jaimemieux | (no subject)

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flavia

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Even as September marched steadily on, summer clung to the fields and woods outside Darrow. The last flowers of the season were still blooming, the grounds lush, and the leaves on the trees stubbornly green, though the air hinted at autumn. Soon, the days would turn cooler still, and the opportunity to collect specimens in the wild would be gone for another season. What better time for one last walk in the nearby wilderness?

“Now, what was this project you mentioned for your biology class?” Combeferre asked his twelve-year-old companion as he offered her a hand, helping Flavia up a steep incline just off the more usually trodden paths. Quick-witted and keen-eyed, she made for an excellent compatriot on Henri’s exploratory walks. In addition, he supposed it was better that someone knew which poisonous plants she was collecting for her chemical arsenal. Just in case. “Is there something we can find while we are out here?"

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“Not biology, photography,” Flavia corrected, grateful for Combeferre’s help as she scrambled up the ridge, camera bag slung over one shoulder. “We’re supposed to practice taking close-up photographs of things within a particular theme; I chose plants.”

Exactly what kind of plants—poisonous ones, of course—she’d contemplated keeping a secret from her friend, though as skilled a scientist as Combeferre was, he’d have figured it out in a moment anyway. Let the rest of her classmates take snapshot after snapshot of their pets at home, or weird gargoyles along the rooflines of the library or art museum; Flavia was going to make a pictorial survey of the deadly, delightful things growing in the Darrow wilderness.

“Photography, ah yes.” Combeferre needed a camera of his own, and had been declaring his intention to purchase one for the better part of six months, but every time he walked into the appropriate shop, he found himself overwhelmed by the choices. “Then you will have to show me your pictures later.”

“Are you looking for any particular sort of plant?” he asked, already suspicious of the answer he was sure to get.

"Of course I will," Flavia said, surprised he hadn't assumed she would as a matter of course. It was only fair, after all. "We're supposed to develop them ourselves and everything, which means there'll be loads of chemistry involved." Spotting a cluster of pokeweed a few yards distant, she began walking over, taking the camera out of the bag as she went. "I'd say you should come help with that, too, but the darkroom's at school so it's students only." She adjusted the focus, squinting through the viewfinder trying to frame the shot--a cluster of dark purple berries, hanging like toxic jewels--before clicking the shutter a few times.

Lowering the camera, she looked back at Combeferre with a sweet--if slightly mischievous--smile. "I'm looking for poisonous plants," she admitted. "This one's American nightshade."

“Sounds like your sort of project,” Combeferre observes with a soft chuckle. He has only seen the sorts of cameras wight he little chips inside, the ones they call digital, though he has heard of this other sort, ones more like Monsieur Daguerre’s contraption, which develop film under chemical circumstances unknown to him.”Well then, once you are an expert, you will merely have to find a way to show me how it’s done. In a different lab, perhaps.” They were scientists. They would find a way.

He suppresses a smile as they girl sinks down beside the bright fruit, terribly unsurprised. “As long as you intend to take pictures, and not samples,” he chides mildly, turning to inspect an unfamiliar plant of his own.

"In a different lab," Flavia echoes, thinking of the small darkroom tucked into the corner of Tar's laboratory back home. It was a ludicrous idea, but stranger things--if not smaller--had arrived in the city from home before. A darkroom, or even a laboratory, could hardly be much more work.

"Pictures only, Girl Guide's honor," she says with an agreeable smile, holding up one hand in the Scout's Salute. This time, she thinks, before turning her attention to the plant Combeferre had noticed.

"What've you found?"

Henri’s grin was sly; he knew better than to believe Flavia wholesale, but he appreciated her reassurance, even if he had every intention of keeping an eye on her.

“Mm, it’s a type of Monotropa, I believe. No poisonous properties that I know of, I fear, but it is rarely found in this part of the world. Strange looking flora, isn't it?"

"It is," Flavia agrees, coming to Combeferre's side to examine the plant with him. Gently, she reaches out a finger, brushing the pale cream-colored flowers drooping along the stalk. "It's like someone forgot to turn the lights on when they were growing it."

"It does, rather," Combeferre agreed, tipping his head to the side as he examined the strange, alien flower. "I don't suppose you might take a picture for me? I don't think I can quite capture it with my sketchbook."

Almost before he finishes the question, Flavia is adjusting the focus on the camera, bringing each petal into sharp relief. "It's got a lot to it," she agrees, snapping a few photos from a handful of angles. "This way, you can draw from the photo too, if you want."

Combeferre rose to his feet, his smile bright and pleased. “Ah, bon! You are a wonder, cherie. I may have to take you and your camera on all my excursions."

“I hope that’s a promise,” Flavia replied, standing up as well and brushing a bit of dirt off her jeans. “I wish I’d thought to do something like this back home—even though I knew what most of the plants were anyway, it would’ve been useful to make a formal record."

"One must have a formal record in order to expand one's knowledge," Combeferre agreed, much like a teacher approving of a student's thoughtful observation - which, in a sense, was exactly what it was. "There is no one who can keep everything he discovers in his head, and even if he could, how could he pass it on to others?"

"He--or she," Flavia added, giving Combeferre an amusedly pointed glance, "couldn't. Uncle Tar kept books and books of scientific notes--they've been awfully useful."

Even as she mentioned Tar's notebooks, Flavia thought not of them, but of a different book--one perhaps even more important than anything her great-uncle could ever have written. "And it was Harriet's notes in her old textbook that introduced me to chemistry in the first place," she said after a moment's pause.

Harriet, Combeferre remembered, was the girl’s mother, though he had never heard a child refer to a parent in such a fashion. Of course, Flavia was no ordinary child, and it followed that Harriet had been no ordinary woman.

He smiled. “Then by the sound of it, you have a familial duty to add to their observations."

“I suppose I do,” Flavia said quietly, struck by the idea that somewhere, far in the future, other de Luces—perhaps even Feely or Daffy’s children, or grandchildren—would hear stories just like the ones she’d heard about Tar’s disgrace at Oxford, or Antony and William de Luce’s rancorous feud. The only difference being, they’d be about her instead. She hoped—and trusted—she’d be worthy of them.

“It is the only way any of us might be remembered. If not by name, then by the contributions we have made. Now, come along,” slipping his notebook under his arm, Combeferre started up the path, “if I remember rightly, there is a creek this way, and a stand of mushrooms you will find very interesting for your project, I think."

Shouldering her camera bag, Flavia followed along behind him, grateful for the change of subject. They had quite a lot to do; dwelling on the questions of what was or might someday be would get them nowhere. “I was hoping for some mushrooms,” she said. “Even if they’re technically fungi, not plants; the poisonous ones are usually so hard to tell from the safe, edible ones."

“Your pictures could serve as a very useful guide for those who explore these woods,” Combeferre mused, "and that alone will make documenting fungi as well as plants valuable.” He led her to the edge of a trickling stream, really little more than a rivulet through the earth, where damp ground had sprouted schools of tiny, spongy caps at regular intervals. “Do you know much about poisonous mushrooms?” he asked, crouching beside one of the patches.

“Not as much as I should,” Flavia says. It’s an admission she’d make to a rare number of people, Henri among them; after so diligently cultivating—even accepting—the mantle of a poisons genius, it wouldn’t do to confess any ignorance. “Mostly that you have to be endlessly careful, because so many poisonous mushrooms look just like ones you’d be just fine eating.”

To illustrate, she brushes aside a shock of grass, revealing a fist-sized mushroom, just sprouting from the dirt. “What’s your verdict? Poison, or not poison?"

“Alors, mademoiselle, I am relying upon you as my poison expert!” Grinning, he squats down to look more carefully at the fungus Flavia has revealed. “Mm. It might be of the genus Amanita, though it might also be something rather more innocent and useful for a stew.” He pulls out a pocketknife and, after plucking the plant from the ground, carefully slices it in half. “Ah, we are saved. See here, there are no gills within."

"Cleverly done," Flavia says, grinning as she raises her camera to snap a photo of Combeferre, triumphantly holding the mushroom half aloft. "Nobody's dying from that mushroom, today or any day."

“Nevertheless, let us not test my aptitude today,” Combeferre suggests with a wink and a grin. “At least not until we are better equipped to handle such an experiment.” Taking the mushroom’s other half, he wraps it carefully in paper and puts it among the other samples in his satchel. While there is nothing particularly unique about it, the specimen adds to the record of their day.

“Miss Crawley would be a bit cross if I had to tell her you’d been poisoned,” Flavia agrees, as soberly as she’s able. “And I think Ophelia would have your head if I was the one poisoned.” Watching him wrap the mushroom and stow it away brings a small, proud smile to her face; while it’s entirely possible he’s done it merely to be kind, it’s still a scientific contribution they’ve made—together—to the day.

“Speaking of poisons,” she says, looking at a stand of trees a few yards distant, “I think there’s a yew tree over there; shall we investigate?"

“She is a fierce one when provoked, your sister,” Henri notes in thoughtful agreement, a grin twitching at his lips when he thinks of the way that Jehan has been swooning over her recently. But there are some things little sisters probably do not need to know.

He looks where she points and nods in agreement. “Describe by Linnaeus and beloved by woodworkers. Lead the way, mademoiselle."

"I've wound up on the wrong side of her fury enough times to know that's true," Flavia muses as they strike out for the copse up ahead. "Did you have any siblings, growing up?"

“Two sisters and a brother,” Combeferre answers, smiling faintly, sadly, at the thought of the siblings he will never see again. Even if he somehow left this place, he knows what his future holds. As dreadful as it is, he would never dare attempt to steer if off-course.

But this is not the time for such melancholy thoughts. He offers Flavia a conspiratorial grin. “All younger. So do not say anything too disparaging about elder siblings, mademoiselle, or I shall be quite offended."

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