“Oh, Lily?”
“Yes?”
“Could you pass the watering pail? The tulips are looking a little parched.”
The pink mare nodded, turning to grab the can’s handle with her mouth before offering it to her friend.
Roseluck accepted it with a smile. “Fhanks, Lily,” she said gratefully, her words slightly muffled. Turning to face the pot of yellow tulips, she sprinkled a fair helping of water on them. Not too much, but not too little.
She set it back down. “The weather’s been really dry lately,” Rose commented, the edges of her mouth lowering into a frown. “If we don’t keep on top of the watering, then our flowers will likely shrivel up in no time.”
“True,” admitted Lily sadly. “The pegasi haven’t had any good rainfalls scheduled for Ponyville yet, from what Raindrops told me. It might be another few days before we get it.”
The red-maned pony stared at her friend incredulously. “A few more days?” echoed Roseluck, letting the word hang on her tongue for a moment. “But… by then, the flowers would surely wilt!”
Lily bit her lip, and looked away from Rose. “They might, they might not…”
Roseluck couldn’t believe it. A few more days? They had already gone without rain in Ponyville for almost a week! A few more days added on to that would no doubt be too much for her poor flowers; and for flowers all around the town too, for that matter.
“It’s… it’s not fair,” she said at last, her ears flattening against her head from both frustration and gloom. “The flowers didn’t do anything wrong to deserve all this torture. Why should they suffer, Lily? I don’t understand it…”
The blond mare was somewhat taken-aback by the sudden change in Roseluck’s tone. “Well… that’s just how things happen,” she said helplessly. “It’s just a part of life. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
Rose stomped the ground with a hoof and scowled. “Gngh, if the stupid weather pegasi had kept on top of this, then the flowers would have been perfectly fine. But no! They had to go and mess everything up!”
Lily only stared, unsure of what to say.
“And isn’t that just typical!” the mare continued, ignoring Lily’s gaze. “Why does stuff like that have to happen? Things get messed up, and then someone gets hurt…”
Roseluck turned towards the many flower pots adorning her stand. She walked towards one of them, which contained her favorite flowers: roses. She gently brushed her hoof against the tender petals, and sighed.
“…Why?” she asked aloud, almost as if she were speaking to the plant itself. “Why do you have to be so… fragile? So beautiful, and yet… so weak?”
Just then, Daisy returned to the flower stand, having brought her friends back a few bags with food from the restaurant. She looked first at Roseluck, then at Lily, and quirked an eyebrow. Lily shrugged helplessly.
Setting down the sandwich bags, Daisy asked, “What’s the matter, Rose? You don’t look so hot.”
“Funny, I don’t feel so hot, either,” the other earth pony remarked, glancing at her lime-maned acquaintance. She chuckled dryly. “Which is ironic, considering that we’re practically in a drought right now.”
Both Daisy and Lily swapped a look with each other. They knew Roseluck, and they knew it was fairly odd for her to be acting this way. Of course, they naturally understood and empathized with her concern for the flowers — they loved them almost as much as she did too — but her suddenly-introverted attitude was jarring.
After a few moments of silence, with Roseluck gently stroking the petals of the roses she cared so dearly for, she finally spoke. “Hey, girls…”
“Yes?” responded Lily at once, almost too quickly. “What is it?”
“I was just thinking. You know, about…” She tilted her head to the side as she thought. “…life. And these flowers. How fragile and precious they can be.”
Now it was Daisy’s turn to be puzzled. “What makes you think about that?” she inquired, tilting her head as well.
Roseluck stroked the rose once more, and as she did, one of the petals was accidentally pulled loose. She gasped as the velvet-red petal fluttered down through the air, coming to rest at her hooves on the ground. Rose stared at the discarded petal with shock, but then slowly shifted her expression into one of grim acceptance. She sighed.
“…That’s all it takes, isn’t it,” the earth pony mused. “Just a little touch, a small slip of the hoof, and something precious can be lost in an instant.” She turned to face her friends. “Life is like that. Flowers, I mean. Beautiful, yet ordinary… strong, yet fragile… Like the petals of a rose, almost.”
Daisy ahh’d at Roseluck’s concept. Lily nodded silently, raising a hoof under her chin and rubbing it thoughtfully. “You know,” she said, “when you think about it, the rose itself is also kinda like that. Prickly, too, and you could get hurt if you handle it improperly. Petals could be thought of as the “pieces” of life; memories, friends, and all kinds of things, too.”
“Hey, yeah!” interjected Daisy. “And when you lose those petals, like, you can never get them back. Not the same ones, anyway. They’ll be gone forever.”
“And if a flower loses its petals…” Roseluck gazed at the plants on the shelf sadly. “…it’ll die.”
Lily bit her lip again; a nervous habit of hers, apparently. “Almost like how we can’t live life without all the pieces that make it up…”
Silence reigned between the three for some time. After a moment, Roseluck turned back to her flowers, passing her gaze over the many orchids, tulips, and roses that she had been tending.
Daisy and Lily sat down and began to eat their lunch, with Rose eventually joining them. They ate their sandwiches in silence. Afterwards, the trio returned to tending the flower stall.
By the end of the day, as the sun began to fall, Roseluck was tired. There had actually been very few customers, but for what she was feeling, she swore that she had served all of Ponyville at once. She knew that she was still feeling upset about the delay in the rainfall, but Rose tried not to let it show. Why, she had half a mind to march up to Cloudsdale and demand their rainfall ASAP if she could!
But, being a simple, flower-loving earth pony, such a feat appeared quite unrealistic. So, she swallowed her pride, and was forced to accept the possible fate of the flowers.
On the way home, she was accompanied by Lily and Daisy. The three idly chatted with each other, sharing stories and gossip that they had heard from customers and passersby. Lily even recalled a tale of the stallion who stepped on a rose that had fallen on the road, and spent the next several minutes crying and pulling the thorns out of the base of his hoof.
Roseluck soon found herself bringing up an earlier topic. “You know what I said earlier, about the flowers?” she asked her friends, to which they nodded in unison. “Well, I’ve been thinking a little bit more about it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Daisy. “Me too.”
Rose raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Flowers are usually really pretty,” her friend clarified, “but, there are plenty of ‘em that aren’t very nice-looking. And there’s even some that can hurt us, or make us feel sick. But they’re still flowers, though; just as much alive as the next. What about those ones?”
“Well…” Roseluck licked her lips. “They really don’t serve much use to us, do they? We don’t need those other flowers, and if they aren’t any good anyway, why keep them?”
Daisy stopped. She looked at her friend, hardening her gaze. “Because they’re alive,” she stated firmly. “And as you said: life is a precious thing.”
The earth pony opened to her mouth to rebut that statement, but then closed it, as she found it impossible. Daisy had used her own words against her. Hence, she remained silent.
“And besides; aren’t flowers kind of like ponies, in a way? There’s all different kinds of them, big and small. Some of them are really pretty. Others, well, not so much. And a few even hurt others, whether or not it was an accident or on purpose.”
“…” Roseluck didn’t say anything.
“So, what? Should we keep the ponies that are “useful”, and get rid of the ones that “aren’t any good”? Because they “serve no use”?”
“No!” exclaimed Roseluck, shocked that Daisy was throwing everything she had said back into her face. “That’s just… not right! We can’t just get rid of them!”
Daisy narrowed her eyes. “And why not? By your logic, we should get rid of them.”
“Because it’s wrong!”
“Then why isn’t doing the same thing to those plants wrong?”
“…”
Roseluck turned away from Daisy and lowered her head. She had a point. Why would her morality deem acts of cruelty toward a “bad pony” unacceptable, but to do the same to a “bad flower” would be perfectly fine? It was a point that conflicted her mind, and made Rose’s stomach feel queasily tangled with itself.
She felt somepony’s foreleg drape over her shoulder, and she looked up. Daisy was there, frowning slightly, but looking more worried than anything else. “I… Sorry,” she said quietly, nervously avoiding eye contact. “I really shouldn’t have gotten on your case like that.”
“No,” Roseluck insisted, sighing. “You’re right. Flowers are like ponies, in so many more ways than one. I shouldn’t be discriminating the ones that “don’t look pretty” to me. They have just as much right to be here as the others.”
Lily giggled. “Well, that’s more than what a Canterlot noble would say about a farm pony, huh?”
The three shared a good-natured laugh.
“I guess so,” said Roseluck at last, still chuckling. “It’s funny; flowers almost seem like they have “classes” too. The prettier, more delicate ones, contrasting the tougher, and somewhat homelier-looking ones… I wonder if they even have those so-called “clashes” like us ponies, too.”
“Heh, that’ll be the hot topic for tomorrow then,” Daisy joked. “Orchids demanding tax from the dandelions encroaching on their land! Chrysanthemums meeting with the bee ambassadors to discuss pollination! Tulips preaching to the simple daisies, showing them the way of the bulb!”
Lily shook her head, cracking a smile. “Daisy, you have the strangest ideas sometimes.”
When the trio finally arrived at the house, Roseluck parted with her friends and headed inside. Within, she was greeted by the warm reception of her many plants; set in pots on end tables, in boxes by the window, and hanging in baskets from the ceiling.
But she paid these ones no mind. Instead, Rose continued inside her house, going past the living room, and heading upstairs to her bedroom. She walked past her bed, and straight up to a frame hanging on the wall.
Inside the frame was a flattened, dried, but otherwise perfectly preserved red rose—petals, stem, and all. Under the rose, a poorly-hoofwritten note read: ‘The first flower I grew the day I got my cutie mark.’ –Roseluck
Roseluck smiled, and tenderly placed her hoof on the sentimental item. That day was years ago now, she realized. The day that she knew what she was good at, and what she loved the most—flowers. Roses, in particular.
As she looked upon the preserved flower, she thought of something else: life could be preserved. If not life itself, then the memories of life. And Roseluck’s memories were now in the frame, perfectly preserved, possibly for many more years to come.
How fitting, she thought. Life itself, a rose, sealed in both frame and mind for me to remember…
Life goes on. And even when it ends, it can be remembered. To eternally preserve life is perhaps unlikely in the real world, but so long as someone was around to remember, then life never truly dies. Roseluck knew that, even if the flowers did wilt from the drought, more would come to take their place.
She sighed wearily. For now, all she had were the memories. Or the flowers. Her friends. Her family. Everything she did, or said. Good moments, and bad moments. All of her memories. The pieces of her life, all wrapped together at the bud.
Like the petals of a rose.