Scarred Books

“The onlookers' rudeness irked Lavender. How quickly their veneer of courtesy fell away. Beholding the man, they acted as if they viewed an exhibit in some monstrous hall of wonders. Terrible as the ruined side of his face was to look upon, balancing it, the good half was nothing short of godlike.
He stopped in front of her floral cart. As if swished away by some invisible magician's wand, the gawking masses faded, leaving only quietude---a radical privacy---as though a glass dome ventilated with fresh oxygen closed over the two of them, and they alone existed in the world.
"Your flowers steal my breath away," he said.
He wished to make a purchase.
"How many bouquets or tussie-mussies, Sir?"
"All of them," the man said, then pointed to the sachet that had, earlier, toppled into the dirt. "What is this?"
"A scent-filled sachet."
"Sewn with your own hands, I presume?" the man asked.
She nodded.
"What fills it?"
"Achillea millefolium. Yarrow. It heals. Protects. It's also known as a love charm."
"Heals, you say?" The man sighed. "If only it could." Then he inquired the cost---of everything.
Normally, Lavender ciphered like the wind, but a tallying void struck. She told him... a number... some totted up, air-castle sum bolted from her mouth.
He paid her. The sum almost overflowed her hands. She transferred the bounty into her coin purse.
"I worship at your cart," the man declared. "And tomorrow, with even the slightest sliver of serendipity, you shall hear Mr. Whitman's divine words.”
― Jeanette Lynes, The Apothecary's Garden