• Valince shivered, treading the sidewalks and streets blanketed with ice. Slipping and falling on the frosted concrete for the third time, he cursed his parents once again for taking him away from his beautiful home in North Carolina to move to this smog-filled, crime-infested, roach-crawling, blood-and-sweat-and-mud-drenched colorless dirthole nationally and internationally known as New York City. It was early springtime, where newborn grass and flowers were supposed to emerge from the earth and animals of all shapes, sizes and colors would come out to greet the sun from their three-month-long absence. The wind would sing through the newly grown leaves and opened pear blossoms of the twin pear trees they used to have in their backyard. Spring had come to New York as well, but all that was there was ice, ice, and even more frikkin ice. Valince groaned, slapping a stray snowflake that had collapsed against his cheek. His parents always told him how it would have to be impossible for them to leave such a beautiful town such as their's. They always said that Hell would have to freeze completely over before that happened.

    Well, it did. Hell had frozen over completely. And that Hell was called New York City, and it was frozen from the moment they got off the damn plane.

    Walking back "home" that afternoon from school, which he had to admit really sucked, he stopped at a small flower shop. Flowers of many varieties and colors flooded the shop window. White roses, yellow daisies, golden crimson marigolds, magenta chrysanthemums, baby blue violets, silvery rose garlic pears and dark purple glue gems. There were also pinkish orange sago palms, and a few venus flytraps dotted the walls much to his surprise.

    A vase of golden amber sunflowers caught his eye. Curious, he opened the mahogany door and walked in. Flowers numbered on the shelves and windows by the hundreds, while there was almost no furniture, save the small table in the top left corner covered with a small stack of books on different flowers and plants. The air was thick with the scent of dirt, fertilizer and a little bit of vanilla.

    In the back of the small ship was an old woman hunched over the counter next to the register, dipping a ripe strawberry in a tiny bowl of honey before lifting it up to her wrinkled mouth. The scraggly hair that was tied back in a loose, messy bun was as white as the snow that fell outside. Through her squinting eyelids were orbs of a wise, gentle aqua blue that dimly shone from her light peach skin. She shifted the green scarf around her neck and straightened out her long brown dress as she moved to dispose of the honey bowl.

    "Excuse me?" the fourteen-year-old called to the elderly lady across the room. The woman slowly turned her head to look at the dirty blonde-haired boy wearing a dark green parka and blue jeans with his hands in his pockets. Her eyes stared back into his brown ones before continuing what she was doing, like she didn't even know he was there. Coming up to a sink, she washed the bowl out and set it upside down on the counter.

    "There," she said with a gentle but sturdy voice, weighed with age. "Save that for later, I will." With that, she slowly walked towards the boy. "Now how may I help you, young man?" she asked.

    Valince cleared his throat as he glanced over each shoulder at the plants involuntarily. "I, uh, saw the flowers in your window and thought I'd check it out."

    "The flowers in general?" The woman asked suspiciously. "Or a flower in particular?"

    He answered her by gazing at the sunflowers at the right side of the show window. The woman imitated him and chuckled lightly at what he was referring to.

    "Ah, the sunflowers," she said. "Or known by those God-forsaken ecologists as 'helianthus annuus.' Good choice." Keeping her steady pace, she picked up the vase and walked to the table, putting them down on top of the small stack of books. "Now, how many? They're seventy-five cents per bloom."

    "Oh no, I didn't wanna buy any. I was just looking." Valince corrected, his hands fidgeting in his pockets uncomfortably. The old woman looked at him for a moment as if insulted, before she chuckled again in a livelier tone.

    "You're not from here, are you boy?" she asked.

    Valince's neck stiffened. "N-No. How could you tell?" The woman chuckled again.

    "Oh, Grandma Lucy knows. No one ever enters my shop and 'just looks,' because everyone else in this city has already seen everything I have here. Once they do, they either buy something or just appear disappointed. Either way, once they visit, they never come back. If somebody finds pure interest in something for what it is, despite if they've already seen it, they must be from some other place. Ah, but I digress. I like seeing that anyway. And it's rather difficult to find someone of such character these days."

    She stared at the boy with unreadable eyes. "So, you have a name sonny?"

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    TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO