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Scar loved his job. He worked as a flower shop owner and was always surrounded by leaves and buds and blooms aplenty. Recently, he’d taken his business mobile, mostly because he’d noticed a dip in his customers. Perhaps his shop was too far out… it was on the outskirts of the city, after all, and Scar knew how awkward a situation could be if someone couldn’t get last-minute flowers for an event!
So, the florist packed his bags, made a cart, and took his flowers to the roads. The streets were quieter than he remembered - cars nowhere in sight, pedestrians scarce. Everywhere Scar went, he found piles of flowers, petals strewn about and scattered in the wind. Different varieties and breeds - some he knew didn’t grow here, where the soil was too hard to sustain them - but all with a common factor. Every single flower bed he came across had some sort of fungus on them. One the florist had never seen before; blood-red and swirled, each pattern unique and scattered across the leaves and petals alike. Now, Scar knew not to touch flowers with some sort of unknown infection, lest he spread the disease to his plants, but he swore that sometimes - especially when the flowers were lilacs or poppies - his urge to pick one grew stronger.
Only his own blooms stopped him. A leaf would brush against his skin, a breeze would send a scent across his face, and the florist would snap out of it. It troubled Scar, these spells, so he did his best to ignore them and focused on selling his wares. Whenever he came across someone who looked especially unfortunate, which was becoming more and more frequent nowadays as he traveled further east, he’d give them a small clipping of one of his companions to keep with them. A splash of life in a world that seemed so lifeless.
…No, that wasn’t right. The world was more lively than ever, plants springing up everywhere Scar went. It wasn’t lifeless, it was empty. His plants were vibrant and free to feel the sun on their leaves, photosynthesizing more than they ever could in his shop. Yet the florist was alone, nothing but the elements to keep him company. Passerby became few and far between, decreasing in frequency before ceasing completely. No one crossed his path for a long time, despite his constant movement east and his use of mainstream roads. Everywhere he went, he just saw more and more flowers. All with the same strange red fungus, all with the same swirled pattern.
Cherry blossoms lined the path as the florist entered a forest, not yet in bloom but on the edge of flowering. Scar’s plants seemed to shrink as the flora around them grew denser and denser until, with a groan, the cart stopped completely. Small vines had curled around the wheels, stopping their movement forward. The florist had a feeling that removing them would not only be a terrible idea, but would be horrible for the well-being of his plants. He tried moving the cart backward and found the vines slackened just enough for him to do so. The message was clear: turn back.
So the florist left, backing up his cart until the flora around him decided he was far enough away to turn around completely. As he left, he caught the faint scent of lavender drifting from the wind behind him, along with something else, something sweet. Honey, perhaps? No, no - it was slightly too bitter to be honey. A new variety of flower… now that piqued Scar’s interest. But the forest had been clear: he was not welcome on the forbidden path.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the approaching person until he nearly ran over them with his mobile shop.
“Hey!” someone yelled. “Watch the cart!”
Scar started, unused to hearing anything past the sound of the wildlife and the rustling of leaves. There was a person in front of him. An actual living and breathing human being, in front of him. They wore a red sweater that had seen better days, black jeans with a few rips in them, and well-loved brown boots. A rather annoyed look adorned their freckled face, espresso eyes narrowed in the florist’s direction. Light brown hair swirled around their head, curls caught in the breeze that rustled the trees and carried the scent of wet dirt.
A knife was brought to his chin. The stranger in front of him had unsheathed it and pressed it to the florist’s neck in one fluid motion, leaving no room for him to counter or dodge the threat. So he froze as the red-sweatered person glared at him from where they held the knife.
Scar should not risk provoking the stranger holding a knife to his neck. “Hey, Sunshine. I know you might be intimidated by someone as tall as I, but the first date is a bit too soon to press me against a tree and threaten my life.”
The stranger just stared at him, before lowering their knife slightly, “You’re not what I expected, Plant Guy. What are you doing at the heart of the infection?”
“...the infection…” the florist muttered, “Do you mean this lovely path of flowers?”
The person muttered a string of curses in disbelief, “...you really don’t know. I’m not sure if this is just a new level of stupidity, or true obliviousness to the world around you.” They sheathed the knife, having deemed Scar no longer a threat. Their dark eyes met his, and the stranger spoke again, “The end of the world occurred roughly two weeks ago. Since then, the survivors have been disappearing without a trace. I came from a research compound northwest of here. The name’s Grian.”
“Oh,” Scar said, still dazed by the revelation that the apocalypse happened without his noticing, “So… are you a scientist? You seem smart enough to be one.” The florist absentmindedly raised a finger to the leaf of a small sunflower that his mother had given to him a year prior.
Grian watched the florist’s fingers carefully even as he spoke, “I used to be a scientist, yes. However, I’m on my own now, without any equipment. All I have is a tiny notepad that’s more writing than actual paper at this point. I still want to try and catalog the infection, though.”
“Cool, cool,” Scar said, not understanding much at all, and the two lapsed into silence. The near-continuous breeze whispered through the trees surrounding them, scattering the petals and tossing them through the air. March was nearing an end, and the wind brought whispers of a storm.
“So… How did the world end?” Scar asked, “It’s okay if you don’t want to answer, especially if you find it hard to talk about.”
“It’s- fine,” Grian said. “And it didn’t end , so much as it slowly decayed into nothingness…
“It started with the flowers. A few, cropping up here and there, nothing too serious. But they all had-”
“The weird red fungus,” the florist interrupted.
The red-sweatered man sent Scar a look, “How do you know about the Thumbprint? Most people just touch the flowers and end up…” he let out a shaky breath, “...they end up infected.”
“I’m a florist - did I ever tell you? That’s kind of why I have my flowers with me in my portable shop. Though I haven’t had any customers in a while - which makes more sense now that I know the apocalypse… happened recently…” he trailed off at the last part, wondering how he had missed such a crucial bit of information about the world around him. “The point is, I’ve seen many a fungus in my time, but never something that affects the whole bed, petals and all.”
Grian huffed a sad laugh at that, “Well, you’ve seen it all, now. But the Thumbprint doesn’t just affect plants, it… affects people, too. If you touch any of the flowerbeds infected with it, your body begins to break down into plant matter. You turn into another host for the fungus and eventually are laid to rest in the flowers of your own making. The infected’s corpse turns into a flowerbed, same as the ones surrounding us right now.”
“...Well, that’s morbid,” Scar says, without much pretense or warning. Here he was, trying to sell flowers to people in the middle of an apocalypse where people were turning into flowers. Not to mention, he was talking to a stranger while surrounded by said people-turned-flowers and technically corpses, with the flowers existing as an extant form of the dead person’s life. The infection wasn’t loud and explosive, or groaning for brains - it was small, and it was beautiful in a twisted way, and it took more and more until there was nothing more to take, and it left behind nothing but petals in memory of its host.
Grian shifted before he spoke again, “I think that sooner or later, the whole of humanity’ll be consumed by the Thumbprint. You’re probably one of the only ones left, uh… what was your name, again?”
The florist offered him his sharpest grin and a hand for a shake. “Scar Goodtimes, handsome flower salesman and extremely good at making bouquets!”
The red-sweatered man pointedly ignored Scar’s hand, so the florist put it back down. “As I was saying, you’re probably one of the only humans left, Scar.”
“You say humans as if you aren’t one,” he said, turning to squint at his companion.
Grian squinted back at him, before sighing and turning away with a, “I’m not. Human, that is.”
The florist stared at the back of Grian’s head for a bit, wondering why it looked like a waffle, then tried to process whatever it was his companion was saying. “You’re not human. So - and excuse my rudeness - what are you, exactly?”
Grian peeked over his shoulder at Scar before his eyes hardened with something like resolve. With one swift movement, he removed both his sweater and undershirt to reveal… wings. Real, honest-to-void wings emerged from where his shoulder blades should be, feathers speckled across the skin around them and leading into hard sinew and muscle. They were an iridescent black, speckled with smaller patches of white and purple that gave the impression of stars in a night sky. But one of the wings was missing an entire row of primary feathers, simply ending instead of being able to stretch to its full length.
“...Pinioned,” murmured Scar, and Grian flinched at the word, wings instinctively curling around his form. His face was still turned away from the florist, and he had started to tremble. “Hey, hey,” Scar whispered, “I didn’t mean to say that - it was just an observation I made. I think your wings are beautiful. They look just like…”
The avian speaks up, voice hoarse, “Like the sky.”
“Yeah,” the florist said, still slightly in shock that he’d come across a non-human at the heart of an apocalyptic infection that turned humans into plants. Plants that seemed to have some type of hivemind, considering they had stopped Scar from venturing any further into the forest. It would be nice to have someone to talk to. “Would you like to join me? As a traveling companion, I mean.”
Grian turned to look at Scar, something wistful in his eyes. “You don’t mind having a non-human as a friend?”
“What do I care if you have wings?” the florist said with a wave of his hand, “It’s not like you’ve suddenly become a different person in the last minute or so. You just have wings. It’s like saying that all people with green eyes are inherently evil because green is the color of poison or something. Physical traits don’t make us who we are, mental and emotional traits do.”
“Well then,” the avian said with a small smile, taking Scar’s hand from where it lay beside him, “Who am I to refuse?”
And if Grian eventually returns to the same clearing, years later, with an infected Scar in his arms and a cart at his side to watch as his only companion in a lonely world fades into sunflowers in front of his eyes, who was he to leave Scar alone?
And if Scar asks that the avian lays down beside him, petals lining his face and rimming his emerald eyes, who was Grian to refuse?
And if the infection inevitably passes over to the sun when it’s finished with his sunflower, who was he to stop it?
And if the sun’s end comes, not with blood and suffering, but with a gentle breeze and the blooming of the cherry blossoms, who was he to battle against it?
And if the avian and the florist were laid to rest, side by side, a bed of sunflowers, of bamboo, of lilacs and poppies and cactus overtaking them, then there wasn’t much more to say, was there?