Astrid Magnussen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_oleander) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomtownies2020-06-23 04:54 am
white_oleander) wrote in fandomtownies2020-06-23 04:54 am
Entry tags:
Covent Garden Flowers; Tuesday [06/23].
The box of drawings was back on the counter for Astrid's shift again ($5 each, or $2 with additional purchase), and she'd added a few more sketches of flowers to it, but, for the most part, the drawings being added to it today featured ladybugs, because there seemed to be quite a few of them hanging around in the shop that day. Not swarming or in any sort of alarming numbers, thankfully, but just...wherever Astrid looked, if you looked for more than two seconds, you'd see one ambling along, making its way around a petal or a leaf or down the side of a flower pot.
It made Astrid smile, a bittersweet sort of smile, as she remembered this one time, finding street peddler selling little plastic bubbles, the kind that held prizes from gumball machines, filled with ladybugs on the street. Astrid tried to avoid them at all costs, but Claire was too soft, she always stopped and gave them money, and then regretted it and cried over it later when they mistook her kindness for an invitation. But this one was actually offering something that Astrid found interesting. He was a small man, wiry, of indeterminate age, his face weathered, his black beard and long ponytail shot with gray. Unlike most street people, he didn’t seem drunk or insane, and she'd never seen anyone who sold ladybugs as a profession, so Astrid bought the ladybugs. He told her they were lucky. But, in the car, on the way back home, she watched them mill around in their little plastic prison and felt bad about their captivity, opened the tube and released them out the car window.
Throw it back, Claire had said once. It's so alive.
Astrid wondered what happened to those ladybugs. Probably nothing good. But, on that day, she liked to think that maybe these were those ladybugs, coming back to her after all that time.
Covent Garden is open!
It made Astrid smile, a bittersweet sort of smile, as she remembered this one time, finding street peddler selling little plastic bubbles, the kind that held prizes from gumball machines, filled with ladybugs on the street. Astrid tried to avoid them at all costs, but Claire was too soft, she always stopped and gave them money, and then regretted it and cried over it later when they mistook her kindness for an invitation. But this one was actually offering something that Astrid found interesting. He was a small man, wiry, of indeterminate age, his face weathered, his black beard and long ponytail shot with gray. Unlike most street people, he didn’t seem drunk or insane, and she'd never seen anyone who sold ladybugs as a profession, so Astrid bought the ladybugs. He told her they were lucky. But, in the car, on the way back home, she watched them mill around in their little plastic prison and felt bad about their captivity, opened the tube and released them out the car window.
Throw it back, Claire had said once. It's so alive.
Astrid wondered what happened to those ladybugs. Probably nothing good. But, on that day, she liked to think that maybe these were those ladybugs, coming back to her after all that time.
Covent Garden is open!