The last couple of days, the raven haired mage had been so annoyed with each and every one of the couples and families that were walking in town. It was a bit pathetic, Phoebe was hyper aware of that as well. The thing was, where she thought to have found a partner, even in games, she was left alone again. Had she been lost in Magnolia because she had felt lonely and wanted to go home and taken the wrong train. She now felt lonely again, but didn’t dare to admit it basically and with that, she felt horrible and angry. Mostly angry as well as Persephone who had promoted Victor in their mind as a human being instead of a monkey but the words and the actions that he spoke about weren’t true to what happened in the end. Jobs, leads, answers, bullshit it was, all of it as he had suddenly disappeared. Bet he got a new blonde to help him. Persephone muttered as they thought about it again and Phoebe shrugged, looking at her reflection, seeing Persephone half in it but ignoring it as she brushed her long black raven hair. ”I don’t care.” But she did and she wasn’t sure if it had to do with only Victor. The fact that she really had no friends at all, after almost leaving her home for a year was pathetic. Yes she made friends, Jeeroy, Videns, but where were they? Not where she was at the very least, she had not seen them since August.

She closed her eyes shortly as her hair brush was stuck in a mess of her hair and she had almost pulled it out by sheer force. She looked up at her reflection, actually quite happy or no more satisfied that she wasn’t whiny about it, not crying about it. She would find other people and besides that, she didn’t need people. All she needed was Persephone right now, she wasn’t alone. She had someone to talk to and their bond had only grown stronger, Exactly, we don’t need anyone, Persephone answered and their eyes met shortly in the reflection before she would continue to untangle her long hair and finish brushing it, ”Let’s go do something fun.” There weren’t many things to do, they liked drinking but it was too early for that and alone drinking was boring. Apart from that, Persephone liked Nature and Phoebe surely came to respect that much more lately as she had done her portion of taking care of Nature here in Crocus after the matches that the mages held against each other. She didn’t know much about it, wasn’t very aware what to say about it but it surely felt that they could do something about that. ”I heard about a flower garden here, let’s go watch that.” Where she couldn’t hide her thoughts about wondering if there were flowers in the winter and Persephone presented a whole list of flowers during winter in an area like Fiore.

While she was listening to Persephone her going on and on about nature and that flowers weren’t the only beautiful things in winter or the rest of the seasons and she learned that Persephone preferred spring over the other seasons. The rebirth that it showed of every plant and she showed some imagines in their shared mind while Phoebe left the inn and headed over to the location. Crocus seemed to be very proud of their gardens as there were enough signs directing them to it. Arriving there she realized more couples, families and friend groups were here and she shook her head. She would get friends too, she didn’t know when but it would happen at some point and she would meet them more often. She thought about T.K. and how he knew Alice as well and.. she trailed too far in her mind which made it a sad sob story again and she didn’t want that. As she arrived at the gate of the gardens, there was a man looking lost. He reminded Persephone about Luciel and they didn’t feel the need to help. But the man took a step towards them asking if they were going towards the Gardens, which was clear as they stood near the gate so she simply answered to be polite enough. He told her that he had lost his sword and couldn’t retrace his steps and believed it was lost in the garden, if she would help him search, he would reward her. They decided only to do it for the jewels.

This meant that their simple trip to watch the flowers and other plants, to calm down, changed into a job and she decided to simply do that, it also distracted her from all the couples around and thus not thinking about King. She had ruined it all by leaving without a note, she shook her head and looked around the flowers and plants, the path and the benches but no.. sword. She stood up straight again and her lilac eyes lingered on the dog a few feet away from her, carrying a sword in its mouth. Gross, although Persephone was glad the dog was a good looking animal, his owners seemed to care as his pelt looked groomed and well fed. Phoebe pushed the thoughts away and told Persephone to focus for they had to get the sword, when she walked towards the dog, it seemed to figure out why she was there and she had to run after it, thank god the sword seemed to be heavy and the dog had his head tilted to the left as it was trying to carry it and in the end thanks to Persephone her suggestion, they stopped, held open their hands and simply called for a good boy. While the dog came and dropped the sword so she could pet him for a short while. She took the sword, albeit far stretched from her body and walked back to Armin to hand him the sword and get her paycheck. Now she had to find something better to do than watch the gardens...