Title: The Language of Flowers
Author: Carmarthen
Fandom/Pairing: Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic novels; Lark/Rosethorn, past Rosethorn/Crane implied
Disclaimer: The characters belong to the wonderful Tamora Pierce. This was written strictly for fun; I'm not making any money and I mean no disrespect.
Rating: PG for a bit of romance that happens to be between two women.
Spoilers: None that I'm aware of; set pre-Circle of Magic.
Summary: Lark learns to speak the language Rosethorn understands best, with mixed results. Crane, of all people, is sensible and understanding - for entirely self-serving motives, of course.
Warning: Slash: contains a romantic relationship between two women. If this bothers you, why waste your time? Go read something you like.
Archive: Yes to Piercings (http://u01wmd.supanet.com/piercings) and my personal site (http://thewritegirls.populli.net/carmarthen), others ask.
Notes: This fic elaborates upon Tamora Pierce's comments at the Sheroes message board on a) Lark and Rosethorn's relationship and b) Rosethorn and Crane's past relationship. So, while not technically canon, the concepts were invented by the original author. I swore I wouldn't write Circle of Magic fic, but like most of my firm resolutions, it went by the wayside. Sigh. Notes on the meanings of flowers not explicitly explained in the text can be found in the detailed notes.
GRATUITOUS PLUG: If you like Tamora Pierce slash, please, please, please go join the tortallslash list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tortallslash. More members --> discussion --> fic = A Good Thing.
many thanks to Elske for the beta
Lark never pushed. Not like Crane. Crane had pushed and pushed and Rosethorn had pushed right back. Rosethorn's roots held her to the earth, and whenever she pushed against Crane, he was gone like the wind, only to return and push elsewhere, always looking for the weak spot to mold her like weatherworn rock.
Lark never pushed.
And sometimes Rosethorn wondered. She had always known on some level that she could love a woman as well as a man, but the only person she had ever allowed close enough to love that way was Crane, and look how well that had turned out. Sometimes she thought she was not meant for love. And sometimes she thought perhaps Lark had become something more than a friend.
Sometimes she thought there was more in Lark's friendly embraces, her kind words, her gentle laughter than friendship.
But she was never certain.
Never certain, that is, until she poked around in Lark's workroom one day, looking for some fabric squares, and found the paper. It was a list of plants, in Lark's elegant cursive. And Rosethorn, unable to stop herself, had read it. Yellow acacia, it said, and her mind filled in the meaning at once: secret love. Heliotrope, snowdrop, myrtle, jonquil -- devotion, hope, love, return my affections. Lilac, ivy, arbor vitae -- first emotions of love, friendship and fidelity, unchanging friendship. And last, maiden blush rose. If you love me, you will find it out.
There was no indication of who the flowers were meant for, but Rosethorn knew.
"What are you doing?" Lark asked softly from behind Rosethorn.
Rosethorn started guiltily and dropped the paper on the table as she turned. "I was looking for fabric squares. For seeds," she said, not meeting Lark's eyes.
"They're not--" Lark began, then paled as she saw the paper on the table. "Oh, Rosie." Something that might have been fear, or disappointment, or hope crossed Lark's face. She picked up the paper, folded it neatly, and tucked it into the bodice of her habit. "Did you read it?"
Rosethorn nodded, unable to speak.
"Oh, Rosie," Lark said again, her voice tired and small. She glanced up at Rosethorn slantwise. Her expression was closed and unreadable, yet Rosethorn noticed how Lark's golden skin pulled tight at the corners of her mouth and that she looked as though she had not slept well in days.
"Yes," Lark finally said, her voice nearly inaudible. "I love you. I'm in love with you."
Rosethorn nearly stopped breathing. Somehow Lark's words were the most terrifying she had ever heard, even if she had suspected long ago that Lark's feelings towards her were more than friendly.
"I'm sorry," she heard herself say, her own voice echoing in her ears as if from far away. "You're my friend, but I...I don't love you that way."
Rosethorn hated herself for the quickly-hidden flash of hurt on Lark's face, and wished she could unsay her words, words she suspected might not be so true as she had thought. But it was too late.
"I did not expect you to," Lark said, her voice shaking. "I did not ask you to. I -- you didn't have to say it." Lark looked away, dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her habit. Then, softer and broken, "You didn't have to say it."
"I'm sorry," Rosethorn said again, but Lark had already fled.
Rosethorn hardly saw Lark for weeks after that . As soon as the sun rose, Lark left for the Temple, returning only just before sundown to eat a hasty meal and disappear into her room. For her part, Rosethorn threw herself into her work. The garden had seldom been so free of weeds, the trees never so neatly pruned, the herbs from her windowsill never repotted so often.
None of it made her stop thinking about Lark, and when one particular sage plant complained that it really didn't need repotting and would really prefer to stay in one home for longer than a week, she decided it was time to stop.
She was desperate. She would go talk to Crane.
Crane was deadheading one of his poor tropical flowers in his greenhouse when Rosethorn found him. "Rosethorn," he said, raising one elegant eyebrow and looking down his rather long nose at her. "To what do I owe this unexpected...pleasure?"
"I wanted to talk," Rosethorn growled, sounding less like a friend who wanted to chat than someone forced to apologize to her worst enemy.
Crane tapped his ear experimentally, then pinched his arm. "Sorry," he said, "did you just say you wanted to talk? Are you feeling well, Rosethorn?"
Rosethorn glared at him. "You heard me."
"Very well," he said after a moment. "I'll go put on some tea."
Rosethorn followed him, laughing silently to herself. Crane made 'tea' sound like a dreadful and dangerous task. She really should have done this earlier, she reflected. Baiting Crane always made her feel better.
A few cups of tea and several insults later, Rosethorn had almost forgotten about Lark.
Suddenly Crane said, "Don't be foolish, my dear girl."
"I am not your dear girl," Rosethorn muttered.
"You were once," Crane said, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
"I was never your dear girl, Crane. That was the problem."
Crane sighed and poured himself another cup of tea. "Returning to the topic at hand...you're being an idiot."
Rosethorn just raised one eyebrow and waited for him to enlighten her.
"Lark," he said.
Lark. It figured that Crane, supercilious bastard that he was, would hit upon the truth for once. "Lark?" she said, carefully keeping her voice level and studying her cup as if she could read Crane's answer in the tea leaves.
"Yes. She's obviously in love with you, you're obviously in love with her, and yet she's been moping around the Water Temple and you're here talking to me. You don't even like me." Crane smiled smugly, obviously certain he knew what was happening better than anyone else.
"Have you considered that she might be making herself useful? Or that I might simply have wished your company?" Rosethorn asked for the sake of argument, although she knew Crane would never let it rest until he winkled the truth out of her.
"If she's trying to be useful, she's doing a very poor job of it. As for the second, I can sooner see you volunteering for hospital duty." His pause was obviously calculated for dramatic effect, and Rosethorn was hard-pressed to keep her lip from curling with disgust. Damn the man and his overdeveloped sense of drama. "Besides, you're evading the issue at hand, Rosethorn."
"Crane, you are the last person to give romantic advice."
"I'm not giving romantic advice. Dedicate Staghorn asked me to get Lark out from underfoot. You seemed to be both the problem and the obvious solution."
Rosethorn sighed. "Maybe I am, but what's said is said and cannot be unsaid, no matter how much any of us wish it."
"Rosethorn...I know you don't want to hear this from me, but you really shouldn't let our failure keep you from loving again."
Rosethorn looked up quickly, searching Crane's face for any signs of mockery. To her surprise, he looked absolutely sincere. For a moment she felt a pang of regret; this was the Crane she had fallen in love with. But she no longer loved him.
"Lark is not me," he said, meeting her eyes.
"No," she said, at a loss for anything else to say.
"Right then," Crane said briskly, his normal prickly self again. He stood and set his cup on a side table. Judging by the pile of similar cups next to it, Crane rarely washed dishes. "Run along now, Rosie. I've got work to do."
Rosethorn left, bemused enough that she even let the 'Rosie' slip by without a retort. Crane had been...Crane, yes, but less flippant than she had seen him for a long time. Perhaps he had finally grown up.
And perhaps, just perhaps, he was right about Lark.
Much as Rosethorn hated to admit it -- and she did, with the deep-set stubbornness of an ancient cedar, hate to admit that Crane was right about anything but medicine -- Crane was right. She had been foolish and afraid, and Lark was hurting because of it.
She stared at her worktable. Two of the herbs from the windowsill needed repotting, the rosemary and the peppermint, but she could not face them that day. If you love me, you will find it out. Almost unaware of her motions, she began opening drawers and taking out pouches of seeds. Here, the small black seeds of bluebell, there the parasol-shaped fuzz of clematis, then chrysanthemums, red and white, amaranth, honeysuckle. She continued, her eyes shut, allowing the plants to call her, until she had a pile of white cloth packets of seeds in front of her.
She opened her eyes, looked at the names written in her small, neat handwriting on the packets, and smiled, suddenly very glad that she had prepared a plot of earth in her one of her spates of activity. She had worked to take her mind off Lark, but had found that gardening only made her think more of Lark, of the careful list of flowers, of the stricken look on Lark's face when -- Rosethorn shook her head and swept the packets off the worktable into the skirt of her habit.
Time enough to dwell on that later, if Lark didn't accept her apology. For now -- better to remember the good times. The smile on Lark's face when she played with the Temple children. The soft clack of her loom on winter evenings. Summer nights spent on the roof, naming star patterns and talking like teenagers.
Rosethorn set the seed packets on the ground next to her cleared patch of earth and set to work. She was still working hours later, arranging seeds in careful patterns. As the last seed fell into place, she sat back on her heels and contemplated her work. The earth looked as bare as when she started, but to her eyes it was alive with flecks of green fire, each one tinted with the essence of the plant it would grow into. In her mind's eye, she could see the garden grown, riotous with color and fragrance, a living tapestry. If Lark learned to speak her language, she could learn to speak Lark's.
There was still something missing, she decided. She stood, suppressing a gasp of pain as she worked the kinks out of her back. Yes. That was it.
She set off purposefully for the shed behind Discipline and returned a few moments later, two saplings cradled in her arms. One was a cedar, the other an elm. Strength and dignity.
She set them down and dug a hole in the center of the bed, then placed the trees in the hole, patted soil around them, and gave their branches a reassuring pat. A tiny push of her magic made them reach for the sky, twining their nearest branches together into an intricate braid. Rosethorn smiled and touched the ground at the edge of the bed, watching green fire spread through the soil like roots, touching each seed.
When Rosethorn opened her eyes the bed was full of plants, some budding, some dormant, but all singing with life.
She had bordered the bed with budding white and red chrysanthemums, intermixed with blue forget-me-nots. Clematis and honeysuckle twined over the fence at the back of the bed, just beginning to perfume the air, and red salvia and the pink shoots of amaranth formed a spiral leading to the saplings at the center of the design. Bluebells and variegated tulips filled the rest of the bed with spears of green. The message of Rosethorn's garden was simple, the words that Rosethorn could not speak repeated in each flower and leaf.
She finished just in time, for Lark, no longer able to stay away, was coming up the path. For the first time in weeks, Rosethorn went to greet her.
"Rosethorn, what--"
Rosethorn, forgetting her voice after her afternoon listening to the plants, simply took Lark's hand and led her into the garden. Lark took one look at the flowers and a dusky blush crept across her face. "Oh, Rosie," she said breathlessly, flinging her arms around Rosethorn. "I love you."
Rosethorn looked down, but returned Lark's embrace awkwardly. "I'm sorry," she mumbled.
Lark just smiled radiantly at her. They kissed, barefoot in the garden, while buds opened around them and the plants sang their green joy in voices only Rosethorn could hear.
When they broke apart, Lark murmured, "Just one thing -- do I really have beautiful eyes?"
Rosethorn stared, thought of the tulips, then laughed and embraced Lark again. "Would I have said it if you didn't?"
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