Roses Are Red
A Writer's Digest February Flash Fiction Challenge Response
Prompt: write from the perspective of a well known character
For the entire week he was gone, I spent every spare second I wasn’t grinding herbs for making salves and tinctures in the kitchen by the fire working on the surprise. After three days straight with snow, I wasn’t sure at all if Jamie would make it home in time.
But he did. I heard him stomping on the porch to knock the snow off his boots. It must have been a terribly hard trip, for his face was gaunt, his wide shoulders sagging, and the sparkle in his eyes he usually had at a homecoming was missing.
“Have you soup on the fire, lass? I’m as cold as a statue in a blizzard, and ate the last of the jerked beef I took along with me yesterday.”
“Come into the kitchen,” I said. “Fanny, go out to the wash house and make sure the fires haven’t gone out there, would you please?” I wanted a few minutes alone with Jamie.
In the middle of the kitchen table, surrounded by a ring of dried roses and chamomile flowers, sat the heart shaped cake I’d toiled over. And at the head of the table, Jamie’s usual spot as head of household waited the heart-shaped card I’d cut out of two broadsides with blank backs sitting in the kindling box, glued front to front, and stained red with the berries of the partridgeberry plant. When the paper was dry I’d written a short poem on it, one familiar in 1978 but unknown in 1776.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your time is mine and
I’ll always love you
“What is this, Sassenach?”
“It’s called a valentine. Every year on this day, cards like this are exchanged between lovers, usually with some kind of gift. Heart shaped boxes of chocolates are, were, popular. So were bouquets of roses.”
“Why did ye do it?”
“Back then, in my time do you mean?”
He nodded, swallowing the hot beef bone marrow broth that was simmering in the cauldron on the hearth.
“To show the one you love that you love and appreciate them.”
His eye brows shot up. “I can think of more direct ways to show ye that, ken?” And with that he pulled me to him, and kiss me long and deep.