Marmalade's Love Potion

The Sisters found her later that morning hunched over her work bench surrounded by flowers and using one of Sister Rosin’s small wooden hand drills to bore a hole through a gleaming azure stone.

“Aha!” Penelope exclaimed, looking up in triumph as the Sisters stepped into the lounge. Rinsing the stone in a floral teacup filled with water, Penelope held it up to the sunlight.

“I’m making beads for my dress,” she explained with a wild grin before selecting another stone.

In the play of light glinting from its smooth surface, she could distance herself from the darkness of the forest, and the nightmares that had lead her there.

“That’s... lovely,” Sister Heely said with an uncertain glance at Sister Rosin. “We’ll just... go start breakfast.”

“Mmhmm,” Penelope hummed as she began twisting the drill into the smooth quartz of a purple stone.

When all the stones she had chosen were drilled, Penelope looked up, stretching out her neck, to notice a cup of tea had been placed on the edge of the bench. Penelope smiled at the thoughtful gesture. The tea was cold, but sweet, and Penelope gulped it down before returning to her work.

By early afternoon, Penelope had arranged all the flowers across her workbench in the pattern she wanted to stitch across the bodice. Their petals were lush and multi-hued, glimmering ever so faintly as if they had captured beads of starlight. They bloomed under Penelope’s touch, releasing a clean fragrance like storm rain.

The Sisters had tried to drag her away for lunch, but Penelope had been too engrossed in her work.

Penelope met her first snag when she realised the flowers shied away from her needle. At the first jab through the base of a flowerhead, the petals turned a livid crimson and the flower curled in on itself.

“Oooh, no! Poor darling, I’m so sorry,” Penelope murmured over and again, stroking the velvet soft petals until they unfurled again, the red fading to a reluctant pink. “How am I to attach you then?”

By evening, the Sisters found Penelope pacing the lounge, talking to her flowers. Sister Rosin cleared her throat. “Penelope, duckling, are you quite alright?”

“Hn? Oh, yes, I’m fine, I’m fine, I just need to convince the flowers to stay on my dress, is all.”

“Perhaps it’s time to put the flowers down and come eat something, dear,” Sister Heely hedged.

“Oh, no, I’m fine, not hungry.” Penelope squinted down at the large moon-bright blossom in her hand, which had trembled ever so slightly. “What was that, did something upset you?” she whispered to it. “Poor thing...”

“Penelope, sweetling, why don’t you give those to me, and—” As Sister Heely’s tentative steps drew closer, Penelope gasped. Small thread-thin vines grew outwards from the flower, wrapping around her finger.

“Oh! Oh, you clever thing!”

The thread tightened as Sister Heely stepped nearer still.

“Ow!” Penelope grimaced as the thread grew uncomfortably tight. “Sister Heely, would you please stop just right there?”

Sister Heely stood in place, regarding Penelope with a bemused quirk of her brow.

“Yes, yes, perfect, now take a step back? Please?”

Sister Heely complied with a purse of her lips. She exchanged a concerned glance with Sister Rosin when Penelope cackled as the gripping threads around her finger loosened their hold.

“Oh, yes, that’s it!” she cried, racing to her workbench. “Don’t you worry, little dears, I won’t let them take you away. Where is it, where is it—Aha! Here now, can you try and cling to this for me? I’ll give you a spritz of honey water...” Penelope sang, holding out a scrap of fine translucent mesh to the flower.

She barely noticed when the Sisters backed out of the room without another word.

The lace-like mesh and a steady litany of encouragement turned out to do just the trick. Penelope spent the rest of the evening fashioning a pattern from the bolt of mesh, spare material from a dress she had made the previous summer.

She pinned it over the indigo bodice of her gown, placing it precisely where she wanted the flowers to sit. With whispered promises and gushing praise, Penelope coaxed the flowers, one by one, to grow fine tendrils through the thin fabric, clinging tight to the garment.

Each beaded stone, each flower positioned just so, felt like a choice. A decision to reweave dreams from the pall of nightmare. A choice to unearth her hurts and remake them into something of beauty, something that would bloom with all that Penelope would rather be and become.

With the last flower in place, Penelope stepped back to inspect her work, clapping her hands with a squeal of glee at the sight.

“Goodnight, sweetheart... Are you going to bed soon, do you think?”

“Goodnight Sister Heely, oh, yes, I think I’ll be finished soon!”

“I think it’s best to leave her to it at this point, love,” Sister Rosin hissed from the stairwell.

Penelope waved them a vague goodnight and returned to her work.

Dawn was glinting from the snowbanks in the garden when Penelope stitched the final bead in place.

“It’s perfect,” Penelope whispered to herself as she stood back, eyes welling with awe as she took in her gown.

The skirt flowed out in a wide, rippling sweep of night-blue silk and sparkling diamonds. Long sheer sleeves billowed from the shoulders, glittering like frosted ice. Blooming flowers of glistening opal, dawn pink, velvet purple, and dusky blue spilled down the dress in rivers, a glimmering night garden that blossomed under Penelope’s pride.

Penelope shucked off her work dress and eased the gown from her mannequin. Stepping into the dress, so very careful not to harm her flowers, she pulled it over her shoulders and stepped to the mirror.

The gown was otherworldly, and she looked otherworldly in it. A fae queen dressed in a gown of flowers and starlight, ready to hold court in a winter’s dream.

Penelope could hardly breathe as she stared at herself in the mirror, a vision of ethereal power, in stark and wondrous contrast to the gown of vines that had tried to ensnare her.

The river stones gleamed like jewels as they caught the light. The flowers flourished, furling and unfurling as she twisted, her skirt flaring in a wide, twinkling arc.

Penelope spun as she heard a gasp behind her. The Sisters had crept downstairs without her noticing.

“What do you think?” Penelope asked with a shy smile.

Sister Heely stepped forward, her hands pressed to her mouth as tears formed in her eyes. “Beautiful... Absolutely beautiful...”

Penelope grinned and spun again as Sister Rosin edged around her wife, giving a low whistle that made Penelope laugh.

“I’ll not lie, we thought you’d gone proper off your rocker, but just look at you! Magnificent! Stunning! Gorgeous! Radiant! Heels, help me out here, more words!”

“I’ll be no help, I can hardly even speak.”

Penelope bent over in a fit of giddy giggles, groaning when her stomach rumbled. “Oh, I am starving!”

“Come on, darlin’, we’ll cook you up something special.”

Penelope fixed her gown back atop the mannequin and blew kisses at her flowers before joining the Sisters for breakfast.