Flowery Language

It’s a small lecture theatre, dimly lit. Dr Romano is a brilliant speaker, knowledgeable and engaging and just the slightest bit condescending - the just slightly pompous tone of someone who is the most expert in her field and knows it. She’s talking through some drawings right now, a collection of Da Vinci’s anatomical sketches. It’s fascinating, and the papers are incredible, and Antiope knows that she’s privileged to be here and she should be on the edge of her seat.

And she would be, except she can’t. Stop. Sneezing. 

It’s infuriating. She’d had a cold last week, and she’d thought she was over it, but this is her third outburst in as many minutes and she can barely recall Romano’s insights into the Vatican’s success in trying to restrict anatomical study. She’s only glad that she was too late to find a seat not in the back row - hopefully she isn’t disturbing too many people. On the flip-side, the draft from the door certainly isn’t doing her any favours.

She almost sighs with relief, when the lights come up for people to ask questions, and feels terrible about it. She’s almost there. She’s going to go home, and sleep, and hopefully when she wakes up she’ll be able to put both the sneezing fits and the associated embarrassment behind her.

A movement on her right catches her eye, and she turns her head to look.

The woman next to her is speaking, asking some question about whether art could have hoped to progress relying on private funding alone, but Antiope is barely listening, too distracted by the speaker. The woman is stunning, with long eyelashes and dark eyes, sharp features carved from stone, and a thick black braid that trails down her back.

And sitting in that thick hair, tucked in above her ear, is a large, obnoxiously bright, yellow lily, all open petals and long, peeking filaments covered in clumps of dark, easily disturbed pollen.

The woman turns her head slightly, and the lily swings towards her, and Antiope can almost see those tiny particles floating through the air, feel them drifting up her nose and down her throat.

She sneezes.

****************************************************************************

There’s a woman glaring at her and she doesn’t know why.

She’s tall, though still shorter than her, with pale hair dyed pale blue and freckles spattering her face. She’s sitting a few rows in front of her, next to the opposite aisle, and it isn’t for very long, or even with any seeming malicious intent, but every now and again she can feel her eyes on her, staring either at her or - she tracks her gaze now - at the flowers tucked behind her air.

Her cousin, Arnav, had handed them over that morning - “Michael mouse daisies,” he’d claimed they were called, with all the confidence typical of an eight year old who knows that they have never once in their life been wrong.

They’re a cheerful pair - one pink and one lilac, and in complete contrast to her grey hoodie and navy shorts. That’s probably what keeps drawing the woman’s attention.

She decides she’ll tell Arnav that a lady was jealous of her pretty flowers once she gets home, and thinks nothing more of it.

****************************************************************************

Antiope feels frustrated. For once, Dr Romano actually has time to talk to people after the lecture, and instead she’s been standing around nearly fifteen minutes now, as one man has decided to monopolize her with inane conversation about the Borgia’s.

Antiope would have left, but she desperately wants to ask about the Galileo letter to Castelli, so she’s stuck here, bored and waiting, and surrounded by people who must be equally so.

The woman nearest her shuffles, restlessly. She’s the same person from the first lecture, Antiope realises, wearing a sunflower today, a sunny antithesis to her dark outfit.

Antiope isn’t sneezing today, so she’s fairly certain the pollen was an isolated incident, exacerbated by her recent cold, but she still feels some resentment towards this woman, with her warm stone face and casual grace and ever-changing flowers.

Romano and the irritating man’s conversation is entering its seventeenth minute when the woman suddenly speaks.

“I like your hair.”

Antiope starts. Unconsciously, a hand goes to the back of her neck, fingers running through the short strands there. It’s purple right now, she thinks. A light pastel shade for the light, cropped locks she cuts herself every other month.

It’s not a particularly pretty hairstyle, nor particularly well executed. But the woman looks sincere, and Antiope softens, somewhat.

Her hesitant, “Thanks,” comes a few beats too late, and she scrambles quickly for something else to say. “Yours too. I, uh, like the flowers. The sunflower. It suits you.”

“Really?” the woman snorts, eyebrows raised. Her voice is deep and mellow, melodious like a lullaby.

“Yeah, you know.” In truth, Antiope doesn’t know, but she’s committed now so she keeps going. “All proud, and haughty. That’s what tall sunflowers used to mean, right?” It’s only once she’s said it that Antiope realises exactly what she’s said, and she rushes to explain herself, to say that that came out wrong, when the woman, inexplicably, laughs. 

“Haughty’s a new one on me.”

“Not in a bad way. But like, dignified, I guess. There’s nothing wrong with being proud. Haughty’s just what the flower means.”

She’s still smiling. “Sure. This one’s just a baby, though,” she says, gesturing with a hand that could fit the whole flower in its palm. “Hardly tall.”

“No, but you are.” It’s true. She has a good few inches on Antiope, and it’s rare that that happens. 

She laughs again. “Suppose I am.” There’s a pause, as if she’s considering something, and then she sticks out a hand. “I’m Juhi.”

“Antiope,” she replies, taking it. Her grip is strong, her fingers callused. They shake.

“Nice name.”

“Chose it myself.” 

“Huh,” she says, which if nothing else is not the worst reaction she’s ever had. Juhi tilts her head. “Suits you.”

Antiope can feel herself break into a smile. “Really?”

“Mm-hmm.” She’s nodding. “Yeah, I see it. You’re all confronting and antagonistic and stuff. And…” she trails off, as if in deep thought, but she can see suppressed laughter dancing in her eyes. “You’re like an ant - all tiny and short.”

Antiope laughs despite herself. She’s spent half her life self conscious of her height for one reason or another, but she’s finding that she’s enjoying herself. She casts around for something else to say...

And her new nemesis finally walks away from Dr Romano, and their conversation is cut short as they both rush forward before someone else can engage her.

****************************************************************************

It’s typical, Juhi thinks. For once she arrives early, and the lecturer’s been delayed by half an hour.

Four weeks it’s taken her, to foster the time management skills required to make it to one measly talk without rushing, and it’s all for nothing.

She should let her aunt know she’ll be back late.

One hand drifts absently to her hair as the other digs out her phone. Arnav had handed her a yellow tulip today, with a very short stem, and she wears it with the same reverence she does all his offerings, but she’s also constantly terrified it’ll fall out before she returns home.

People are still filling in around her as she shoots her aunt a quick text, so she pulls out some headphones and starts listening to music to kill the time. She’s halfway through her third game of solitaire when her phone buzzes with a notification: ‘“Antiope” would like to share a photo.’

Intrigued, she accepts, and finds an image of a tree branch, with very thin oval leaves and crimson, almost hollowed berries.

Confused, she opens up her notes app and sends back a “?”. Antiope’s response is immediate - a photo of a screen, open on a page with listed flowers and meanings - and she begins scanning the hall looking for her.

It isn’t difficult: her hair, bright green today, draws the eye like a beacon. She sits in the third row, laptop open, and if Juhi cranes her neck she can just make out a webpage that seems to match the one in the picture.

Antiope has clearly highlighted the words she thinks relevant. ‘Yellow tulip, hopeless love.’ Her hand flies to her hair again. Grinning, she thinks back to their conversation last week, where she’d learned she looked like a stuck-up sunflower, and pulls out her own laptop.

Googling “coniferous tree red berries oval leaves”, she deduces that she’s been sent an English Yew; a pdf of ‘Language of Flowers’ that seems to match Antiope’s tells her that yew stands for sorrow. The message is clear: sympathy for Juhi’s supposed breaking heart.

There’s still no sign nor update of Dr Romano. Ruhi begins scanning through the document, eventually settling on sending back Xanthium, which she hopes will convey her disdain at Antiope’s ‘rudeness’ effectively.

It seems to work, because her next notification heralds a labeled peony of shame.

It’s a good distraction - bending a restricted, archaic dictionary into something that could pass for conversation. Ruhi’s pasqueflower and walnut statement that Antiope ‘has no claim to intellect’ triggers a wild tansy declaration of war. Her remorseful raspberry pleas and crocus ‘abuse me nots’ are dismissed with disdainful rue. From there the messages devolve into a battle of insults.

When she receives a Japan Rose, proclaiming ‘beauty as her only attraction’, she pauses, considering. She scrolls rapidly through the page, formulating her response, and settles finally on a white clover - ‘think of me’ - and multi-coloured daisies for beauty, an improvised bouquet equivalent for ‘aw, you think I’m pretty’. It’s a while before Antiope replies, with marjoram blushes and foxgloves of insincerity. She bites her lip, hard, to keep from laughing.

She sends a picture of a mahogany tree - not because it has any meaning, but because the idea of Antiope frantically searching for one amuses her - and then, finally, Dr Romano walks into the room, and their game is cut short.

As Romano walks towards the podium, Juhi quickly sends Antiope an olive branch, both proverbial and photographic. Then, before she can talk herself out of it, she sends over her number too and turns off her phone, just as Romano begins her lecture.

An hour later, as she’s leaving the building, she sees a text from an unknown number. A picture of a single corn straw, and the word ‘Truce’.

****************************************************************************

Juhi waves her over as soon as she walks through the doors, and though Antiope likes sitting closer to the front when she can, she makes an exception and heads for the back row.

There’s a daffodil in Juhi’s hair today, dwarfing some daintier blue blossoms. Antiope motions at it vaguely as she collapses in the seat next to her, and Juhi gives a half smile. 

“My baby cousin gave it me when I picked him up from school today.”

“He’s been the one hooking you up?”

She laughs. “Yeah. My aunt’s a florist - he’s been, ‘rescuing’, the flowers she can’t use for a few months now.”

“Well that explains that mystery.”

“What, you thought I lived in a greenhouse or something?” She’s turned a little in her seat, pulling one leg underneath her so that she can better face Antiope; Antiope does the same.

“That or you were the next Poison Ivy.” Juhi chuckles again, a low rumble pulled straight from her stomach. It leaves Antiope feeling unstable, like an earthquake.

“‘Fraid not, sorry. No green thumb on me - I kill everything I touch. Only reason I’ve got away living with my aunt this long is ‘cause I refuse to enter her shop.”

“Wow. Now the truth comes pouring out.”

“You got me. I’m only befriending you to get close enough to murder all your plants.”

Antiope snorts. “Good luck with that. I only ever keep plants that can defend themselves.”

Juhi throws a hand to her chest in shock. “Sacrilege. You think I could lose to a plant.”

“I know you would lose to my plants. I’m gonna line my doormat with venus flytraps and cacti, you wouldn’t last three minutes.”

“I’d last longer than you.”

Antiope swats her with the back of her hand, and Juhi throws her hands up in surrender, fingers splayed. “Alright, alright.”

But she leans back in close as her laughter subsides, and even as the lights start to dim as Romano takes the podium she doesn’t move away, listing towards her even as she opens up her laptop to start taking notes.

Antiope slips a hand into her pocket, and fumbles with the small plastic bag she’s stashed inside. Maybe…

It takes Juhi a lot longer to pack up after the lecture than it does Antiope, even though both of them only really have laptops to put away. She waits for her anyway, fists stuffed into her skirt pockets to hide their fidgeting.

She broaches the subject, somewhat obliquely, as they’re leaving the building.

“How do you think your cousin would feel if you went home with some extra flowers in your hair?”

“Huh?” She turns to look at her, and Antiope pulls out the chickweed she’d found hiking on the weekend.

She feels her mouth go dry. “Um, well. Next week is the last lecture in this series, and then we go back to our respective history lives…”

Juhi nods. “Art history, and then the boring one.”

“Right. Well, no, but.” She stops, and breathes, and maybe Juhi can see her hands shaking with nerves because she doesn’t interrupt. “I was just wondering, if, before that happens, you wanted to maybe, grab dinner or something, that night?” She winces at the uncertainty in her own voice, but what’s said is said, and she stands her ground and lifts her head to look Juhi in the eye.

She thinks - or maybe hopes - Juhi might be blushing. It’s hard to tell, but she’s smiling, and nodding as she says, “Yeah, that would be fun.”

Antiope feels the tension drain from her body. 

Juhi gestures at the flowers. “What’s that?” she asks, pointing with her chin.

“Oh, it’s, nothing, just.” She feels herself flush. “I thought, well, I found some chickweed on Sunday, and chickweed used to signal a rendezvous and…” She shrugs, but Juhi’s face lights up, and she beckons impatiently.

“Ooh. Gimme, gimme.” 

It’s a bit of a contortion act, for Juhi to bend low enough that Antiope can tuck the flowers into her braid, but they manage somehow, and when Juhi turns around she is smiling as bright and white as the petals.

They keep walking to the door. 

“Next Thursday at seven, then?” Juhi asks, as she starts to walk away.

“It’s a date,” Antiope calls, and she feels her face heat up again, but Juhi merely laughs, light and unburdened as it floats on the air, and she feels her heart flutter as if longing to chase after it.

****************************************************************************

“What’s the story here then?” Antiope asks as she sits down.

It’s a fair question - for the most part Juhi hasn’t worn anything more intricate than simple blooms, secured with bobby pins. Now a string of jasmine flowers weave their way through her hair.

She smiles. “You like it? Arnav helped put it together - he told me that I needed something fancier than normal if I was going out tonight.”

“He was right. Where’d he get so many flowers from?”

Juhi grimaces. “I think, he may have stolen them from our neighbour’s creeper, I didn’t ask, plausible deniability and all.”

“A thief and a murderer huh? Everyone loves a bad guy.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. But what’s done is done - I can hardly grow the flowers back - and besides, he was insistent I had jasmine.”

“Oh yeah?” Antiope asks, curiosity colouring her voice. “Why’s that?”

“Oh, um, my name? Juhi. Means jasmine. I mean, there’s not like any significance or anything, but he’s been thrilled with that fact ever since he found out.”

“No, that’s cute. Sweet. Jasmine suits you.”

“Really? What’s that one mean?”

Antiope flushes, but answers anyway. At some point, Juhi is going to find out exactly why a political history student has so much flower lore memorised.

“Um, amiability. And, elegance, and grace.”

And there’s only one real response to that.

“Aww, you think I’m elegant?”

It’s gratifying to actually see her blush.

“Shut up. See if I ever compliment you again.”

“No take-backs. Besides, Juhi still suits me better. That’s who I am - Jasmine’s far too princess.”

Antiope nods.

They quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, Juhi starts to grin, as something occurs to her.

“Speaking of names…”

Antiope looks up, nonplussed.

“I looked up yours. Why’d you choose it?”

She shrugs, but her eyes had widened when Juhi started speaking, and instinctively she knows her suspicions are right. Antiope makes a valiant effort anyway, talking about the cultural and social significance of Ancient Greece, and the Amazonian mythos, and really it sounds very interesting and at any other time Juhi would be happy to listen to it all.

But for now she cuts her off.

“And the real reason?”

They stare at each other, but Antiope, unprepared, blinks first.

“Alright, fine. I didn’t know her much from the myths, I heard the name watching Wonder Woman.”

Juhi pumps her fist. “Knew it. Nerd.”

Antiope shoulders her gently, as people around them start to quiet down. “Says the woman coming to a series of optional lectures, unaffiliated with her degree, in her free-time.”

“Says the woman doing the same thing. Besides,” she adds, whispering now, as Dr Romano starts to speak. “I’m fairly happy with how it all turned out.”

In the dark, she feels Antiope loosely take her hand, and smiling, she settles back in her seat as details of artistic development during the renaissance wash over her.