This is supposed to be the last year of college, is this really happening?
Floret sighs a she grabs the handle of the front door.
An assignment to pick a flower and present it in class? Really?
Where are we, in elementary school?
She just couldn't wrap her head around it, that this tradition was really still alive.
Even when, it had finally come her turn.
Never should have doubted the old fashioned traditions...
Of course they'd stick around in such a rural town...
Pulling the door open, the refreshingly cool night air greets her, as she stands on the threshold.
Each student needed to find a flower to wear to the graduation ceremony, worn either in one's hair or on their outfit.
The rarer the flower the more you'd be noticed and even revered over, especially if you brought one nobody had ever graduated with before.
They even kept records of all the graduates' choices, it was a great honor to start a new list with a never before presented flower.
Considering, how it was illegal to import any flowers through the town's borders, finding such a flower by yourself, wasn't exactly easy.
Yeah, that's how crazy serious the town of Perennial Bloom was about their kooky traditions.
At least, they could be exported out, by tourists or some few select companies, god knows this backwater place would have dried out decades ago otherwise.
The source of all this mania, a large botanical garden that housed all sorts of exotic plants, going bankrupt.
As the place fell into disrepair, all sorts of species from their indoors and outdoor exhibits spread into the surrounding forest. Somehow miraculously, acclimating to the climate in the process.
The town had become famous for this and even had planned renovating and reopening the premises, but what was the point in that now, the biggest flower garden was already around them.
I did enjoy the sight of a good flower, as much as the next person, or maybe a little less being honest.
But this... fanaticism, felt more than a little silly to me.
It's education I'm here for, not for the flowers and out of date traditions!
I hadn't even cleared the porch, and I was already upset.
Sighing, I felt the cool evening air fluttering the hem of my blue frilly dress, decorated with all sorts of flowers, unsurprisingly, other patterns were hard to get here.
It was one of my shorter ones, not quite reaching down to my knees.
Falling dusk paints the horizon in red and orange, so bright still that I could almost feel the subtle warmth of the setting sun on my skin.
Oh well, better get on it then...
I slam the door of my adobe of tranquility, a detached house on the edge of town. The residence of my parent's, back when they still lived here.
Stepping on to the lawn, the soft, but chilly grass caresses my bare feet, like the wind does to my underwear-less crotch.
Going commando excited me, I did it often in my evening walks, though it had started to loose its glamour as only once in a blue moon I even ran into somebody. The town really was just that sleepy and peaceful, or deserted, depending how you looked at it.
Though the feeling of freedom this habit brought me, stayed nonetheless.
Maybe picking daytime or a morning to do this flower searching might have been a better idea, but then I couldn't indulge myself in my risky hobby.
Who knows if I'd ran to other students in the woods then?
Well, I would certainly like it, as long as they didn't find out, I'd rather ran into random people though.
It's not like I knew everyone who lived here, I wasn't that social. And Perennial Bloom might be small for a town, but not tiny.
I'd rather not let anyone I knew find out, school was hard enough, without that extra aspect to worry about.
Although, I did go to school without panties once, I was so confident that I didn't even pack any spares.
Though I did at least decide on a longer dress that day.
However, instead of it being an arousing and blood pumping experience, I was just super awkward and nervous the whole day, really took it out of me.
I couldn't help but sit cross legged all the time, in class, in the cafeteria with my friends... I guess I was really afraid of the confrontation, of being found out.
The experience really didn't live up to what I thought it would be.
Maybe its was due to being confined indoors, not able to run away giggling if somebody notices. Quite impossible when you're in the middle of class surrounded by all your peers and friends, not even talking of the teachers.
The wide streets or forest paths were much more suited for it. The forest the town was known for: Eternally Flourishing Grove, they called it, EFG, or Eternal Grove for short. Though, unlike the name might suggest, it wasn't small or Grove-like, by any means.
At times, it had near impassable level's of foliage, and the forest surrounded the entire town, extending far on all sides. Ten kilometers at the thinnest part, and a whopping 25 at the thickest.
The sheer size of Eternal Grove, ensured that even after all these years, new flower discoveries were still being made. Hopeful, I entered the shade of lush trees, the ground covered in a bit longer grass that tickled my calves. Lots of daffodils, some marigolds and other flowers, already hiding their brilliant colors in the safety of their buds.
I was pretty confident I could recognize most flowers even when they weren't blooming, as the knowledge was being shoved down my throat constantly.
The whole curriculum was supposedly filled with real subjects, but every single teacher had something to say or to teach of different flowers and plants on the side. Math had us calculate the areas of flowery shapes, even P.E. had team games and athletic moves renamed with names of flowers, going to excruciating detail about their Etymology, during the explaining of the rules...
I spin a small flashlight from its key chain, at the tip of my finger.
It was all I could really carry with me, just imagine if dresses had pockets.
The evening was young and it was only a little dim so far, but I might need it later, if my search went on longer than I planned.
I didn't come here to aimlessly wander, I had a specific destination in mind.
A few kilometers or so walk to a special spot, supposedly, by a small stream that ran through the forest.
My parents had passed this knowledge on to me, as they were originally graduates from this school too, but lived elsewhere now.
They had eagerly presented me their dried and resin preserved flowers, both the first of their kinds to be graduated with. Their pride and joy, presented on their very own pedestals in the house.
On Monday's class we are supposed to dry ours, with instruction from our teacher on how to do it correctly for each flower. After we had worn the dried ones in our ceremony, the last class of the school right after, was to cast them into resin, so they'd remain as memorabilia forever.
