The Garden of What Once Was

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A light, pleasant smell of lavender tickled at Ember's nose as she slowly woke up. She opened her eyes slightly to see Landon sitting on a wooden stool in front of a large oval window. Green drapes bellowed in the wind coming from the slightly ajar window. Along with the wind, came the distant car whizzing by and the occasional shout of a voice that managed to float its way into the room. Those noises were like a quiet symphony of randomness, so unorganized, yet so beautiful. It almost even made Ember fall back to sleep, but her eyes stayed wide open to allow herself to gaze at the blonde mastermind at work. Landon was currently beginning his newest art project. In front of him was an easel that held up a fairly-sized canvas. He carefully dragged his paint brushed across the white canvas that was just begging to be colored. The way the brush glided across the canvas was mesmerizing, yet all Landon was doing was simply painting.   His movements were precise and methodical, some might say perfect. It was a sight that Ember didn't want to look away from. Unfortunately, Landon had turned away from his painting to look at her. When he laid his eyes upon her, her mouth was still pulled into a small smile, and her eyes were gleaming with child-like fascination. 

"Do you like it?" He scooted his seat to the far right to give Ember a better view.

Now that he no longer was painting, the canvas lost its life. Not that it didn't look pretty to Ember anymore. It was still easy on the eyes, but when Landon was in front of it, he breathed life into the otherwise static painting. She went to position herself so that she could get both Landon and the painting in her line of vision. In doing so, she found something else that caught her attention, more so than Landon's artwork. Pushed against a wall, near where Landon was sitting, was a clothing rack of dresses. The dresses looked as if they would cost a thousand dollars to even try on.

Completely forgetting about the painting, she arched her eyebrow, then asked, in a joking manner, "Do you plan on wearing those?"

Landon rotated himself on the seat of the stool to look at what Ember was referring to. When he saw what 'those' were, he snorted, shaking his head from side to side. His blonde hair swayed, momentarily catching in the sunlight.

"No, but you sure as hell are," Landon announced, facing Ember with an excited grin.

His grin was met with a very unenthusiastic frown. One look at the skimpy dresses and it was an automatic 'no' from her, which she expressed by violently shaking her head back and forth and waving her hands. Those dresses were very out of her comfort zone. Rather than having her butt hanging out or her stomach being on display, she always preferred more conserved clothing, like simple t-shirts or shorts that covered her entire butt. If she shimmed herself into any of those, she would definitely have at least some part of her hanging out that would probably end in her getting arrested for public indecency.

After watching Ember continuously shake her head back and forth, Landon shot up from the stool and headed over to his bed. "Come on!" He whined, now kneeling down with his arms resting on the top of the bed where Ember was sitting. "These are my mother's finest dress lines. It took a lot of pleading to even get one dress from her! Imagine how long I had to beg. Plus, I had to use my own money to get them shipped over here in an hour's time!"

An exasperated sigh left Ember's mouth. Her head fell into her hands. Leave it to Landon to try to guilt trip her into wearing dresses that should be illegal to wear out in public. She was fairly close to giving in to him, but she was determined to hold her ground.

Averting her eyes from his gaze, she shrugged, "You didn't have to do that."

"Yeah, I did. We can't have you going out wearing what you normally wear."

His rebuttal was not received very kindly, as Ember immediately took offense to it. He backed himself away from the bed after seeing her evidently angry scowl.