storypaint | Say It With Flowers (Cardcaptor Sakura, Eriol/Sakura, Ch1)

Title: Say It With Flowers
Comm: 15pairings
Words: 1181
Pairing: Hiiragizawa Eriol/Kinomoto Sakura
Chapter: 1/3
Summary: A week after she got back from the wedding, she got the first bouquet-- jonquils for sympathy, pot marigolds for grief, white poppies for consolation, and a blue iris in the middle of the orangey golds for hope.

Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura is the property of CLAMP. All of the floral information on traditional meanings of flowers I got from these webpages: About: Mother's Day, USA Bride, and Wikipedia article: Language of Flowers.

A week after she got back from the wedding, she got the first bouquet-- jonquils for sympathy, pot marigolds for grief, white poppies for consolation, and a blue iris in the middle of the orangey golds for hope. That's what the flower book said anyway.

When she stepped onto the step that Saturday, the light stabbed her eyes and she gasped a little at the brightness. It's early as hell if the sun is still rising, she thought, feeling pleasantly bad for cursing. That wasn't who she was. She was that girl who believed that everything would turn out right.

Ha. Funny. Her brother stole her first love, her rival had her second, her best friend was away at university, and her loyal guardians were napping. Kero had assured her he'd get up in ten years or so, but he always slept late and in any case that wasn't helping her now.

Her bare foot brushed something damp, soft, and cold, and she yelped. Probably a slug. I probably squished a slug with my bare foot, she thought, but looked down anyway.

There were flowers on her step--orange, yellow, white, and blue. A beautifully arranged bouquet. She nudged it with her foot uncertainly. Who would send her flowers? She felt something hard under the bouquet, so she bent down and picked the flowers up. Underneath was a small book entitled Flowery Language Is Good: the meaning of flowers. She picked up the book and went inside.

Half an hour later, when the bouquet was in a vase, a cup of coffee empty on the table, and the meaning of her bouquet deciphered, Sakura looked up at the blooms. Thankfully, the book contained pictures, so she was able to decipher the identity of each flower. And therefore, the meaning.

She rose and went to the vase, grabbing the iris by the stem. Blue irises for hope, the book said. What hope did she have? She grabbed the scissors from a nearby drawer and held them to the stem, to the flower's neck. Maliciously she considered beheading it. Then she set the scissors down, let the flower go, and sighed. She couldn't kill Hope. The card she had created with the powerful emotion rested safely in the desk with Kero. She shut her eyes in pain as she remembered the events leading up to the naming of that card.

"You said I was your number one..." she whispered, rubbing a hand across her eyes. "And then you married her instead, like your clan wanted. But how could you ignore your heart?"

She wiped her tears on the inside of the vase as if to share her pain with the bouquet. From her reading, she had discovered the meaning of Meiling's bouquet.

The orchid, for many children, a long life, and beauty.

Yellow poppies for wealth and success.

Red chrysanthemums for eternal love.

Each felt like another nail in the coffin of Sakura's loneliness. Angrily she grabbed the scissors, cut the head off the iris, and threw it away. The stem sat in the middle of the bouquet like a jagged reminder of her sorrow.

Still, she didn't throw the flowers out until she got the next bouquet.

Two weeks had passed in a daze. Sakura went to work, came home to an empty house, and slept. She began going to bed earlier and earlier, sleeping her days away so that she didn't have to think. Her father didn't notice; he'd been gone for almost a month now on a very important dig. As long as she got his call twice a week, he thought she was fine.

She thought sleeping would dull the pain, and it did for a little while. But her dreams began to focus again on a certain amber-eyed boy and how happy they had been for those two years he'd lived in Tomoeda. That's why she was awake at four a.m., sourly sipping coffee, and she heard the noise of something soft hitting the front step.

Mumbling in irritation, her eyes dark-ringed, she went to see if the newspaper had arrived early and once again nearly crushed a beautiful bouquet. This one had no irises in it, so she glanced around at the quiet suburb, saw no one, and took the bouquet in.

She took the other flowers out of the vase and let them drip into the sink as she put in the new ones: white roses for innocence and beauty; calla lilies for charm, beauty, and grace; hawthorn, again for hope; purple heather for admiration, solitude, and beauty; and a cherry blossom, her own special flower. Was this person trying to court her?

She laughed cheerlessly. It wasn't that she wasn't flattered; it was more like her emotions had been dampened or shut down as a reaction to the pain. If her younger self had seen a glimpse of this future--of "always-cheerful" Kinomoto Sakura dressed in a faded pink bathrobe, coffee mug in hand suggesting that the reader "Shut up until the cup is empty," her hair sticking out all over the place, and a look of pure dejection on her face that appeared permanent--if her younger self had seen this, she would have cried. But here it was.

And apparently, someone thought she was still beautiful. Hmm.

When she came home from work that day, she didn't put the pink bathrobe back on. She upgraded her style to actual pyjamas, reasoning with herself that the bathrobe needed a wash and that perhaps wearing real clothes would be a good idea staying in a house by herself. It would discourage the weirdos like this bouquet boy.

Though he seemed gentlemanly. With the flowers and all.

The third bouquet came the next Saturday--white tulips, meaning 'I am worthy of you'; blue gooseweed, tenacity, 'I am determined to win your love'; golden evening primrose, promising mute devotion, 'Humbly, I adore you'; and daisies sprinkled in for romance and innocence. On the plastic stick that normally told the giver of the bouquet there was a gift certificate for Naples, the best Italian restaurant in town. Under the gift amount (plenty enough for wine and two meals) there was a time written in a hand she didn't recognize.

"Seven p.m.," she said aloud, and wondered if she should go meet her stalker. She ran a hand through her dull brown hair, interested in spite of herself. Then she sighed. Who cared? So he liked to send her flowers--her and how many other girls? Besides, it was Saturday. She hadn't taken a shower today, or gotten out of her pyjamas, or anything...

And why should she? Who was there to impress? Some guy who won't even say that he likes her to her face?

Carefully trying to ignore how much this looked like hope, she tucked the card into her purse and put the flowers in her vase.