Ring Around the Rosie

[iamnotpolaris]

Niagara Falls is gorgeous, but there's only so long you can stand at the railing staring at it. Emily is, therefore, giving her feet a rest with one of the convenient benches and snapping photos of miscellaneous attractive objects.

She isn't taking pictures of specific people, because, privacy, but in a crowded place like this you can't exactly complain if you happen to be in frame when someone's trying to take a picture of a rainbow or a flower. Or if someone happens to notice your bracelet when the sleeve of your hoodie rides up a little. Or that it's not actually a bracelet, but some kind of...vine? With thorns?

Okay, they could probably complain some about her getting up to follow them, but it would bother Emily for weeks if she never found out whether she had seen wrong or not.

Comments

[gaincontrol]

"Magic is gross and painful," she warns, but she grins. "Sure, just a sec."

The black stem holding the red rose-head grows longer, and then it's joined by a purple stem holding a blue flower, and a yellow stem holding a pink flower, and finally a white stem holding a black flower. Each has the same distinctive kind of thorns, short but sharp, the same colour as their stems but fading to petal-coloured at the tips. She holds that hand out to Cass.

[the_greatest_show]

Cass cuts them free and offers the cut flowers to Emily.

[iamnotpolaris]

She takes them. "So how does this work?"

[gaincontrol]

"If you cut yourself with a thorn, the flower grabs you. It'll hurt a bunch. The black ones are the worst. It's also kind of hard on your clothes what with all the thorns everywhere, or I'd just demonstrate," she says. "To start with you get one kind of magic per flower, but you won't be very good at it. Red cuts things, blue moves things, pink heals people, black makes stuff. And you can only do the magic while the flower has you, and unless you're really into pain you probably don't want to go around with four flowers on literally all the time."

[iamnotpolaris]

"So trying it right now isn't really feasible," she says, looking down at her relatively destructible outfit. "I wouldn't say I'm into it, not the way it's usually meant, but..." she shrugs. "Makes stuff like how?"

[gaincontrol]

"Like just..."

She makes a gesture and a brightly coloured rubber bouncy ball appears in her hand. She hands it to Emily.

"Stuff, the making thereof. I'm not super good at it, Cass is better, but she's not wearing her black flower right now."

[iamnotpolaris]

"That is so cool." She looks down at her clothes regretfully again.

[gaincontrol]

"I know, right? Don't count on that to stick around, by the way, Cass can make permanent stuff but mine still disappears after a couple hours."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I guess I'll just have to see if I can get good, then."

[gaincontrol]

"I recommend being in the shower when you use the red flower because blood, but the other ones don't make you bleed so much," she adds.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Red one was cutting, right? Doesn't sound as useful as the others."

[the_greatest_show]

"If you're only going to use one flower it's kinda the best one because it's the borrower," says Cass. "After you get good enough at the cutting magic you can start on one of the other four and they're healing people, moving stuff, the weird one that's the same as the weird one from the black flowers, and light."

[gaincontrol]

"We don't know what all the kinds of magic do because we haven't tried them all yet and the ones we've tried we haven't totally figured out, but you can tell which kinds of magic are the same as which other kinds without having to use them."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I suppose the shower thing is less obnoxious than it would be if the thorns weren't hard on clothing anyway."

[gaincontrol]

"I mean, you can put clothes on over the flowers, witness how I'm wearing clothes, but yeah, the red ones are really messy especially when you're just starting out."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I just meant for putting the flowers on. I observe that you are wearing clothes. The alternative would be so much more awkward."

[the_greatest_show]

Cass snickers.

[iamnotpolaris]

Emily's phone pings. She takes it out and checks it. "My sister appears to be overreacting to my last text."

[the_greatest_show]

"Yeah?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Well, remember that I thought you guys might be connected to a cult at the time. I told her where I was and that if I went mysteriously missing I didn't just get lost."

[the_greatest_show]

"...Do you maybe wanna tell her that we're not a cult and you haven't gone mysteriously missing?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"I didn't say anything about a cult specifically or even technically mention I was trailing anyone, but yeah, I'm reassuring her," she says, typing at the tiny keyboard on her screen. All cleared up, no worries! Also, magic exists.

[gaincontrol]

"Is she going to want flowers too?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Probably. Do they--reproduce, once you have them?"

[gaincontrol]

"Not really. I can make more of any of them but Cass can't do pink or blue yet, you have to use the flower a lot before you can do that."