She thinks of yellow wallpaper and hours upon hours of restless pacing, going around and around, over and over, until finally coming to the conclusion that she's not all there, that she'd become the monster hidden in the pattern. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is right, she thinks, even if the reasoning differs. Instead of wallpaper, Fleur is enraptured by her reflection, and maybe that word isn't the most fitting word, but she blanks on anything better. Having someone to talk to, someone other than the dead, keeps her level, the type of level she'd lost when her line died, when her sire disappeared, when her sibling disappeared, when Rhys disappeared, when Robin disappeared. She leaves a trail of broken relationships and lost possibilities. Every night, she finds reasons to wake up, if only to stand in the hallway outside of her apartment and wait for someone else to appear. She's lonely, the type of lonely that breaks someone, but she can't say she's unhappy. She carries with her a number of daydreams, just as she carries with her a multitude of dead. Dorothy says she's lost it, but she's not quite sure if she ever had it to begin with, and there's no real reason to pick at scabs. No, she's still trying to stop the bleeding.
There's a balcony in her apartment and she spends hours staring out at the night sky, finding purpose in every star, every cloud blocking the light of the moon. Moonlight is the only kind of light unable to hurt her, and she thinks it's because there's a connection, that she's a part of something much bigger than herself. But her thoughts get away from her and she's left wondering what the hell she had been thinking about in the first place. A higher power? How ridiculous. She was an atheist in life, and with good reason. While her reflection is a rabid beast, snarling and clawing at the mirror, she's not quite as brave. She thinks she'd run away from a real fight, or maybe just stand there and take it, because losing would take her to the shadow realm, and there's nothing scary there, not for her. Cowardice doesn't mean much to her. There's nothing shameful about it, nothing embarrassing. She is a gardener more than a fighter, despite how many hours she wastes killing all kinds of beasts. Her flower boxes and hanging plants keep her busy. While they need the sunlight, she doesn't. Every night, just before dawn, she says goodbye to them, and she greets when she wakes. They're interesting. It's interesting. Everything else she touches dies, so she wears gloves, and it doesn't matter, in the end. For some reason she doesn't understand, those particular plants won't die on her, so she won't die on them.
Dorothy turned twelve a few months ago, and Fleur threw her a tiny birthday party. She'd baked a cake and covered the top with twelve candles. They couldn't eat the cake, but Dorothy allowed Fleur to blow the candles out and make a wish. Fleur wished for a new friend. Two days later, she awoke to a grumpy old man standing over her. He follows her sometimes, too stubborn to ask to move on, or maybe still too attached to his former life -- Fleur doesn't know -- but she looks for him, because no one else is looking for him. Sometimes she can tell when people are ghosts; other times, she can't tell the living from the dead. And it becomes especially difficult when the dead don't know they're dead. The old man is easy to read, because his feet are encased in stone, hands tied behind his back. Fleur knows he's dead, and she's left to wonder why something so horrible had happened to him. She thinks it's the gangsters in the city, and maybe she's right, or maybe she's wrong. Nothing changes the fact that George is a part of her life.
Dorothy likes taking walks, and though George grumbles about the heat or the cold, the rain or the sunshine, he tends to join them. Fleur feeds the ducks, as usual, living the moment for herself and for her two companions. Dorothy likes to sit down with the ducks and pretend to hold conversations with them, even though they can't see or hear her. Fleur learned never to touch them. The one time she'd tried, the duck died. So now, Fleur avoids touching them at all costs. George likes to sit down next to people and read the newspapers some businessmen like to read. He keeps up with current events, so he and Dorothy hold intelligent conversations on tectonic plates that may or may not have been responsible for the earthquake a few years ago. Fleur doesn't pay them any mind. What difference does it make? The earthquake had ended, so she moved on. Dorothy tells her she's going to end up getting "really hurt" one day because she tries to live her life to the fullest, even if it doesn't always seem that way. Fleur likes to think that when it's her time, it's her time. She thinks she'll just stop coming around. That makes her think about her plants. That makes her sad.
Fleur doesn't know how old she is. She thinks she's twenty-six, because that sounds like a good age, but she could be in her thirties. She could be old, even though she doesn't feel old. Dorothy tries to dig up information on her, but the girl can't interact much with the world. When Dorothy gathers energy, she can move things and whisper, but it takes a lot out of her, so Fleur discourages it. Somewhere, Fleur knows there must be a story about her disappearance and suspected murder, but she knows it's another cold case, and there's really no point in digging around. At the end of the day, she has no one looking for her, and maybe that's for the best. She leaves Mondays for thinking about the world and Tuesdays for introspection. Every other day, she lives in the moment, and she finds she likes those days better than Mondays or Tuesdays. It's Saturday when Fleur decides to find a new friend, and Saturday when Fleur finds a crumpled invitation to a 1920s party. It's Saturday when Fleur feels alive again, as alive as she'll ever be.
