The rapping against Marisa's window was too localised to come from a human-sized hand. Marisa looked up from her book expecting either a fairy or a small bird and smiled to instead find a neatly-dressed doll peering inside. She dropped the book and walked out of the door.
She very nearly collided with Alice, who had been standing right outside. She stepped back to take in the folded arms and the look which suggested Alice was either suffering from indigestion or had just found evidence of a booklice infestation in her house.
"Here." She thrust a book Marisa had asked to 'borrow' for quite some time towards her. "Now you have no reason to come over."
Marisa took the book by instinct. She stared at it, then up at Alice. She tucked the book beneath her arm. "Okay. What's up?"
"You know perfectly well what it is. For future reference, I would appreciate it if next time you had the guts to tell me how you truly feel to my face."
"Uh..." Marisa blinked several times. There were only so many things this could be about, but even with that knowledge she was left groping in the dark. "Ya got allergies I didn't know about?"
"No."
"D'ya just really hate carnations?"
"Don't mock me."
"I ain't mocking ya." Marisa scratched the side of her head as she tried to come up with other possibilities. "Look, whatever's going on, I think we need to get back on the same page first."
Alice's coolness visibly thawed as she considered Marisa's words. "I agree."
"Just a tick." Marisa ducked back indoors.
It took some rummaging — more than expected, since she could've sworn she had left it on top of the pile rather than in the middle of it — but soon enough she had her guide to Western flower language in hand. She brushed aside the piece of purple string clinging to the front cover, grabbed her hat, and stepped back outdoors. "I'm good to go."
They didn't exchange a single word as they marched over to Alice's house, but the silence wasn't nearly as tense as Marisa might have expected. In fact, both the curve of Alice's shoulders and the casual manner in which her doll flew next to them made the walk seem like a typical forest excursion. It was like the matter was half resolved already, whatever it was.
Once at Alice's house, Marisa set her hat on its usual peg while Alice sailed past her to the kitchen and resumed orchestrating a small army of dolls as they chopped vegetables and minded pots and pans. Almost everything was in its usual neat order, and so Marisa's attention was quickly drawn to the chaos on the desk. Upon closer inspection, the papers covering the surface were filled with tables and explanatory notes in Alice's narrow and precise hand. Preparatory work for a new grimoire? She leaned over to study them, but a look from Alice through the open door kept her from filching a page or two.
Returning her attention to other things, she noticed a potted pansy on the windowsill, its lone blossom turned towards the sun. Despite the tension lingering in the air, the sight was a hopeful one.
"Now then." It seemed Alice's lunch preparations had entered a phase where her dolls required only a fraction of her attention. She returned to the sitting room and picked up an old book which had lain next to the papers on the desk. Its covers were an uninspired shade of brown, but the gilded letters on its spine revealed it to be a cousin to Marisa's book. Her brow furrowed gently as she opened the book and searched for the correct page. "When I first sent you a snowdrop, you took it to mean..."
"Nice flower." Still, Marisa followed suit and opened her guide just as she had back then. "But then I remembered what we'd been talkin' about the week before and looked it up. It means hope."
Alice nodded. "And a few days later, you sent me..." Her eyes moved to the pansy on the windowsill.
"Think of me," Marisa said, with a slightly awkward grin.
"Then it was lilies-of-the-valley..."
Marisa quickly flipped through the pages. "Return of happiness."
"Exactly. And finally..." Alice seemed more hesitant now, as though she had already seen the conclusion of the exercise. Regardless, she sought out the correct page in her book and looked at Marisa. "What does yours say about carnations?"
"Maybe I oughta know what yours says first."
The narrowing of Alice's eyes suggested she was unimpressed, but she obliged Marisa anyway. "Disdain."
"Okay. Mine has 'em meaning fascination and distinction."
"It doesn't specify anything about yellow carnations in particular?"
"Nah." Actually, now that Marisa studied the page more closely, she discovered a list in smaller print specifying the meaning of each individual colour of carnation. Bringing that up seemed counterproductive, however, and so she insisted on the point that really mattered. "I meant only what I thought the meaning was."
For a moment, Alice said nothing. Finally, she closed her book and looked aside. "...That would explain it."
"But, uh..." This was surprisingly embarrassing. Marisa scratched her cheek before continuing. "What's in this book ain't actually what I meant with it. I had hanakotoba in mind."
Alice's next pause only lasted a moment before she returned the book to the desk and walked over to the nearest bookshelf. After a few moments of scanning the titles, she extracted a volume with blue covers from the shelf and studied it with care.
Finally, she stilled. "...Oh."
"...Yeah." Marisa's cheeks were suddenly on fire. Pure and deep love. Because that had seemed like the right message to send at the time.
"...That is rather saccharine of you." But even as Alice closed the volume with a snap, she failed to contain her growing smile. Clearly, the sappiness had been taken in its intended way.
"Yeah, I'm movin' onto the sugary part of floral courtship." Marisa grinned, both because it seemed likely to distract from the blush still warming her cheek and because things were definitely looking up. "Think ya can rise to the challenge?"
Alice carried the guide to hanakotoba to the desk and placed it on top of the first book. "I have no intention of losing to you when it comes to doing research." She hesitated for just a moment before she smiled at Marisa in her usual pleasant way. "I have enough food for two if you'd like to stay for lunch."
"Sounds great." Even as Marisa settled herself for a longer stay in Alice's house, she was already planning what kinds of flowers she might send over next.