"Nothing Makes Sense Until It Does"

- Lily

LILY WAITS

~ A Melancholic Story about Life, Love, Friends, Family... and the Universe ~

White

It sat there – a crumpled, wrinkled fold of plastic, discarded and lonely at the bottom of a basin. The basin held water, once, but was now nothing more than a shadow of its former self – a glass receptacle used merely for the retention of items so cruelly deemed as trash by the lofty standards of this heavily entitled world.

At least Lily could make her dustbin something more than a mere container. She could give it a life of its own – give it flavour and colour and texture, give the little things in life a proper home. The slip of crinkled plastic had performed its one true purpose and lacked another, and what was once the wrapper of a solitary hygiene product was now ‘useless’ simply because of that.

And it had been with great sorrow and guilt did Lily drop the piece of refuse into the glass vessel, knowing well that she had condemned the lonely wrapper to an eternal life of solitude, there in the bottom of the makeshift trash can.

I wonder what’s for dinner tonight, Lily thought, glancing at the wrapper, as the light of a ceiling lamp danced off its moderately reflective surface. It was the sort of wrapper that was slightly shiny and had a smooth texture – sort of light, sort of ephemeral. It smelt of lavender, but, much to Lily’s disappointment, the product within smelled nothing more than cotton that had been appropriately tempered to be sterile and clean.

These hygiene products were just so convenient in every way. It was nice that there were ponies out there somewhere thinking enough about the needs of complete strangers that they would go through all the trouble to make a simple, disposable product like this, with all its various uses.

It was a warm feeling to believe that you didn’t have to meet someone for them to love you so.

It was like the fine stallions who worked at the hygiene product companies gave Lily a pat on the head and said, ‘Here. Take these hygiene products with our blessing. And...’ with a small, gentle tilt of the head that betrayed their utmost love, ‘... take care of yourself.’ It was like getting a hug from a very long way away.

But today, her world was cold. No amount of phantom hugs from distant entrepreneurs would change that. The lack of customers made the flower shop a desolate, distant place. It was a world bereft of kindness and heart and the tinklings of the bell that hung above the door – the one that rang out soft and loud and all the volumes in between when someone walked into the hallowed grounds of her private sanctuary, which also doubled as the storefront.

Roseluck had long since departed from the world, having left the shop that morning to catch a matinee recital at Canterlot. Her note was the first thing that Lily found, tacked up upon the fridge door with a magnet that looked like a smiling cat. It only looked like a smiling cat – it most assuredly wasn’t a real one, and Lily had to make sure to remind herself of this lest the two be confused.

It sat above another magnet that looked like a can of baked beans.

The note said not to worry, that worry should not be had, that she would be back to the world by the end of the day, and that if she needed any help, Daisy was always there.

But Daisy had left as soon as she could that morning, and that left Lily alone in a store that could not be opened until she returned. For the moment, Lily’s life would have to be a barren arctic wasteland, devoid of the warmth of companionship and customers to wait on. But a store must never be opened until everything was ready, and that was up to Daisy.

There was a table in the middle of the shop. It was a small, round wooden one where Lily had her breakfast and lunch every day. She insisted on sitting in the middle of the store to do so.

Despite her peculiar location, it made her feel like she was enjoying a beautiful meal in the middle of a glen. The walls of her shop, already made of wood, extended themselves into a forest, and the roof overhead peeled away to reveal a midday shower that was both cooling and serene.

She had to turn on the fan and run the taps for that, but it was sometimes worth it.

The clock on the wall told her that it was 10:14 in the morning, a good forty-two minutes after she had started breakfast at 9:32. She remembered the time; she had checked, after all. But the dry bowl of cereal stood by itself, uneaten, unmoistened, on the far edge of the table, tiny flaky golden chips of oats and bran and dices of dried fruit sitting in a porcelain oval that had been decorated by little swirls of flowers, painted in by a masterful hoof.

It reminded her of her little stand-in waste-bowl.

The sun attempted to seep its way past the closed shutters, but was unable to break through the simple resistance of a few wooden slats.

Lily turned her head to the ceiling, listening to it as she had done many times before. Each crack told a story. Each splinter in the well-worn wood giving her whispers of the glowing secrets that lay behind. Were she tall enough, she would pick at the knots, finding golden treasures that she knew lay beyond the rafters, but she was unable to and thusly had to satisfy herself with their constant taunts and beckoning calls.

That morning, she had run to Daisy and explained the situation.

She had told her that Roseluck was gone. Daisy was concerned as well. Daisy expressed concern. Daisy showed concern.

Lily had told Daisy to go to the shops to buy more. Many.

Daisy was an understanding pony. A very patient and very kind pony, one with a very kind name. Kind and normal. It was in that normalcy that Daisy was in fact, definitively strange.

It was her other friend Roseluck’s name that was the properly strange one. Why were roses lucky? Could they even be? Did flora understand the basic concepts of chance or misfortune?

No, roses were never lucky in the world of flowers. If there was anything to be taken away from what they had to say for themselves, it was the constant fights that occurred amongst historians and sociologists regarding their meaning.

This had led Lily to do some research of her own by reading the first book she came across in the library about the Language of Flowers. She had spent a good four and a half minutes leafing through as quickly as she could, finally absorbing enough random information that would allow her to come across as an expert.

Of all the many dozen definitions of roses that could be inferred, ‘luck’ was not one found in that book. The theory of flower language was something of a curiosity to Lily. She had always felt that it was something that botanists and poets made up one day just to be able to push the product, rather than being a tradition steeped in ancient history. But it didn’t matter to Lily what the true origins of the Language of Flowers was – she liked both explanations equally – and decided that there was no reason why they could not both be simultaneously true.

Nevertheless, roses were not lucky.

Lily frowned, her rhythmic tabletop hoof-tapping getting faster and faster as her leg shook, victim to a mild anxiety.

Roseluck was, therefore, an abomination of nomenclatures.

So was Lily, to be fair, but Lily did not enjoy thinking about her own full name, and so she wouldn’t. But the truth lent itself to the eventual realisation that out of three of them, only one had a regular name, and that made her the minority.

That made her different.

Being that Roseluck was an abomination and Daisy was oddly regular, that made Lily herself the only normal pony of the three.

Lily nodded. She was happy with her conclusion.

All things could be seen as normal if viewed from the right direction.

A box of tissues lay on the other side of the table and, like the cereal bowl, straddled the edge of the surface like a slightly upset pony peering off the side of a bridge.

It had a little, crumpled corner from when Lily dropped it once, by accident, the cardboard smashing in and wrinkling in an unpleasant way. The functionality of the box was unimpeded, thankfully, and she had decided that it should be kept to be used as was intended.

She had decided to give the box a chance.

But the mildly injured box sat there, all by its lonesome self, its last tissue pulled from its lapels. The fluffy, white, imperfect rectangle of cotton – two-ply – had been folded up neat as could be and placed back on top of the upper face of the cardboard container.

It had remained there on the table for the past two days.

She was going to use it, honestly, but a sudden change of heart swept over her as she stared down at the flimsy piece of processed wood pulp in her fumbly hooves, her emotions suddenly running soft for this one last sheet pulled free.

It told her a story as she listened intently to it, about the great things that it had wished to do – things that existed in potentia. Wasting it on a current event might deny it some future use for something much more fulfilling, tissue-wise, and Lily could never be the pony to do that.

There were no more spare boxes to be found all around the house. She had spent a good three minutes searching for one in all the right places. Daisy had helped her confirm this fact. Roseluck would have, too, had she been around.

But she was no longer with them.

The shutters still denied the sun any entry.

Lily tapped away at the tabletop, worry in her eyes and a dryness upon her lips. It was at these moments when she really wished she knew what was for dinner – it would help her take her mind off the present.

It would help her take her mind off breakfast.

Perhaps a bit of carrot. She loved carrots. Carrots were long and orange. They thusly reminded her of orange umbrellas, except that, perhaps, carrots were not quite so long; could not be opened; had no efficient ability to keep one sheltered from the rain, and was really only similar to an orange umbrella due to the relatively similar colours that they both held, were they to be both found in the same shade and hue.

Lily wondered why there were so many orange things in her life. She wondered if there was a specialist reference book, perhaps, that spoke of the Language of Orange Things.

Perhaps she would spend four, or maybe more, minutes reading it and learning that the colour orange was found primarily in the lives of ponies who suffered from a lot of stress anxiety in their lives. It seemed that it did not make much sense. But most things rarely did.

This was why Lily was always happy to have more than one explanation for everything – if something didn’t make sense, other things would do in a pinch.

Lily looked at breakfast.

There was a bottle of milk that lay next to the dry cereal and the empty box of tissues. It lay there because it was not standing. It wasn’t standing because Lily had knocked it over.

There were now three things on the table that were testament to her general life condition.

There was a tissue box that she mangled by fumbling the simplest of transportations.

There was a bottle of milk that had toppled thanks to a carelessly misplaced hoof.

And there was a bowl of cereal that would never find itself bathed in the the missing component that would make it evolve into a complete meal.

All this just made Lily feel just a bit more miserable.

The plastic dam on the top of the bottle, try as it might, could not hold back the rushing tide. And having already been opened part-way by an over-eager pony, could not stop the surge of milk from within a bottle upturned.

From the dripping top of the bottle came a trickle of milk that had eventually collected in the form of a small pond in the middle of the table.

It was a glorious white lake upon which the lights above played a sparkling melody. It glistened and glimmered, quivered in the winds of a pony’s sigh, and shook from the tapping of a hoof upon the table.

There was an island in the middle of the lake – an island of wood and a bare table-surface. On the shore of the island lay a small pontoon boat, one made of cotton, sporting a long, thread-like tail.

Lily read the description again as her eyes fell upon the packet in the trash.

Extra absorbent.

Some things in this world were like a hug from an invisible pony.

Some things in this world were lies of venom spat by a silver-tongued demon.

It all evened out, eventually.

The bell tinkled in all its volumes as the door opened. Daisy walked through, full saddle bags slung across her back and a smile slung across her face. She always had a smile on her face, because she was always quite happy.

“Oh!” Lily exclaimed, pushing herself away from the table with a scraping of a stool against a hardwood floor, rushing forward to greet her friend who had started to move to the rather humble cabin-like kitchen of their shophouse.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” Daisy apologized, wiping her brow from a smattering of perspiration. “Early morning queues. You know how it is.”

“Did you get it?” Lily asked, a hopeful smile crossing her face.

“Well, I got a whole five-pack of tissue boxes here,” Daisy said cheerfully, pulling the items out from her saddlebags as she named them, “and more milk, of course.”

“And? And?” Lily asked with a tinge of discombobulation.

“Yes, Lily,” Daisy said softly, her expression changing tones from a smile to a smile. “I have them right here.”

Daisy pulled out two boxes of the hygiene products, setting them on the kitchen counter.

Lily nodded at them with full reverence and understanding.

“But, you know,” Daisy said, sliding the stack of tissue boxes over. She turned her head to the table where Lily had used the soft cotton bud to soak up a mere modicum of the spilt milk. “You could always use these. Then you wouldn’t have to use the last one. Also, it’d probably be a little bit easier. And then we can open the shop. Can’t keep our customers waiting, you know!”

“No, of course not! Well, it’s great you’re back, then!” Lily agreed, wholeheartedly. “And yes, you are right, of course. I’ll open a box of the tissues right now... but... Daisy...”

“Yes?”

“What do we do with these, then?” Lily picked up a box of the hygiene products, reading the back panel, as if the answers were writ thereupon.

Daisy looked down at the other box she had bought on Lily’s command then up toward Lily herself as her eyebrows tilted back, and she looked upon her friend with a slow, waxing sadness.

“We’ll think of something, Lily,” she said emphatically. “We’ll think of something.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~And Lily Continues To Wait---->

Haiku #19b

They say I’m someone

but I only want to be

Lily of the Vale