xXWatch as the flowers...F.A.D.E. awayXx

[Tsubasa]

The view from his eyes were beautiful, bunches of different flowers ranging from different colors, types, and sizes were littered around the garden. It was a paradise, and the sun was shining high. This looked like the perfect chance for the boy to play around without any restrictions or people to tell him what to do. Miles could just enjoy himself...well, when did he not?

Jumping up, he raised his arms in the air and flung himself on a patch of daisies. Oh, he could just roll around in the plants. Rolling over, he smelled the pretty things and wondered if they were edible. Not giving a second thought, the Filipino munched down on the sorrowful flower. Oh yes! It was delicious! He decided then to have an early lunch and delight himself in this delicacies. Grabbing fistfuls of the Daisies, he pulled them out of their roots harshly and shoved them in his mouth, roots and all. Then he noticed a select few ants crawling around the area of which he took the flower from its resting place, and watched them with interest.

His A.D.D mind took hold and parted from the flower eating to the ant watching. He placed himself on all fours, elbows and knees clearly streaked with dirt and grass stains, and watched them with his big, haunting black eyes. The strange boy had some sort of fascination with the bugs, but then decided it would be much more eventful to squash them with his fists. He laughed playfully as they succumbed to their fate, and then licked the remainder off his hands.

Yes, today was truly going to be fun.

[Javert]

((note: I've been reading too much jane austen lately. Forgive me for the overly florid writing style. XD I think it suits fran, though, so.))

Only three days had passed since her arrival at Florence's, but she knew that number to be unarguably divine and holy and certainly none too few, so Frances Crawford decided to commemorate the eve of her fourth day by visiting the gardens.

Although gardening was pointless to some and tedious to others, Fran found it exhilarating. She was quite easily amused by anything and everything, but nature itself provided her her greatest entertainment and satiated her greatest curiosities. She was most content out-of-doors and could find no purer happiness outside of a garden. Her own garden, started two years ago and nursed daily (sometimes beckoning Fran to spend entire days on her knees in the dirt, ruining her best dresses and tangling her hair and burning scarlet onto her pale cheeks and bringing an enormous smile to her face), was her pride and joy, more of a child to her than a sprawling knot of buds and blooms. The beginning pangs of homesickness were surfacing in her tender heart, and among them was a longing for her garden. Certainly the beautiful flora of Florence's would ease her suffering, and perhaps the Headmistress would allow her to have her own patch of Heaven!

The thought brought a smile to Fran's face as she skipped across the grounds of her new school, red hair plaited into a thick braid so that her gaze would be able to drink in the glories of the gardens uninhibited. Already her mind was awhirl and aswirl with possibilities. That plot of ground beside the lake would be good... Or perhaps that quaint little dapple of dirt besides the peonies... Or the petunias... Their tulips were simply too vivid to be imagined! Her thoughts soon drifted from plans for her own garden and were instead rendered immobile in awe. She drifted through the hedges nearly on tiptoe, her pale eyes wide, her hands folded tightly so that they would not be tempted to reach out and caress a velveteen petal or emerald stem.

As daisies were among her favored flowers, naturally Fran's skip became more pronounced and her smile deeper as she came upon them—and the smile of a small, dark-haired bow increased, also, as he delightfully munched on the beautiful buds.

“No!” The agonized cry came forth from her throat before it could be restrained, and she teetered forward on urgent feet with a hand outstretched to salvage the flowers. “Please don't—leave them be—they're too beautiful to be eaten, unless you're a rabbit, but I daresay you aren't because you're far too big and not furry,” she babbled in a single stream. As the words processed, she blinked once, shook her head minutely, and prepared to gently pry the daisies from the boy's hands before he released his captives and dropped to all fours, silent and unmoving.

Fran held her breath for a moment, fearful of another outburst. When it seemed to be safe she offered, hesitantly, “Do you like ants as well? I find them quite endearing. They're so--” Appetizing was not an adjective that she would have considered, and in new found horror—and morbid curiosity—she watched as the boy proceeded to consume a fistful of ants who had met an untimely demise. “Oh,” said Fran, quietly.

[Tsubasa]

Chicken, yes they tasted like chicken. The grounded and pounded insects fled from their captor in a hopeful yet doubtful chance to get away, yet they were unfortuantly consumed like the rest of their brethren. But the Filipino didn't just eat- oh no - he made sure to terrorize them and play with them for his own fun and amusement. Did he really know what he was doing? no, probably not. But even if he did he wouldn't have stopped. The boy made sure to pick off their little legs one, by, one and slowwwly squish them under his fists. But, as ADD proved reliable, he quickly lost interest with his activity and wanted to find something else to do - or torture -. That is, until he finally noticed the ginger-haired maiden placed in front of his scattered view.

She was very pretty, he thought to himself, and that caused him to smile real wide. Miles loved pretty things, as well as people. Crawling over to shorten the distance between the two, the student raised a hand up high in the form of raising his hand, but meant it as a 'hello'.

"Hi there!" he yelped rather loudly, putting his hand down and staring more at her silky hair than the girl herself, "My names MILES," he emphasized his name with his eyes growing wide and then back to normal, "what's YOUR name?"

But, without waiting for the pretty lady's response, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and brought it directly in front of his wide eager eyes. Stroking the locks with one hand, he 'ooo'd and 'ahhh'd in fascination.

"You have real pretty hair, miss." He lifted his head up, eyes wide with a smile. "Can I have some? Pleaseeeeee? Pretty please?"

(no no my dear, you're writing was perfect for both the character and the setting. xD the only problem is its so good and makes me look bad with my noobish writing skills...>>)

[Javert]

Fran remained in a statuesque stillness, clutching the flowers to the bodice of her dress tightly enough for the petals to permanently stain it with their perfume. Her regard for their well-being had been pushed momentarily to the back of her mind. Instead, she was consumed with pity for the poor little ants, marching proudly in a line to their impending doom. She very nearly fell to her knees and scooped the lilliputian insects up into the cradle of her palms. They didn't deserve such torture, even from a child who rather obviously... Wasn't completely there, or was instead located somewhere else entirely.

Fran swallowed the sudden knot in her throat, unknowingly twisting petals off of her beloved flowers as she wrung her hands. Surely this boy didn't intend such malignant behavior! Fran remained of an opinion that everyone under the age of twenty or so possessed entirely innocent minds, yet to be warped or tainted by the horrors of the outside world... Even though she had been proved otherwise on a single momentous occasion that seared her memory like a cattle brand. Unconsciously, she was gnawing on her lip, and she realized this after a moment, shaking her head minutely as if trying and failing to wake herself up.

If that small movement proved inefficient, the boy's sudden attention to her certainly did. Fran's frozen exterior melted with his gesture. Perhaps he was harmless after all; his radiant smile was enough to assure her as much. She released her vise grip upon the daisy with one hand and allowed it to describe a timid wave in the air before her. “What a lovely name,” Fran assured Miles with a smile of her own—hesitant as it was, it was surely existent. Frowning was a painful expression for the girl. “It's very nice to meet you. My name is Fra—Oh.” Her name changed into something entirely different mid-vowel as the boy decided to seize the end of her braid and she was yanked with it unceremoniously towards him. A swift onslaught of pain did not summon anger so much as it ushered in her earlier astonishment, and what could only be described as a small inkling of fear.

“Oh,” she repeated, casting him a sidelong glance and frantic smile as she was held fast by his grip on her hair, “well, thank you, Miles, that's very kind of you, I like to think I have my mum's hair except that hers is much curlier and a much prettier color...” Another rush of pointless drivel was issuing from her mouth, she realized, but although prompted by her quotidian extroversion, it was also a device employed as she tried to give herself time enough to figure out what exactly to do. “Um,” Fran stated, “if you'll please let me have my hair back for one tiny minute, I'm sure I can give you, er, a strand... Or so...” She wasn't quite sure as to why she was agreeing to present this boy with a strand of her hair, or why he wanted one, but it simply seemed like the nice thing to do since he seemed to want it so much. It wasn't a huge sacrifice, and at least it was keeping him occupied and granting the ants a chance at escape.

[Tsubasa]

Fra, Fra Fra, it seem to just roll off his tongue in such a soothing way, even if he wasn't even saying it out-loud. But with Miles, it didn't really make a difference. As she had been cut off, the boy truly thought that this was her name, not bothering ask why it was so short, since he didn't really see the difference. He had once named his pet bunny Kle. Oh that furry white little rabbit, how he missed him so. It was a shame that the animal hadn't been able to take his hug -overpowering squeeze- and well, you can tell the rest. He couldn't stop crying for days, but when the doctor gave him a replacement stuffed toy, he completely forgot in an instant.

Starring intently at the sun-colored braid of hair clutched tightly in his hand as if his life depended on it, the boy licked his lips and then stared back up with hollow eyes. Those eerie eyes could stare right through a person, and it was mind-breaking if he stared too long. So as he peered right into her pretty ocean eyes, it could make anyone pity the poor girl. Clicking his head to the side slowly, he tugged on the braid and smiled a wide grin.

"I can? Really? Truthfully? THANKS!" Not waiting for anything else -when did he ever?- he quickly yanked a bundle of strands from the girl's head and clutched them with both hands. Cupping them as if they were a wondrous thing, he peered with his face directly in his hands, and made sounds of amazement. Miles could find amusement in the tiniest things, even if they weren't amusing to begin with. That was one of his positive qualities, and could almost never find himself bored. If there was a floor and a wall, the Filipino could find a way. In this moment, he found his way with the bundle of red strands, holding them now in front of his eyes.

But, as with everything, he lost quick interest and threw them over his shoulder with a yawn. Nothing lasted long, and he got bored as quickly as he got entertained. There was a negative quality. The sad part of the whole thing was there were more negative qualities than positive for the poor boy, even if it was not his fault in the end. Nevertheless, he found another way to amuse himself, as he scuttled over to Fran with a grin and placed himself rather sloppily on her lap. Nuzzling her with is head, he purred almost like a cat -Miles loved to copy the animals- and stared up at her from his position, waiting for something to happen.

[Javert]

Prompted by the pain already at the base of her skull, the malicious beginnings of a headache were beginning to form at Fran's temples. She narrowed her eyes and gnawed her bottom lip as her hands quested frantically around, unsure of what to do. She couldn't just push the boy away—that would be rude, and, distantly, in a selfish pocket of her mind, she acknowledged that it would probably increase her pain tenfold if he refused to relinquish her braid. Instead, she folded her hands tightly in front of her, and leaned to the side so that her head was nearly on the boy's shoulder. It was an awkward position to be standing in, leaning and immobile like a wind-blown scarecrow, but it alleviated some of the pain. He was bound to let go eventually.

Right?

He met her gaze with eyes like black buttons. Fran forced a grin out from its hiding place. Even her innocent nature detected something unsettling about those eyes. She was beginning to feel far less amused and more than a little afraid, and, tremulously, mind churning for an escape, she suggested, wincing slightly as he tugged on her hair, “Perhaps if you let me—,”

Obviously a child not accustomed to listening to petty suggestions, Miles skipped the negotiating and instead got straight to the point. Fran's mouth popped into a tiny circle of surprise as he uprooted the hair from her head like a cluster of weeds. Tears rushed to gather in her eyes at the pain—as she looked at the hair the boy now clutched triumphantly in his hand, he had acquired no small amount. Her hands, plucking anxiously at her skirt, flew upward to press their palms flat against her skull, as if keen on pushing the pain back into her head, because it had been far more manageable when restrained at her temples. A strand, she thought, hurt, I would have given him a strand; certainly all this wasn't necessary! No stranger to pain but certainly no enthusiast of it, she felt the urge to cry accumulating in her throat, and she swallowed, blinking furiously, her hands now fiddling with her braid, as if protecting it from further invasion. “Y-you're welcome,” she managed to say, inanely, because it was the only response she found herself able to give.

Just as her brain was simultaneously chiding her for nearly crying (she was somehow keeping the tears at bay, although her face was reddening perceptibly), it was also forming speculations as to why the boy was so interested in her hair, and just as she had derived that it quite simply had to be insanity, and she was feeling much more frightened than pitying, he discarded of her hair as if it were some rusted treasure. Breathe, Fran, she thought her eyes widened (she was accustomed to talking to herself almost as often as she talked to others). It's not his fault, the poor dear, she reminded herself. Nevertheless, she was of half a mind to tiptoe quietly away while the boy sought further amusement elsewhere, but her plan was foiled as he rather forcefully pushed her to sit and then crawled into her lap. Nose-to-nose with the boy, Fran stared into those button eyes of his, too thoroughly overwhelmed to speak.

“Well,” she breathed after a long moment, “hello, there.” A whirlwind of emotions wreaked havoc in her head, ranging from fright to pity and now complete confusion, but she sorted through them all as calmly as she could. She felt, suddenly, as if she were babysitting her younger nieces and nephews. She would just have to entertain the boy until he went away. Oh, dear, thought Fran, but she said, smiling, her voice exaggeratedly syrupy, “Well, Miles, what's your favorite flower?”

[Tsubasa]

At first he seemed not to hear her, not in the actual hearing aspect but more of the fact that his mind didn't hear her, Miles was somewhere else. He looked at a certain piece of dust on the girl he was 'occupying', and continued to stare at it if it was the most brilliant thing his very eyes had seen. But then, the words slowly crept into his ears and to his brain so that the boy could finally process it and respond. Staring back up at her the smile crept back and he giggled, a short step from a gurgle like that of a newborn, and with his right hand he touched her cheek.

"I reaallly love the dogbane Apocynaceae family -although they aren't really flowers-, preferably the Nerium Oleander, but Taki-san always tells me to stay away from it. Oh! But the Anagallis arvensis of the Primulaceae family is reaalllyyy pretty." A gurgle followed once more, and after his black eyes found their way up to the sky, moving so slightly from the right to left as he watched the clouds. "What's...your fav..orite flower?"

The sentence took time, as he was distracted by the vast and mysterious view. Sometimes the boy would find himself lost in the heavens, and would simply be completely and utterly entranced by it, only to find that when he had to leave it had been hours spent away. But the Filipino couldn't help but stare up at the bright big sky that was filled with so many wonders, so much mystery and hidden secrets. He loved the shapes that the clouds would make, and often liked to see them in the form of things he enjoyed. Like flowers, toys, animals and other silly things such that a young boy often dreamed of.

Then Miles took his glazed eyes back to 'Fra' and pressed his head softly against her chest, his eyes half-lidded and dreamy. She was very soft, he thought, and very warm too. There was a certain ease to her that made him feel very comfortable with her, almost a motherly feeling. He wouldn't know though, he hadn't grown up with mother...or father...or anyone really for that matter, since no one had wanted to deal with him or even accept that he existed. But the boy didn't know that, no, he wouldn't even be able to comprehend it if it was told to him. His brain power wasn't that strong for these complicated matters.

[Javert]

((I dislike this post immensely. isry.))
Granted, the boy was somewhat heavier than her nieces and nephews, [/size] a more solid presence upon her lap than she was accustomed to, and yet Fran felt suddenly as if she were back home, seated in the pleasantly cool soil of her mum's garden, her family seated on nearby benches and laughing as the children crawled around and over Fran, she acting as either a bridge to further adventures or a minor obstruction to be scaled. As the pain in her head faded, so, too, did the pangs of homesickness like needles in her heart. Her slight fear and confusion remained, but it was quieted, now, as she shrugged around her shoulders a shawl of calm. As if Miles sensed this, he placed a quiet hand against her cheek, and Fran blinked, stiffening, surprised, yet she soon relaxed, as if the gesture had been meant to physically quell and push away her earlier anxieties. This boy could be no more than two years younger than she, perhaps even less, and yet Fran could see him as nothing more than a much younger child—a younger child with something quite different about him, admittedly, and yet to Fran that made no difference.

Until, at least, he began speaking once again. Fran's eyes widened until she was certain they had the circumference of silver dollars; she felt as if they now occupied at least half of her face. Seated nearly nose-to-nose, he still looked like the young, oddly placid young child she was beginning to feel a friendly fondness for, and yet he sounded like a teacher at Florence's, a professor, a botanist, a world-renowned scholar. No—he still sounded like himself, the joyful cadences of innocent youth still dancing in his voice, yet the words he used went far over Fran's head and into the stratosphere above, or even beyond that, far past the limits of Earth and hurtling into space. This was the depth of Fran's utter confusion. She was as effectively lost as she would have been if she had ran, blind-folded, through the labyrinthine columns of the gardens.

As her mind began again to debate shuddering to a halt or moving to a sprint, Fran gave her head a shake, her eyes a forceful blink. There was something remarkable about this child, she decided, something that she would be unable to understand, and she was just going to have to accept it. This was a trying task, but, finally, Fran was quite able to decipher his last few words. “Well,” said Fran, surprisingly calmly, “those all sound just perfectly lovely.” This was not entirely a lie: Fran thought every flower upon God's green earth beautiful, almost achieving a divine perfection, whether green and flourishing or brown and withering. “My favorite flowers are lily-of-the-valley. Do you like those?” One final obstreperous thought snidely quipped that Miles had probably been talking about them for the last thirty seconds but that silly, stupid Fran had been unable to understand him. She shushed it and it dissolved into another wave of calm, a defense mechanism against sudden insanity or hyperventilation, neither of which Fran found remotely appealing.

She smiled in a further attempt to slow her thoughts and her heart rate, before the boy, mirroring her expression, his button eyes hazing over, lay his head against her chest. A moment's pause ensued, a total halt in the inward mechanisms of Frances. Then, almost immediately, she was overwhelmed with a maternal fondness for the boy that burst forth and blossomed in the sunlight. Fran loved her nieces and nephews with every thread and fiber of her being, and one of her greatest wishes was to marry and have many children running haphazardly around the house, laughing, singing, dancing, playing, dreaming, wishing, creating, appreciating and loving life almost as much as Fran loved them. She prayed that she was mother material, and the gentle pressure against her chest, like a handprint on her heart, made every maternal instinct of hers sing. She melted. “Aren't you precious,” she murmured, eyes nearly brimming with tears, inexplicably touched, as she encircled him gently with her arms. How could she have been frightened of such a tender soul? [/font]

[Tsubasa]

(how dare you say you dislike it?! All your posts are amazing and mine pale in comparison D: I mean, just look at this short thing)

Oh my, he could feel himself slowly drifting away, losing his frantic consciousness little by little. But how could he help it? The girl was so soft, so warm, and he couldn't help but feel immense affection beaming towards her. Snuggling deeper, he moved around a bit until he found the most comfortable position that suited him. Soon the dark beady eyes started to close, slowly but surely, even as he struggled to keep them stern. Giving up after a few tries, he pleasantly let his eyes shut.

But, Miles allowed his ears to stay open as he listened to the girl spew her sugar-coated words. The boy loved the sound of her voice, if he had to think of what a princess sounded like, it would probably have been Fra's voice.

"Mm....I looove the Convallaria majalis...smells so nice....pretty...like you.."

He yawned a bit, unable to contain his drifting sounds.

"Fra....Are you a princess?"

She probably was, he quickly concluded. The asian boy wondered if she would let him be her knight, so he could protect her from evil wizards and dragons.

(SHORT BECAUSE IM RUSHING)