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With a belly full of pancakes and a heart full of joy, Flora strolled home from the diner beaming.  Sliding her fingers into her sewing apron pocket, she felt for the tiny jar Jackie had given her earlier that day.

“Isn’t it amazing, little one?” she whispered to the tiny butterfly egg.  “So many possibilities!  The coronation dress, your own little house in my gardens, helping Miss Tuttlesworth achieve her dream…”  She sighed.  “Can you imagine spending years working for a dreadful woman with no appreciation of your talent, only heaping abuse on you day after day and slowly sucking your talent and soul out with every vile word that drips from their lips?”

She glanced around and laughed.  “I guess I get dramatic at night,” she admitted to the tiny egg in the jar.  Lifting her shoulders in a shrug, she twirled under a street lamp.  “Who knows?  Maybe Astrid is right.  Maybe this coronation dress will help me get into the Fashion Institute of Technology!”  She didn’t bother to say out loud the practical reply in her brain: Only if they let me in for free.

She refused to let her money woes, or lack of money woes rather, ruin a beautiful evening.  As the last glimmers of summer sunshine dappled through the towering oak trees lining the sidewalk, she hummed as she strolled home, her fingertips brushing the tiny jar every few minutes as if it might disapear.

“Here we are!” she announced, ducking through a wooden gate and hurrying up a cobblestone sidewalk.  “Home sweet home!” At the end of a winding cobblestone path lay a tiny cottage, tucked away in a towering burst of blooms.  Around the small home, flowers of every shape and size were artfully scattered, lining the walls, spilling out from window boxes and tucked into pockets of green grass or under stately shade trees.  A fountain Jackie had installed last year gurgled merrily, a statue of a fairy standing impishly in the center.  Nestled amongst the blooms and bushes were tiny details: a small thatched house for toads, salt licks for deer, special grasses for nibbling bunnies and dozens of colorful birdhouses with plenty of nearby fountains for splashing and preening.

She took a deep breath and sighed.  “Smell the roses and honeysuckle?  Aren’t they grand?  Jackie outdid herself.”

“You act as if she did it alone!”

Flora gasped and whirled around.  When she spotted the crochety old man in a floppy hat and mud-stained overalls glaring at her with his own good eye, she laughed.  “Of course she couldn’t have done it without you, Mr. Grissom.”

“I taught that girl everything she knows,” the old caretaker boasted, sweeping out his arm at the lush landscape around them.  Shaking his finger at Flora, he narrowed his eyes.  “Speaking of which, you know I told you to quit coming around the back and go through the main gates of the estate.”

Flora winced.  “I know.  I just can’t seem to do it.”

“It’s not like you’re hired help,” the old caretaker pointed out.  “You own the cottage.”

“It just happens to be on the grand Nottingham estate.”  Flora toyed with the straps of her apron nervously.

“Just the back corner.”  Mr. Grissom waved his arm dismissively.  “You can’t even see the house from here.  It’s in it’s own little world.”

“Precisely why I bought it.”  Flora smiled.  “I doubt they even know I’m here!  I’m like a flea on the back of a Persian cat.”

“The Nottinghams can’t help their wealth,” Mr. Grissom said sternly, shaking his head.  “Not any more than we can help our own lack of fortune.  But for a bunch of rich folks, they’ve been very kind.  When you’ve tended someone’s land 50 years, you learn a lot about them.  And they’re good folks.”  He waggled his eyebrows.  “You know your grandmother was good friends with the old matron?”

“Nadine Nottingham and my grandmother?”  Flora snorted.  “Get real!  My grandmother was a seamstress!”

“And she created several gowns for Nottingham balls.  You know how it is with women–they gossip and such with their hair dressers and manicurists.  Why should a seamstress be any different?”

“True.”  Flora gazed at her tiny cottage.  It was small and old, the pipes creaked and the floorboards screeched, cold in the winter and sweltering int he summer, but it was hers.  And that made it perfect.  “You know, it was because of her I have this cottage.”  She turned to the old man.  “When she passed away, she left me just enough money to move out of my mother’s and buy it.”  She blushed.  “I know it’s silly, but the minute I saw it I knew she’d want me to have it.  ‘A piece of magic,’ she would have said.  ‘Like a fairy tale.”  She leaned forward and brushed her fingers against a large purple bloom.  “She liked flowers as much as I do.”

“Flowers are brief moments of beauty and goodness, gone too soon.”  The cantankerous old gardener shook his head.  “That’s why I like grass.  Pracical, green, sturdy.”

“But if all we had was grass, life would be quite dull.”  Flora snorted as the old man’s good eye bugged out in surprise.

“True.”  He tipped his hat and picked up his bucket of tools laying by his feet.  “Be careful coming in the back gate, Flora.  I worry about you back here, all alone.  I wish you’d get a roommate or something–or a husband!”

“There’s not much risk of that,” she said dryly as he tottered away.  Shaking her head, she sighed.  Romance was something she didn’t even want to consider.

Sliding her fingers into her pocket, she stroked the tiny jar.  “Let’s take you home, shall we?”

After unlocking her front door and setting her purse on the side table, she turned on a few lamps, instinctively moving through the tiny cottage.  In the glowing golden lamp light, what looked like a cramped and pathetic little space turned cozy and warm, with plush throw pillows and neat shelves boasting books and tiny knickknacks.  Moving across the polished dark wooden floorboards, she took a few steps into her bedroom and flung open the French doors.

“This is my own private little patio,” she confessed to the butterfly, stepping out onto the small space of cement.  “Every plant here is friendly for butterflies.  Jackie made sure of it.  And we’ll put your little house right here, next to the hummingbird feeder.”

Opening another door, she stepped into a small greenhouse.  Instead of flowers, tables dotted with bobbins, needles and swatches of fabric lined the small house.  Drawing the shades, she unzipped one of the bag fabric bags hanging from the wall.  “And she helped me convert this greenhouse into a little studio for my sewing–so I could be inspired, she said.”  She grinned at her apron pocket.  “Not that there was any room in my house, anyway.”  Carefully, she lifted the frothy golden dress from it’s bag.  “I made this the other day.  It’s not for anyone yet–but it might be.  It was just a dream I had.”  Pressing the dress to her front, she spun and twirled around.  Closing her eyes, she imagined bobbing and dipping across a dance floor, laughing and twirling int he arms of”–

Her eyes flew open and she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the greenhouse door.  Her large brown eyes stared back at her, framed in a puffy, plain face with far too many freckles and far too little prettiness.  Smoothing her stringy brown bob behind her ears, she hung up the dress and zipped it back up into it’s bag.

Then, one hand toying with the butterfly charm brushing against her collarbone and her other hand carefully touching the jar, she ducked back into her house, carefully ignoring her reflection.

She’d already had far too much reality.

Stay tuned, Invisible Friends!  We have a new Comfort and Whimsy tomorrow!

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