The Florist

A Story by Cagan

Why does everyone hate fake flowers, when they can be the nicest of all?

The world, it seems, shares a collective distaste for fake flowers. One can admire the beauty of such a blossom, true, and unlike the living variety, their beauty is perfect and eternal. Even so, they remain, in people’s minds, but cheap imitations of nature’s creations. They lack the pure and wild imperfection of true flowers, after all; that, and the unique quality of releasing perfume. Yet in a certain bedroom of a certain girl sat a brilliant bouquet of such a sort that put nature to shame. Paper flowers, roses and lilies and lotus buds, arranged in a rainbow of colors and textures that drew in the eye and enchanted the viewer with their simple magnificence. Each bloom had been folded and positioned with an expert precision so as to achieve such an effect.

It was not the beauty of these paper petals, however, that made these flowers so exceptional--rather, it was their scent. The bouquet had evidently decided to ignore the way one supposed a flower ought to smell. Instead they filled the room with even sweeter perfumes: the smoky aroma of a crackling fire, for instance, or perhaps the fragrance of vanilla extract or cherry soap or some other sweet. The folded flowers excreted whatever scents the young girl loved most, serving her and her alone and doing as she dictated. She had created each one of them, meticulously folding each one, taking pains to make every blossom more elegant than the last. Then she did as no one else could, breathing life into them and waking them from their inanimate slumber. Soon they were just as alive as if Nature had formed them with her own guiding hand. As a thanks, the flowers served their florist as flowers do: they made themselves beautiful to look upon and intoxicating to inhale. No flower on Earth could be quite so splendid.

Any room would seem an inadequate home for the bouquet and its creator, but this one seemed especially humble. The ground was littered with crumpled papers and clothing articles that had escaped the hamper. A single window worked with a single lamp in an impressive effort to illuminate the chamber, but it seemed the corner bed was always just out of reach of their full strength. It was here, on the shadowed sheets, that the girl spent her afternoons, working with a fervent diligence on her secret undertakings.

She had been wrestling with the same sheet of paper for nearly half of an hour. What was supposed to be an elaborate origami structure was now a ball of unintelligible creases, unrecognizable as anything but a mistake. She accepted the inevitable with a sigh, crumpling the paper in her fist before releasing it onto the floor. Another failure. The mess on her floor was a tribute to her defeats just as the desk beside her was a tribute to her successes. She walked over to it, as she often did when her work left her frustrated, to admire her collection.

The vase of flowers itself sat on the center of the mahogany surface, surrounded by a menagerie of paper creatures. Her own miniature zoo. Her first creations were simple: smiling faces of dogs and cats, elephant silhouettes and penguins. As her talent evolved, so did her pets. She crafted little frogs that hopped merrily around her room. Later, delicate paper cranes would float through the air, dodging furniture as they raced in circles. She took one now, a purple crane, and exhaled her life giving breath onto it. As she watched, the bird awoke, delicate and fragile, as if from a short nap. It looked up at the girl, its head in a curious tilt, waiting for her command. Nodding at her whispered instruction, it took flight, soaring through the air around its master the way a moon revolves around its planet. The florist looked on in delight, spinning around, laughing, clapping.

The door creaked open, and both the laughing girl’s face and the purple crane fell. The perfume of the flowers, moments before filling the room with their ethereal scent, seemed to dissolve into nonbeing.

The intruder was a small boy, barely twelve, whose eyes, always large, seemed now to pop out of their sockets in his surprise at what he had seen in his sister’s room. They stared at each other for a moment, entering into a silent contest, each child daring the other to talk first. A contest which, the girl realized, she must lose. She fixed an angry glare on the boy who had seen her, who had glimpsed her crane, who could very well be her ruin, and conceded defeat with the unlocking of her jaw.

“What are you doing in my room?” Her words were caustic yet tense, anxiety slipping into her speech and causing her voice to waver, though only slightly.

“I thought…I thought I smelled chocolate…,” the boy said, his voice trailing off as he realized the only smell in the room was that of paper and sweat. It was a silent thought to the flowers the moment he entered the room that had stifled their scent. “But the crane--”

“Please get out of my room.” She made to close the door.

The boy hesitated to move. “But--”

“OUT.”

“But the crane was flying!”

“Flying?” said the florist, laughing as she lied. “Gliding, more like. You can throw them like paper airplanes, you know.”

Her brother remained unconvinced, she knew, but the doubts were there, and they would be enough. Enough to keep him from spilling. She practically shoved him out the door, closing and locking the door behind him before she allowed her room to be recalled to life. The crane lay on the floor where it had fallen, its wing was bent from its ungraceful tumble. The girl grasped it with a gentle pinch, straightening the fragile limb with delicate fingers before replacing the bird on the desk.

The paper folder returned to her bed, selecting a new square sheet--this time, a fiery red--and flipping to the last page of her origami manual for the fourth time that day. Her other attempts at this particular design had been foiled by her impatience and incompetence, and, after a few folds, it appeared this venture would end as the rest.

Until. Until, in a sudden moment of clarity, the impossible directions became decipherable. Until, in this burst of inspiration, she understood the only way to progress was to question her way of thinking. To accept nothing but what was.

And now, her path finally clear in her mind, she began to fold, taking pains to ensure each crease was perfect. And now, when she reached those steps that had always caused such trouble, she opened her mind, she thought differently, and she understood. And now, when all was done, the florist, the paper folder, the little girl, held in her small palms a tiny red paper dragon, who she could not help but beam upon. She took a moment to admire him, with his pointed wings and tiny horns. Then, she brought her miniature creation to her lips, blowing into him that magical breath of life. He woke up slowly, unfurling his wings and stretching, as a cat does. His head strained around to look upon at the girl, the girl who had designed him and given him life, the girl who he therefore would serve without question. With a whispered command, he took flight, gliding out of her hand and around the room. And when the dragon began to cough out bits of joyous flame, why, the girl’s smile was Christmas.