Work Text:
Every Feast, Jenny’s admirers ply her with gifts – fungal poetry, justifiably foul-tempered cats. The spider. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do about the spider.
The Contrarian isn’t an admirer, and his gifts are infuriating by design. Polemic essays, for instance. A jigsaw puzzle, missing a single sky-piece. This year, roses: darkly lustrous, extravagantly-thorned.
“Takes some cheek, offering a nun a bouquet from Hell.”
“Does it?” He smiles broadly. “Perhaps. But those originated elsewhere.”
Ah. From Arbor, then – joke, symbol, warning. Both of them know well enough that their city, too, balances between dream and waking, here and gone.