Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 101

This week's picture prompt is an oil painting by French artist Edouard Manet. This is Two Roses on a Tablecloth and created in 1883. I just find something so delicate and evocative about this painting.


 It's seems I've turned this beautiful picture into a rather dark tale!


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Beauty Within Roses 

Dabbing at one of them, he paused observing the roses he’d painted. They were both so delicate and intricate, their beauty reflected in their subtly different colours, tone and texture.

Just like the girls.

As he continued to touch round the edges, he thought about the day he had brought the roses to them, hoping to see delight on their faces but instead only seeing fear. He had hoped they would cherish the beauty of the blooms as much as he cherished the girls’ beauty. He had wanted them to feel as nurtured, loved, and cared for as the roses he had grown especially for them.

The roses had been fed the best nutrition and kept in the warmest and most protected environment, just like he was keeping them. But unlike the roses they didn’t bloom.

He had come to realise that it was all about their roots. They hadn’t been cultivated in the same environment like the roses, they had been cut, or plucked, and then transplanted. And even though, like a rose in water, they survived for a time still seeming to open and blossom, they soon faded and dried up, wilting and refusing to be coaxed by anything.

Maybe it had been the lack of natural light, or the lack of decor in their cells. He was sure it couldn’t have been his nightly visits; they had been to give comfort, nurture ... and love. Similar to the love he’d given the roses, delicate but persistent, ruthless but enduring. Their tears of gratitude when he left made him certain it couldn’t have had a negative effect on them. 

But like the long stemmed roses he had put in the tall vases next to their beds, they had waned and weakened, gone pale and faded. And now he wasn’t sure what to do with them. So like the roses, he would leave them until they were ready to be disposed of.