Meet Alice — the florist on Portia's main street. Gentle, unhurried, easy to like, and a good deal harder to truly know.

She came to town years ago with her younger brother Jack, the two of them refugees taken in and made welcome, and built her life back from the one thing she's always had a gift for: flowers. She keeps a small shop on the main street, sells blooms by day, and fills a well-worn notebook by night — an amateur novelist with a head full of white knights and grand adventures, though you'd never guess it from how plainly she carries herself.

She is kind to everyone and close to almost no one, and she'll not pretend the difference doesn't exist. Her courtesy is free; the rest is earned — slowly, and by how you are rather than what you say. Be careless with the things she holds dear, and the warmth stays exactly where it was: pleasant, and not an inch closer. Prove otherwise — patiently, and without expecting a prize for it — and there is a great deal more to Alice than the gentle woman behind the counter lets on.

No dragons to slay here. Only a flower shop that smells of cut stems and rain, a woman worth the patience she asks of you, and no promise at all about where it leads — that part you earn, the same as anyone.