Lanterns were lit like stars brightening the blue sky as the colored dresses fluttered like the wings of little angles gracing its vastness. Laughs of joy were filling the corridors of the partying palace but a whole different aura of joy and content was surrounding the handsome young man who took his beloved's hand into his, inviting her yet to another dance. The soft snowy hand gladly accepted the invitation with a smile and glittering eyes narrating the love story going between the two youngsters. The young man had just made his promise to his only love, the promise of everlasting love and the proposal of betrothal. While dancing, the young lady's eyes encountered the beautiful calm brown eyes of a dear old friend, Sir Vincent Carrol. He gestured with his head gently at her but she lowered her eyes sadly as if embarrassed; she'd just turned him down the other day for the sake of the man she was currently flying in his embrace.
Just then, the hall door was wide opened and the whole invitees' attention was drawn to the camellia shedding beauty and dignity on the field she bloomed in.
"Lady Iris Wilshire, representative of the noble Wilshire family."
The servant announced as mouths started to whisper that name and speak of its great impression. The lady walked between the guests saluting them with a gentle bow of the head accompanied with a gentler smile. The crowed wanted to rush at her, to grasp even a little of her elegant scent and beauty but their owe of that name and their timid of its power stopped them except for three people. Vincent left his place humbly kissing the smiling lady's hand while flattering her unmatched beauty as usual and Claudine rushed to her dragging her fiancé. The four of them stood together like delphiniums intertwining together toward the light of the sun.
*****
The round spots the full moon reflected on the green leaves of the garden shone like smaller moons lighting for the two young men who had escaped the party with the excuse of needing some fresh air the road to their hearts.
"Summer is approaching from its end. Soon, only few flowers will remain... We promised we'd go and see together the last roses of summer."
The charming excited eyes looked happily at the young man who stood silent watching the soft white hand flirting with the colored petals. The girl looked at him as the silence went on longer.
"Alex?"
"We can't go on like this, Iris. This is too wrong. I am already betrothed to Claudine."
"So what? You can simply end this!"
The woman in the yellow and golden dress dismissively suggested. For her the matter was very simple, it need it not complication. What one is comfortable with, he is ought to do. That was her motto although she could not realize that not everyone held the same power for making their choices, never having to answer to anyone. She was not keen on hurting the woman's feelings, but she was not keen either on her love being entrapped to surrender.
"I've promised to marry her; I can't break my promise and break her hopes. A promise is made to be kept."
Alex explained with a determent tone, as if he was going through a war plan where one misstep will lead to cost results. Iris did not like this tone, but she knew the man better than himself. It was just an act. Deep down, his wish was residing in her heart and hers was residing in his, safe and protected from peering eyes. The wish to be together, to ride off together. The place, time or consequences were not something to be thinking about, the mattered nothing in front of the vibrating beats their hearts made in each other's presence. The only difference lied in their fear of these peering eyes. While the woman paid no attention to them, not sparing them a glance, the man had no such freedom.
"But you know as I know that you don't love her! She's not the woman of your dreams... your father simply obliged you to marry her! This isn't fair! You don't have to spend your life with a woman you don't like because of a mere promise!"
"You're wrong, I love Claudine and I will never break my promise to her."
The young sailor stared his beloved directly in the eye, his conception of honoring promises inflexible. Maybe that's what Iris had loved about him in the first place; his devotion, his willingness to keep even words that fell trivial on Iris's ears. On the other hand, Alex had loved the freedom of choice Iris possessed and which he was denied. They sought in each other what they were aspiring for yet daring not to grasp, out of difference in principles. Nevertheless, at the man's unmoving resolution, Iris's eyes hardened suddenly like sharp icy. Dripping with coldness and humiliation. She took a deep breath and released it slowly trying to conceal her shaking hands in her dress folds. The wind blew that night through the fife of the broken flowers stems reaching the fading petals, spreading them into the night's darkness. As the man turned to go back to the party one last breeze of a spring to be elapsed whispered to him along with a gust of the cold winter preceding it:
"Think of me Alex... and fear me."
*****
The heavy raindrops were hitting his tired face like the hits of an ax bringing down a mighty tree with many branches just like the many possibilities that ramified in the young man's imagination. The stormy wind was freezing his fast breaths as he ran down the dark streets. This morning he had woken up to find a Canterbury, a letter of warning in flower's language but he just disregarded it feeling so self - assured that nothing will happen as long as he's beside his betrothed but now the latter herself had received a letter from the same woman. A verbal one. Claudine had told Alex that she was with a friend she'd not seen for a while, since the party and their betrothal declaration, the betrothal which bloomed a flower and grew another's thorns.
"Alex..."
His fiancée was waiting for him in the hall. She instantly called his name as he opened the door nervously, his hand on his sword's grip, his eyes growing heavy from the rainfall. A storm of red petals welcomed his eyes and smoothly slipped on his face and hands, unlike the stretched hand struggling to reach the moonlight that was reflected on the shocked face that went still as the desperate smile slowly vanished as his name's letters were whispered by the pale rosy shivering lips. His fiancé told him that she had received a very special gift this morning, pockets of roses announcing her friend's upcoming arrival yet he was too naïve to look this thoroughly, he'd forgotten all about the little warning he was given. The fragile hand fell on the ground harshly like a lilac extracted by the wind of death. The trembling man couldn't move his eyes, and as the body of his beloved was falling it revealed the expected friend who was standing on the garden's door enjoying the feeling of the vivid roses perfuming her body and adding even more shine to the smile she was wearing. After all she had succeeded in keeping her promise to see with him the last roses of summer while the man failed at keeping his own.
"She's the last roses of summer..."
*****
A disguised carriage stopped at the harbor where a ship carrying the Wilshire's crest was anchored waiting. Iris quickly got off but was confronted by an old friend.
"Vincent."
" Iris."
The two friends stood silent. The Wilshire heiress could have ignored him but didn't. Perhaps she needed to hear anything... any word no matter
what it was. The words of condemn would be a salvage to her soul right now.
"Are you all right?"
These words were surprising, they weren't what she'd expected to hear yet they were most comforting. She smiled bitterly and sighed intending to reply but Vincent hadn't finished yet.
"You've stepped into a very dark path, Iris."
This restored to her heart its strength and self -control. She stood up the way she always stood, like a stem of steal.
"Do you not hate me now? I know about your little affection to that woman."
She said this sentence aiming to mock the man but Vincent didn't lose his temper. Instead, he smiled unveiling the fake mask the rose was wearing for it was transparent to his eyes.
"You better not step back now."
Iris sighed in defeat. Perhaps for the first time in her life. She combed her hand through her golden locks and said gazing at the distant.
"I've made a tour in this town and heard things I was deaf to in my isolated island. That siege was finally broken in front of my blind eyes allowing the beams of the bitter truth to reach them. Things weren't the way I had imagined but I'm afraid that just like roses, to bloom most beautifully they flower through a path of thorns and mud tolerating pain and isolation. So is changing. To change something, no matter how much people believe it's constant and unchangeable, you need to hide your true intentions behind a mask. Intentions are most capable when they are safely hid and preserved within the heart."
"But can that heart remain pure, just like the intention hid within it?"
"My intentions were completely pure. They found a two edged sword."
Iris bowed her head, she knew no other answer, but lies did not taint it. Still, Vincent could clearly see determination in her eyes. She raised her head and looked at the bush of roses few steps ahead of them. Vincent followed her line of sight as she mused.
"Oh how much I love roses, their petals are bright and gorgeous yet their roots are hid deep down all covered in mud and dirt... aren't we just the same?"
"Mud is formed when rain kisses soil and dirt, we can always choose what to make the greater part of it."
Iris turned her head away at his words. She shall feel no pure rain anymore. Every drop will be tainted, just like her family's atrocious actions. It will not be cleared until they had poured and merged deep down along the mud. The cold wind plucked out the dark glove Iris was nervously playing with into Vincent's hand, and he held it to his heart.
"The day that man's wrath reaches you, I will be there for you, to see things to its end, by your side. Not as enemy, but as a remorseful companion."
Iris's wide eyes sparkled for one last time like the petals of a tulip blessed with one final beam of sunlight before fading forever. She turned to head to the boat but was stopped again at the sight of an ivy climbing a humid old wall.
"Do you know the meaning of ivy, Vincent?
"Ivy?"
"It's a symbol of friendship, so are roses... only the pale ones unfortunately."
Iris walked to her servant who awaited here then turned for the last time smiling bitterly at her formal friend:
" It's good to know that there's still someone who believes in you. Thank you, Vincent Carrol."
The Wilshire ship departed, and few years after that incident, a mysterious mighty ship rose to fame and was being talked about by everyone everywhere. The ship known as the sea goddess; the Amphitrite. Thus, the ivy seeking to bloom forever crumbled along with the crisp wall it leaned at by the wind of that summer inviting winter to come more rapidly...