FicWad

This is my extra chapter. i decided to make some changes to how Seth meets Lily, but it was long enough for me to make it just another chapter.
This is my best work in a long time. Since I haven't gotten any reviews on this story AT ALL, i made this awesomely detailed chappie as a present to the reviewing/rating parts of your ficwad-reading brains in a desperate attempt to save my sanity.
I don't think anyone has even rated it.
I might just stop posting this story if this continues.
THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES!!!!!.

A couple of days later, I found myself walking alone down a soggy street, watching the people who passed by me huddle beneath umbrellas as if the flimsy metal covered in cloth could protect them from the horrors of their everyday lives.
Myself? I harbored no shield.
Although, thinking back on what I discovered during my simple rainy day excursion, I realize now that I should have brought a suit of fucking armor.
Or maybe I should have just stayed home, because the events that my discovery set in motion seemed like bullets from a machine gun- that is to say, they happened in quick succession and hurt like a bitch while they were at it. I'm not sure if it was only a bad pain I felt, though.
Some say it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but others say the exact opposite. Me? I'm not sure.
It's been three years, and I'm still not sure whether I should have run as fast as I could to the marketplace that wet, cold afternoon in an unfamiliar city, or if I should have stayed in bed, locked my doors and windows, pulled the covers up over my head, and stayed there the entire day. Hell, maybe even the entire week.
Wait, no. Just...no.
It doesn't really matter anymore. You need to understand, reader. Haven't you ever turned something you've done over and over in your head until it seeps through the cracks in your brain and invades every memory you've ever had (good and bad) like wet play-doh?
Yeah. It sure as hell doesn't mean you can change what you did.
Nothing changes.
However proud or stupid you feel, you can't change the past.
She was the one who taught me that. “Learn from the past,” she used to tell me when I felt guilty. “Live in the present, and try to make things better for the future.”
I wrote that all over one of the walls in my room with black sharpie. I guess it's the kind of thing she would have done. I didn't put her name. I can't look at it. Not yet, at least. Maybe someday I'll write it...
But not now.
Anyway, I made my way down the sidewalk, shooting glances like daggers at the people who dared look at me. I eventually found a street market; wandering through the aisles, I came upon a flower stand.
The girl behind the counter was pretty, in a unique way. I didn't realize until much later just how unique she really was.
I made my way to the counter, leaning on it with one elbow.
She smiled a small but genuine smile at me. “Can I help you?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but my elbow slipped on the wet counter and bumped into a vase of tulips, knocking them to the ground. The vase shattered.
I looked at her apologetically, but she had already slipped out from behind the stall and begun to pick up the flowers.
I crouched down and picked up the broken pieces of vase. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-” I stammered.
“Ah, but see here, kind sir,” she said, silencing me with that smile of hers. She held up a tulip whose stem was bent so it looked as if it were crying, what with the rain and all. “It is a sad day for tulips, oh, yes. But! Where there is life, there is hope.”
She stood, returning to her place behind the counter. I stood as well, tossing the pieces into a trash can behind the counter. She had laid out the flowers, examining them and placing random ones in different piles.
“What's your name?” I asked.
“My name is Lillian Aroma Bertrand of Le Havre, France,” she replied, tossing out a tulip that was bent too short to be used. “Y tu? Como te llamas?”
“Seth.” I think. I was never really sure what she had asked me there.
“Pleased to meet you, Seth.” She turned towards me and curtseyed a little with her apron.
Um, pleased to meet you, too. I think. “Do you own this flower stand, or are you just an employee?”
“”Kind sir, I own both this stand and the shop over yonder.” She pointed in the direction I had come from. Without looking up, of course.
“Oh.” I was silent for a while. “Why do you talk like that?”
She reached across the counter, sliding a book towards me.
“The Complete Works of Shakespeare,” I read aloud. What?!?!? What did Shakespeare have to do with ANYTHING she just said?
Riddle me that, riddler.
“When the sun shines on you, you see your friends.” She shrugged a little. “And yet, it requires sunshine to be seen by them to advantage.”
“Um...what does that mean, exactly?” She didn't answer, just continued to move the flowers around like the dealer in a casino. When she finished sorting the flowers, she placed them in different plastic buckets. Picking up the tulip she had shown me before, she handed it to me, smiling.
“Do you know what the colors of a rose signify?” she asked.
“No,” I admitted, smelling the flower gently.
She smiled wider, turning back to her flowers. “Maybe the next time we meet, you can tell me what a red rose symbolizes.”
I had a feeling I had been dismissed, so I quietly walked home, pondering the strangeness of all she had said.


"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass,
It's about dancing in the rain."