Another smile appeared on her face and she shrugged. "I'd love to have a little sister. I think it's cute she follows you around," Linka looked out the window to see the leaves of her bushes moving slightly as Sloth made her way around her garden. "Oh it's nothing." And Linka waved away the thank you and standing up out of politeness, she watched him start to leave.

Upon hinting a return, the smile returned to her face and Linka said. "Oh you have more family?" She liked hearing about other people's family. She never had one herself, but learning about other's siblings and parents and cousins always interested her. "That would be wonderful. What are their favourite flowers? I can probably get a bouquet ready for them..." Linka's thoughts went to the flowers and planned out which ones would be ready for picking and which ones had enough for a bouquet.

((Omg brain damage can't think so short I fail.)))

A smile appeared on her face as she saw the flowers tucked into her shirt. They were one of her favourite flowers and the colour was splendid. "Welcome back," she said softly, smiling to her pleasantly. "It looks like you found a pretty flower! It really matches your pretty eyes."

Linka watched as the small girl shuffled through her home and a look of concern came across Linka's face. "Is she well, August? She seems tired or sick." Linka knew enough about plants to know the basics of herbology, but not enough to give a lasting cure, but enough to abate death or a fever until a true healer came.

August didn't seem too disturbed by her condition, though. So Linka let it slide, though watched her a bit curiously. As he got up to leave, Linka stood as well out of respect and smiled, looking to him and said. "I'll be here tomorrow. I might be in the back so just come in when you arrive." Linka pushed in both chairs and took both plates, placing them gently by the clean water basin to wash later. Before he left, Linka turned around from the counter and said. "Thank you for the company, August. It's not often I have company, but yours was enjoyable." A sheepish smile crossed her lips and her cheeks turned red a little out of embarrassment. She never spoke like that, but it was how she genuinely felt.

Linka watched as her guests left and turned back to her house and closed the door behind her. She cleaned her house once more, placing everything in their respective spots and sighed a little, smiling to herself. She wondered if he really would come back tomorrow, but part of her knew the answer and it caused a warm feeling to bubble inside. Linka blushed slightly and she glanced outside. It was dark, thankfully, so it was time for her to rest. She took one last glance outside her window to the garden, then went to her bed and laid down to sleep.

/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Linka awoke the next morning and grabbed a metal pan and started a small fire in the hearth. She fetched an egg from the stone chest and cracked it over the pan allowing it to sizzle and cook as she held it over the fire. Once it was ready, she took it off and placed it on the cupboard. Linka pulled the bread and cut it and began to eat the bread and egg.

Once finished, Linka took to the garden and glanced around, her brows furrowed.

The flowers she expected to have bloomed didn't. They didn't look as though they had grown at all. She knelt down by one of her bushes and examined a flower. The conditions were perfect. The temperature was light, the moon was bright, the soil was moist and fertile. Why hadn't they bloomed?

Linka stared, perplexed that they hadn't. What had she done wrong? She certainly followed her normal procedure so they should have bloomed. Linka lost track of everything else as she went about trying to figure out what had happened to her garden.

Linka stared at the flowers still as though she hadn't heard August speak. Finally she shook her head a little, still gazing dishearteningly at the flowers and whispered, "I don't know," her hand reached over to a flower that was just inches from blooming, yet seemed to be reluctant to burst open and open its pollen for the insects to collect and to breathe in the sun and air. "I thought they'd bloom. Everything is right. Everything is perfect for the flowers... Some of them grew and some of them didn't." Her gloved hands ran through her hair as she gazed at her garden.

"Maybe it's nothing," Linka finally said dismissively. She pushed herself up and stretched her legs, standing on her toes. "They'll probably bloom later today. What did you come here for again? I've forgotten from yesterday." She dropped down to her feet once again and looked to August. In truth, the fact that her garden hadn't progressed at all disturbed her, though she didn't want it to get in the way of being a good hostess, so she smiled to him convincingly.

((JUST TWO MONTHS LATE. NBD))

"Oh!" Linka gasped. She should have known that's what he was here for! That was the bulk of the discussion from yesterday! Well, the last part of it at least. She silently cursed herself for her forgetfulness and blamed it on being distracted by the flowers' inability to progress to maturity. When he offered the pouch, she stared at it as the colour from her face drained. "N-No, no that's too much, August. Just a gold coin will do, or five silver. Please." There was really nothing she could do with all that money other than be targeted for theft. She liked living the humble life.

Before he could argue, she spun around on her heels and glided over to a toolbox she had hidden along the side of the house. From it, she pulled a pair of metal scissors and made her way over to the thorny bushes. Linka carefully reached in and pulled on a rose and scrutinized it. When she was sure it was healthy enough to be cut, she did so, ensuring she cut far enough into the bushes to cut long stems. Her hands were small and dainty, but still, the many thorns scratched at her skin and some drew a bit of blood, but she showed no signs of pain. Once she had picked twelve of her healthiest roses, Linka stood up, brought the roses with her, and took them inside, beckoning August to follow.

Placing them on the counter, she cut the stems with her knife diagonally and grabbed a white ribbon from the pile that sat on her counter and tied it around the bunch and turned around, holding the bouquet to August.

A blonde brow arched and she glanced down to her hands and she blinked in surprise. "Oh! I'm sorry you had to see that," she said, hiding her hands as her cheeks turned red and quickly walking to a bucket of water, dipping her hands in it and scrubbing them. When she was done, Linka moved over to a cabinet and pulled out two white bandage wraps and began to wrap them around her hands. "I get scrapes so often I hardly notice it anymore. At least they heal nicely." She said while wrapping up her left hand.

Linka stole a glance to August and felt her cheeks burn more. To be honest, this was the first time a man came back to her house that wasn't a pervert or some one who was delivering a service of some sort. Not to mention he was good-looking and polite when he wasn't an arrogant stiff-neck. A smile slipped across her face and she returned her attention to the wrapping and realized she was doing it too tightly. With a giggle, she quickly unwound it. "Wow. I'm..." She didn't know how to finish that sentence without hinting at what she was thinking about, or that she was focused on anything other than her wounds, so she left the sentence hanging.

Linka smiled more as he wrapped up her hand. She felt a strange sensation rise from the contact of his touch, though she tried to brush it aside, it remained there as her gaze flickered up to his face. Instead of trying to fight it, she succumbed to it and enjoyed the feeling while it lasted. It was the first time in a long, long while some one offered to take care of her. It was a small gesture, but it spoke volumes to her.

When he was finished, she flexed her fingers and twisted her wrist around to make sure she could still move her hands. At last she was content with her testing and she looked up to August again and frowned slightly at the mention of paying more money. "August. What would I do with it? I'm a humble gardener in a small town. I'd end up being stolen from if anything," Linka smiled and reached over, her hand touching his. The contact brought another strange sensation through her fingertips, but she pushed it aside, though her blood pumped and flocked to her cheeks again. "Thank you, I appreciate your generosity, but I live by small means and enjoy it."

Linka let go of his hand and looked to the flowers and shifted uneasily. "Perhaps you should take those to your sisters, then? I suppose you do have more things to do than hang around here." Her voice held a lot of reluctance in speaking those words. Linka's body language also gave off a lot of hints that she wished he didn't have a whole lot to do.

Her ex
pression softened from a stony ex
pression to hide her emotion, to a lopsided smile with a bit of coyness. So he could pick up on her hints. Not that they were subtle, but then again, other men never picked up on her more-than-blunt ways of telling them 'No, I don't want to go to your house and do God knows what with you. I think you smell like fish and you have hair in unexpected places'.

As he filled a vase with water and placed the bouquet in them, she nodded, relieved at his willingness to humour her some more. It made her feel a little more important, like less of a nobody and more of a person. "I would enjoy a walk very much," Linka said while nodding. She walked outside and began to dig through her many questions she wanted to ask him and decided upon his family. "How many siblings do you have, exactly?" Linka queried as she walked down he road leading from her house.

The day was perfect for walking with the faintest of breeze breathing from the west. It brought with it a coolness that brought down the general temperature of the world around. A few clouds dotted the sky, but they brought no foreboding of the elements.

She watched his reaction to her question with a certain attentiveness. He didn't seem to like the topic of his siblings. Maybe it was family in general? Linka took note to avoid asking him about such things in the future. When asked about her family, her gaze dropped down and she smiled a little too faintly. "I'm an only child of a broken home. My mother died giving birth to me. My father... I don't know who he is. My aunt, who raised me, told me he was a soldier than passed by and bedded with my mother, then marched on the next day."

Linka didn't have to think about his last question. Her smile became a little more clearer and she lifted her gaze to the road ahead. "No suitors," she said confidently. Linka was never the one for romance or that sort of stuff. She never met anyone she wanted to explore that part of life with. Her thoughts flickered to August at that moment, but she pushed them aside quickly. "I've been to many villages with either old men or little boys. I think you are the first man I've seen around my age for several years." Her blue gaze slid up to his face as saw him attempting to look away from her. Linka's mind analyzed the question, and instantly her cheeks turned a light pink. Her gaze darted ahead and her chin lifted a bit as her lips pressed together to conceal a smile.

After regaining her composure, she decided it would be fun to turn the tables back on him. "I suppose you get many women crooning for your attention?" She asked. It was a bit of a game to her now. Linka wanted to see what she could find out about him and see if she could make his cheeks turn like hers.

((It's the number of CS eggs I have. I want to get 90 so I can spend a whole month hatching nothing but CS eggs. Lol. I'm hoping before the new year I can do that but I also want more variety...))

Linka was surprised at first to his confession of women not liking his personality, then recalled the scene from the other day and her surprise left her. "Ah, I can understand their position," she said wisely with a faint smile. It vanished though as she thought more upon it and she added. "They must not have hung around to dig deeper. You seem like a decent gentleman to me." Maybe it was the way she reacted to him yesterday that made him calm down a bit. She didn't fancy herself with a commanding personality, Linka would prefer people to be who they were. Although August's personality probably would need to be toned down a bit if she were to tolerate his company. Not that he showed to be having a problem with it now.

Linka's attention was drawn back to the road and she let out a small gasp. "Oh! This is the place I love to visit," she said while the road turned from cobblestone to a smoothed stone walkway. Surrounding the pathway were bushes of various flowers and beyond them were raspberry and blueberry shrubs. "I'm jealous of whomever planted these. They're so beautiful." She spoke with a dreamy tone. The place was gorgeous. It was like a park. Grass on all sides and a handsome gazebo stood in the centre of it all, every road that lead from the outside of the park guided straight to the gazebo and circled it. There was a single, small pond on the right side of where they stood. Fish had once inhabited it, but the hungry went and took the fish at some point and made a meal of them.

Linka had enough time to think about his words and she decided to ask a slightly prying question. "I hope this doesn't bother you but... doesn't it get lonely?" She turned and stared at him, watching his ex
pression closely to gauge whether or not she was treading on unwelcome territory.