[She's a Beaut] Patalum's Floret

Fleur had learned long ago that work said much about a person. The flower shop told their story in petals and soil. Quiet mornings sorting new deliveries of bluebells and sage, afternoons tying string around cones of violets, evenings spent in the company of drying herbs and the small bell that rang each time a customer came in for something fragrant to carry home. There was nothing fancy about it, and that was the way they liked it.

But even a steady life could be changed by a promise.

The promise had been won through an arrangement of late summer blooms so perfect that the Leloko buyer, a traveling merchant whose tails were jeweled with peonies, had paid, then leaned in and whispered, "Someday I’ll owe you one." Fleur never forgot favors. They cataloged favors the way they cataloged seeds, each a small kernel of potential waiting for the right season. When the letter came, it was both an invitation and a request with a map to an island that bordered Lothlere Forest.

"You’re really going to sail out there?" Finn asked, his voice pitching upward as if he had spotted something shiny worth collecting. He was sprawled lengthwise along the counter like a lazy cat, dusty paws leaving chalky prints. Finn’s fur was brushed into a mischievous tumble of oranges and golds and looked like someone had painted streaks of fire through him. He wore his hair in jagged fringes, dyed blue at the ends with a plant-based tint Fleur had made from indigo leaves. On Finn every color was a statement while on Fleur color was simply what the body happened to be.

"Yes," Fleur said. "The client’s requested flora are rare, and they only grow on the island. If we can sail, we can harvest some and bring back enough to keep the shop’s rent covered for several seasons. And I promised."

"You promise a lot," Finn said, but not unkindly. He hopped off the counter and landed with a click of claws. "What about a boat? You’re not buying one, are you? We barely afforded supplies for the shop last month."

Fleur tilted their head, smiling with a knowing crinkle in the corner of their eyes. "I have a favor," they said.

That favor turned out to be the rotting skeleton of a vessel slumped on its side in the lilies of a private dock. "She used to be called Minna," said the merchant when Fleur and Finn came at daybreak to collect. "I’ve kept my promise but I warn you, she’s taken on more water than a parched Leloko."

Fleur ran a paw along the ribbed inside of the hull. The wood, once pale and proud, had darkened to the color of coffee grounds. Here and there, a soft place gave beneath their pawpads like rotten fruit. Finn try to pry up a board and it came up whole in their paws, but the nails left behind were orange with stubborn rust, their heads pitted from wear and tear.

"Stars," Finn breathed, not quite despairing. He liked projects but this one nearly seemed hopeless. "We can fix it, Fleur. Probably.”

Fleur nodded slowly. "But we’ll need some help," they said.

They needed more than help. They needed a carpenter who could look at an old hull and see potential, one who wouldn’t laugh them out of the shop when they paid in bouquets and jars of honey from a beekeeper friend in exchange for help. They found Windan by way of an old Poffee who came in for dill seeds each spring. "Windan?" The Poffee hummed around a mouthful of ginger candy. "By the creek. He usually builds barns and toys. Tell him Old Mich sent you."

Windan turned out to be a Crederian whose fur was the color of cedar bark flecked with salt and pepper hairs. He listened, sniffed the jar of honey, and then squinted at the hulking skeleton of Minna when he came to examine her at the docks.

"We’ll make sure she’s ready fer the water," he gruffed at last, and then, because he was Windan and it was his way to blunt sincerity with a bit of gristle, he added, "but don’t think you’re comin’ outta this without carryin’ yer weight!"

Finn stiffened. Fleur only blinked and nodded, having already expected as much.

Windan let his sternness turn to laughter. "Jus’ tryin’ t’ scare ya," he said. "Though I mean it about carryin’ yer weight. Boats don’t fix themselves. We’ll start with the ribs."

Windan began with the frame, but at his direction Fleur and Finn worked tirelessly. From a nearby copse they cut trees that had been marked with a X. Stands of alder and aspen to shape into new ribs and beams. Finn ferried the trunks on a sled borrowed from Windan, singing odd little punk anthems about rebellious trees that refused to be cut. Fleur guided them through the measuring and sawing with calm instructions, paws steady even when their shoulders ached.

Between daylight and dusk they gathered shells for the seams. Thin ones, fan-shaped ones and pearly ones and ground them to powder to mix with tree sap and oil to make a sealant. They braided rope from marsh reeds, paws working through the same motions they used to wrap bouquets. The woven cords came out strong enough to pull logs with.

When Windan was there, he worked like the weather. Steady, necessary, and patient. He showed them how to shape planks into gentle curves using steam. "You rush a bend," he warned, tapping the board with a paw, "and she’ll become brittle. Boats are like creatures. They remember their boards and their craftsmanship."

Finn grinned. "We’re creatures fixing a creature," he said, sweat making his fur glisten. "So that makes us like… lumber veterinarians. Or wizards. Or something."

Fleur smiled a little and kept sanding. From a distance, with their sun-yellow coat and rosy ears, they looked like they were carved from the sunrise. In Patalum most people knew them as the florist who always remembered which flowers someone’s partner loved.

In the following days, the boat became a point of gossip and curiosity in Patalum. The Bowroo shepherds stopped by on market days and squinted at Minna with tilted heads. Lelokos with their flowered tails came to sun themselves on the dock and offered enthusiastic opinions in lilting voices.

But not everyone believed work was the right approach. A few of the Crederians who’d come to inspect Windan’s technique sidled up to Finn one evening when Windan and Fleur had gone to fetch more supplies. "You know," one of them said, voice conspiratorially soft, "it’s a lot of trouble."

Finn kept sanding, eyes squinting against flying dust. "What is?"

"All this," another chimed in, gesturing with a paw at the dock and the mess of their labor. "Cutting trees, grinding shells, weaving rope. You’re a clever lot, sure, but work shouldn’t make you sweat that hard. There’s a ship at the public moorings. Night crew’s half its usual size right now. You slip the line, hoist your little flag, and nobody’ll ask questions as long as you’re gone before dawn."

A third one laughed softly. "Why break your back when you can borrow someone else’s hard work for a while?"

Finn looked like a match about to be struck. He had pride as fierce as a flame with a temper to match. But instead of losing his temper he rolled his shoulders, took a breath, wiped his brow, and said, "Because then it wouldn’t be ours."

When Fleur and Windan returned, Finn told them, and Fleur’s mouth tightened not into anger but into a small line of hurt. Not for themselves, but for the world that made shortcuts seem like good ideas. "We don’t steal or take what isn’t ours," they said simply. Windan, to his credit, only grunted and went back to his tools, though later, when he saw Finn still fuming, he clicked his tongue.

"There’s always someone willing to sell you the easy way," Windan said. "It always ends up costing them more than the hard way."

So they worked harder. Fleur’s nights were divided between the shop and the dock, where lanterns bobbed like little stars. Finn napped in odd places: inside the shadow of a wheelbarrow, on top of coils of rope, across the gentle slope of Minna’s deck once it was re-laid and smooth again beneath their paws. When they needed more nails than Windan’s stores could stretch to, Fleur went into town with a basket on each arm and traded peonies and raspberry jam for discounted supplies.

Going into town did something else to them as well. They had expected to be mocked for their enterprise. Or at least accused of dreamy foolishness by practical Crederians tired of the romance of sailing. Instead, they encountered the respect of other hard working Crederians who knew a dream coming to life when they saw it. A Poffee baker stuffed extra bread into their bag. A Leloko with tail blooms of cala lily and briar pressed a coil of spare rigging into their paw. Windan’s cousin, who sold brass parts, made trinkets and didn’t like much of anything, nodded at them once, as if to say: you’ve got this. Fleur returned to the dock with nails and a new sense of determination in their heart. It was one thing to believe in hard work but it was another to feel the weight of a village behind them.

The day Windan said, "She’s ready fer the water," Fleur didn’t shout or dance. They ran their paw along the hull, felt the smoothness under their pads, and whispered, "Thank you." They meant Windan and Finn and the thousands of small acts that had put Minna back together with dedication and care. Finn did the dancing for both of them, whooping up and down the dock until two Lelokos clapped their paws to keep time.

They painted the new name on her stern in letters that curved like vines: Floret.

"You’re naming her after flowers?" Finn asked, rolling the second coat onto the letters with another grin.

"After the small part of a larger bloom," Fleur said. Their voice was soft, but firm. "This boat is like a floret of our larger life. Also, it sounds like Fleur, and that may be vanity, but I think she likes it."

Windan snorted. "Boats like being spoken to. It’s not vanity. It’s manners."

They decided to launch Floret at dawn. "The water’s calmest then," Fleur said, and everyone agreed. Finn brought kites to string from the yard of the ship, bright little triangles flapping in the wind. The Lelokos brought food and flopped on the dock with their flowered tails in the sun. Bowroo shepherds corralled their charges just beyond the grass so the sheep wouldn’t eat the ribbons Kai from the wool shop had tied onto the mooring posts. Windan brought his wife, who brought a jar of preserved pears with kind eyes.

"Ready?" Windan asked.

Fleur stood at the prow with Finn beside them with a grin that could have powered a village. The boat creaked, not like rotten old bones but like joints waking up after a long hibernation. Fleur laid a paw to the hull one last time.

"Work well please," they said. "Carry us, and we’ll support you."

They shoved. The village held its breath.

Floret slid into the water as if she had been looking forward to it all along. The water touched her. She floated. Finn whooped and clapped. Windan allowed a smile that showed teeth. Fleur leaned out from the prow to watch how the water licked the paint and breathed as though they’d been holding their breath for months.

They raised the flag that Finn and Fleur had worked tirelessly on as well as the kites. The breeze played with them all. Windan nodded. "She’ll do," he said, which, from him, meant approval.

Patalum had been an inland place for so long that a boat felt like a new sort of neighbor. Children ran along the bank to wave. Lelokos leaped into the shallows and paddled a bit before remembering their tails didn’t much like salt and clambered back out with a giggle. Bowroo shepherd dogs barked at the kites. Fleur and Finn tied off the lines, and let Floret move under them in the waves.

"Where to?" Finn bounced, all limbs and excitement.

"Out towards Lothlere Forest," Fleur said, because it was their quest. "To the island."

Finn saluted like a pirate and had even tied a strip of black fabric over one eye to complete the look. They moved with care. Fleur had studied and Finn learned by watching. Between them and the steady presence of Floret beneath their paws, they found rhythm.

Patalum’s channel eventually gave way to a river. It shone like sapphires in the sun, rippling in the wind. Eventually, the island came into view; a low green oval, ringed with stones that rose from the waterline. It was small enough to walk across in an afternoon, and large enough to carry secrets and adventure.

The rare flora they needed was a group of fibrous flowers that grew only in the island’s sheltered hollow, a kind of plant whose threads were as smooth as silk when woven and almost as luminous. Fleur wanted them for wreaths that would not wilt, for garlands that could hold the scents of home, for an order placed by Castle Lothain itself for the upcoming Patalum Faire when Lelokos, newly awake, came to fill up on joy and sunshine. If they delivered enough, it would carry the shop through several seasons and would let Finn tinker with music and kites without counting coins in the bottom of a jam jar.

They found a pocket to anchor. Finn leapt over the edge, splashing with irrepressible glee until Fleur gave him a look that said ‘we have work’. They waded ashore with baskets and tools of harvest. Shears with dulled tips, cloths padded with soft wax and spades to dig up the flora without damaging them. They ascended the low slope of the island, found the hollow where the rare flowers grew, and paused.

The plants, spilling coppery threads from pale green stems, swayed in the breeze, their filamentous strings fluttering in the breeze. Fleur knelt, cupped one in their paws, and held it carefully as they might hold a bouquet during a customer’s fragile grief. "We ask," they said, as if the plant could understand the gravity of consent. "We take only what we can tend."

Finn, rambunctious, moody and punk-hearted, stilled. "We’ll make you famous," he whispered to the plant, grinning again because he couldn’t help it. "Wreaths at the Faire. Lelokos in love wearing you on their tails."

They harvested with care. A handful here, a handful there, leaving enough for the island to replenish itself. Finn’s basket filled quickly while Fleur’s filled slowly. When they eventually returned to the beach, the sky had begun taking on the colors of late afternoon. The kites bobbed from the mast like birds and Floret welcomed them, wood sun-warmed and sturdy.

They set back across the water after Finn had had his fun splashing and playing in the island’s shore. Windan hadn’t come for the first voyage, he had a Barn to finish and a good excuse. But as they rounded the inlet they saw him standing on the dock, arms folded in a way that might have looked severe if not for the small upwards turn of his mouth. Around him gathered half the village with lanterns ready for evening. Patalum did not need a crowd to be a crowd.

Finn threw the anchor as they drifted alongside the dock. Windan caught the line. "So?" he called, though he could already see the baskets.

"So," Fleur replied in the same tone Windan often used. But their eyes laughed.

They climbed onto the dock. The baskets were passed paw to paw, pawpads smelling of pumpkin pulp and chalk and drink and work. Fleur stepped back to look at Floret. They did not preen or pose, they simply stood beside the vessel with shoulders square and proud. Finn couldn’t help himself. He scrambled onto the bow and sat like an ornament, swinging his legs, grinning at everyone. Someone had tied ribbons around his horns while he wasn’t looking, and the blue one fell into his eye. He shook it out with a snort, then waved at a group of Lelokos who were making the Bowroo shepherds flower crowns.

In the lull of evening, one of the Crederians who’d suggested the shortcut sidled up again and had the decency to look sheepish. "Got your boat then," he muttered.

"Our boat," Finn corrected, not unkindly, and thumped the hull with his paw.

"Work’s done?" the Crederian asked, still not looking anyone in the eye.

"Work changes shape," Fleur answered. "But for now, yes. For today." They did not rub salt into the old wound. Work was better than scolding at teaching a person lessons.

Windan came to stand at Fleur’s elbow. "She’s a good boat," he remarked.

"She is," Fleur agreed. "Thank you."

He shrugged. "Thank yourself. Thank yer brother. Thank the town."

"I will."

The sun sank, and the lanterns were lit. The dock became a long, gentle constellation with the stars reflecting off the waves. The kites, with wind at their backs, tugged at their tethers. In the edge of the light, Lelokos sang a song about ships and sailors. Finn tugged at Fleur’s sleeve. "Dance?"

"I am dancing," Fleur said, which, in their own way, meant they were happy enough to sit and glow in their accomplishment. Still, when Finn’s face crumpled with mock sadness, they relented and let him pull them into a slow circle at the end of the dock.

The days that followed flowed into a new rhythm. Fleur tended the shop in the morning, pushing the door open on breezes that smelled of wheat, wet wood and the river while arranging the luminous flowers from the island. Word spread that Floret had been launched and orders from Castle Lothain arrived at their doorstep. The Lelokos, busy preparing for the Patalum Faire, came humming with bellies ready for soup and tails ready for garlands. Finn became the boat’s chaperone and proudest captain, ferrying small deliveries along the inlet where the only current of note was gossip. Sometimes Fleur went with him, mostly because the water brought them calm after long days in the flower shop.

They never stopped being serious, they had no time to pretend to be less. But in the serious way that recognizes when joy needs its place, Fleur started bringing a small lunch to the dock. Slices of the Poffee baker’s bread, a jar of Windan’s wife’s pears they had traded for an arrangement of violet chrysanthemums, and a beet salad from Clover that tasted like gardens. Finn brought music. The clack of sticks, the beat of two buckets, the odd, joyous roar that came out of his throat when he forgot to be moody and remembered how to be a kid.

Sometimes the Crederians who had tried to lure them into theft came by to sit, not quite apologizing, but staying long enough to be washed a little by the calm that settled around Floret when she rocked in her moorings. One evening the unkindest of them spoke up.

"You were right." he said to Finn without preamble.

Finn looked at him over the top of a bundle of rope. "Learning’s good," he said.

The Crederian snorted and Fleur passed him a slice of bread slathered with jam made from fresh berries given in a trade by a Leloko that same morning.

The day before the Faire, Patalum woke earlier than dawn and began to bustle. Lelokos flowed past with tails in bloom, soaking in the sunlight. Bowroo shepherds went from stall to stall with samples of spun wool. Tolls from the quarry down the road rolled in with stone shaped like everything you hoped it was: hearths, benches, a great whale that would lie in the castle’s outer garden and gather children to its stone back. In the middle of the market, a cauldron of pumpkin soup steamed, and the air smelled like spices and celebration.

Fleur stood at their stall, wreaths, garlands, pins and headpieces arranged by color and watched the village bring its heart to market. Finn manned Floret, ferrying orders down to the far end of town where the castle’s carts waited. Windan set up a small display of wooden toys with joints that worked seamlessly and when the Castle Steward came through, flanked by guards who looked bored and hungry, he paused at Fleur’s stall and took a long, appreciative breath.

"You kept your promise," he said.

"Promises keep us honest," Fleur replied, which made him blink.

The Steward ordered twelve garlands made from the island flowers alone. "For the princess’s crowns," he murmured, almost conspiratorially, "and six dozen mixed wreaths for the banquet hall." Finn whooped from the end of the street when he heard, then pretended he hadn’t when Fleur lifted an eyebrow in his direction with amused restraint.

By afternoon the market swelled to fullness. Lelokos ate until they were fit to burst. Poffee bakers ran out of cream tarts and sold jam tarts instead, which were just as good. The Bowroo shepherds gave up trying to keep everything orderly and organized a parade instead. Floret ferried little groups of children to the shoreline under Finn’s strict safety instructions while Windan supervised.

When the sun began to set toward evening, the Steward returned with a small brass coin chain in a velvet bag and a folded parchment that smelled faintly of ink. A promise of future work. He pressed them into Fleur’s paws. "We always need wreaths," he said. "And your rope," he added, surprising them. "It holds better than our imports."

Fleur inclined their head. "Thank you," they said respectfully.

They found Finn at the dock and showed him the coin chain. He crowed, then caught himself and tucked it into the hidden pocket he’d sewn into the sailcloth apron he wore when he wanted to look like a serious river captain. "We did it," he said, vibrating with the effort of not breaking into a wild dance.

"We did," Fleur agreed and they were proud.

Together they turned to look at Floret. If boats could preen, she would have. Her paint gleamed. The ropes Finn had woven with Fleur lay in orderly coils. The sealant made from shells and sap shone. She was a sum of love and labor, and also simply herself.

"Others doubted us," Finn said, a little smugly, because he wasn’t above gloating. "They said it was too much work."

"Others weren’t wrong," Fleur said. "It was a lot of work."

Finn sighed, content. "Worth it."

Windan approached with two mugs of pumpkin soup. "To boats," he said gruffly, and clinked their mugs with his.

"To boats," Finn echoed dramatically.

"To work," Fleur added quietly.

They sipped. Down the dock, Lelokos began singing again, a hymn for a day of joy that had used itself up well. Finn leaned against Floret’s hull with a thump. Fleur placed their pads against the paint and felt the warmth the day had stored there. The kites above fluttered. Stars toyed with their own reflection in the water.

"Tomorrow," Finn said eventually, "can we take her around the far bend? There’s a cove there where the cliff echoes. I want to shout and hear my own voice become ten voices. Like a choir of punk."

"Tomorrow," Fleur said. "And the day after. And the day after that." They glanced at Windan. "If the carpenter approves."

Windan lifted a brow. "Carpenter signed off when she took to the water and didn’t sink," he said. "After that she belongs to the ones who sail her."

Fleur smiled. "Then we’ll sail her."

They looked down the dock at Patalum. The sleepy homes, the expansive fields, the stall where someone had left out a jar and cookies for people craving a late night snack as they came and went. Castle Lothain’s turrets were pale in the distance where the last light touched them. Patalum, famous for wheat and pumpkin soup, was not famous for boats. But it was famous to Fleur because it was the kind of place where you could build something and everyone would gather not only to cheer but to help hold your tools.

"Do you think," Finn asked, "that the island will miss us if we don’t come back right away?"

"The island has tides," Fleur said. "It knows about leaving and coming back and it knows that we won’t leave it for long."

Finn mulled that, then nodded. "Tomorrow," he murmured again, then yawned so loudly that Windan shook his head, took his soup mug back, and guided him towards home with a broad paw between his shoulder blades.

Fleur stayed long after the lamplight lit the quay with a golden glow. They circled Floret, checking knots with the same tenderness they reserved for tying bows around grief bouquets, for crafting corsages for shy brides or for arranging the last flowers of a season so that they knew they were just as special. They tucked the flag’s ropes tight. They tied down the kites. They swept the deck not because it needed it but because the motion felt soothing. The vessel rocked once, twice, like a seabird settling into a nest.

"Thank you," Fleur said again to no one and everyone. To Windan, to Finn, to the island, to the Lelokos who had sung, to the Crederians who had offered the easy road and thereby cemented their choice to take the hard one, to the Poffee baker and his extra bread, to the Bowroo shepherds who had worn flower crowns with good humor. To the merchant whose promise had delivered a ruined Minna into their life so that Floret might be built from its bones. To the flowers that would hang in the castle halls and hold, for a long time, the soft smell of the island.

They climbed down and stood beside the vessel the way a gardener stands beside a tree they have labored over for years. Not clinging, just being there to take a moment to be in awe of that which they’d helped create. The boat’s reflection held steady in the water. Their own reflection beside it was a gentle, serious figure whose eyes looked back with satisfaction.

Work was done for the day.

Tomorrow there would be more. More sails to unfurl, more to harvest, more ferrying of goods and hopes up and down the river. There might be another temptation from someone who still believed in shortcuts. There would be weather and occasionally a plank that needed fixing and Finn’s moods rising in and out like small storms. There would be soup, and evening songs, and garlands to weave. There would be kindnesses repaid and the quiet joy of maintenance.

For now there was the vessel and the one who had helped make it what it could be. Fleur, mature and serious and always friendly if you didn’t try to take more than you gave. They regarded Floret a while longer, then reached up to touch the lettered curve of her name.

"Good night," they said. "Tomorrow we work again."

Floret rocked in assent.

Fleur turned toward home. Finn’s laughter drifted back on the wind, mingling with Leloko lullabies and the occasional, stubborn bark of a Bowroo sheepdog who hadn’t yet learned to be satisfied with the day. Above all, the stars were busy at work, doing what they always did without complaint. Holding their places so the rest of the world could find its way by them.

In the morning, the dock would wake to new footsteps. Fleur would arrive with bread and a list, Finn with loud plans. Windan would pretend to scowl and then straighten a knot. The kites would bring cheer from the yard arms. Today’s work was done. Tomorrow’s waited patiently.

And Floret, beautiful and sound, rode the quiet water of Patalum’s dock. Beside, beneath, and beyond her makers, ready for every voyage to come.