#01 Tulip

The first flower she ever received was a single tulip, wrapped in cellophane and a black ribbon tied into a bow at the stem. It was not the usual kind of gentle tulips you’d see at a flower market. Instead, it had crimson scalloped petals that were fringed at the ends like ruffled feathers and looked almost black in certain hours of the day.

The boy who gave her the flower had attached a note to it with a piece of black twine. The scrawled handwriting, written in red ink was barely legible. There was a faint smell of perfume on the paper, as though to mask something vile.

“I love you like a stone cutter loved the princess. If you were to die one day, I shall too, so that the blood drops from our wounds will become tulips just like this one.”

She called the police immediately.

*****

I kind of wanted to use @furrylittlepeach ‘s Peachtober prompts this year as a way to ease my head back into writing again; so these are just whatever pops into my head!

The story of the stone cutter and the princess is one I’ve heard as a child. I think it was a Persian love story in which the couple ended up fatally stabbing themselves. The blood that fell then came to form tulips, thus the association of everlasting love.

Tulips are also known to be flowers that symbolise an inexplicable and unconditional form of love, such as that between family members.