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just when I've managed
to harden my heart
—
to harden my heart
—
I
f Caine had not chosen that morning to venture into town in search of the enigmatic Denoctian florist’s House of Fleurs Exotiques — a pretentious name for the demure little booth it really was — he would’ve been there to see it happen.Instead, he’d had to settle for hearing about it secondhand.
The wall of ivy had fallen, and as it fell, pearls had rained from the sky.
He later found out, from a secondary source, that pearls had not rained from the sky but had instead burst out of the heart-red berries entangled in the ivy, and Caine couldn’t decide which account was stranger.
It was difficult to keep from departing for the island right then and there to convince himself of either truth.
But as there had been for the past several weeks, there was business to attend to (tonight, it came in the form of exotic flowers and a neatly penned letter) — and so it was not until day slinked into evening, and evening into midnight, that Caine set off to indulge his curiosity for the second time in a matter of days.
There really were pearls. Here and there they gleamed, lodged in the crevices of the volcanic rock or winking beneath the meandering tide. Not the ankle deep expanse the rumors had sung of — more like the remnants of a lady’s unstrung necklace — but unlike most times, he doubted the rumors were hyperbolic.
Caine had arrived late, and most would agree that these were dark times for the solar courts.
Were the pearls a gift sent by the gods, then, to feed their hungry people? If they were, Caine thought they should have at least chosen something edible. With everyone and their mothers bound to flood the markets with their haul at first light tomorrow, pearls would become almost worthless before noon.
He regarded the picked-over treasure once more, mouth set in a faint frown, before advancing onwards to the end of the waves, and the beginning of the island.
Even a day exposed to the sun and sea had not been enough to wash the red stain of berry juice out of the pearls. They reminded him of bloody teeth.
@Random Events | "speech"
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STAFF EDIT***
@caine has rolled a 5! He has been awarded +180 signos.
