Authors Note: The following is a collection of four vignettes. They were ideas that popped into my head at one point or another, but I didn't feel as if any of them were substantial enough to support an actual plot (since a plot, sadly, needs things like conflicts, climaxes, and resolutions). Anyway, I thought it might be a fun idea to write them all up and post them together. I divided them into different chapters for clarity's sake, since it would probably be a little jarring to jump an entire year ahead in the space of an indent. So it's sort of a chapter fic...but not really, since they were all written and posted at the same time.

On Rapunzel's sixth birthday, Mother Gothel gave her a pot. It was small and squat, made from grayish clay and filled with pitch black soil. It wasn't long before the soil burst in pale pink lilies, their weak color upstaged by the vibrant orange and green swirls Rapunzel painted on the clay. Still, Rapunzel thought they were the most beautiful flowers ever, even more beautiful than the flowers her mother was raising, the startlingly fuchsia phlox on the windowsill.

The phlox was outgrowing its pot, so it was with difficulty that Rapunzel found enough room on the window sill to place her lilies. Still, she managed. After all, in her botany book it said plants needed sunlight to grow big and strong, so she couldn't keep her lilies inside the tower with her.

Sometimes Rapunzel wondered if people also needed sunlight to grow big and strong. Maybe she was so much shorter than mother because she stayed inside so much—but when she asked mother about this, she just laughed.

"I don't know where you get these silly ideas, Rapunzel! You're shorter than I am because you're nothing but a child!"

"So when I'm older I'll be as tall as you?"

"Well, let's not jump to conclusions…" Mother patted her on the head and turned back to the dress dummy, where she was about to start making a new dress for Rapunzel.

"Mommy, can my new dress be red like yours?"

"Of course not, Flower. Red's for grown ups—how about a nice pink one, like your lilies?"

"Yes, mommy."

During the day, when mother left to get food and water, Rapunzel would lean onto the sill and talk to her lilies. She named the plant Louise. Louise's favorite color was blue, so Rapunzel repainted the pot in a bright azure. Louise was afraid of spiders, liked guitar strumming, and became irritable when it rained. Mostly, however, Louise was a good listener, so Rapunzel passed a couple of hours each day whispering to her.

She whispered because she didn't want the phlox, which she'd named Antoinette, to overhear. Antoinette would report everything Rapunzel said to mother, and Rapunzel knew mother wouldn't want her talking to a plant. She hadn't liked Rapunzel talking to the cooking ware, after all. She'd thrown a fit when she'd found out Rapunzel had named the frying pan Amelia.

"Don't be ridiculous, Rapunzel!" she'd snarled. "Why should you be lonely? You have me, don't you?" Then she sighed and sank into a nearby chair. "I guess I'm just not good enough for you. Perhaps it was foolish of me to think that a girl would want her own mother for company. Despite everything I've done for you, you'd rather talk to a frying pan than to me!"

It took a lot of clutching mother's dress, insisting that no, she only needed her, a few tears, and a pledge never to talk to Amel—the frying pan again before mother was satisfied enough to let her sing to her.

Rapunzel kept her promise. She never spoke to Amelia again, and over time Amelia faded back into the frying pan. But still, she hadn't promised not to name anything else, and after all, a plant was a living thing, so it wasn't like she was talking to the cooking ware again, right? But in any case, she suspected enough of mother's displeasure to want to keep it a secret. So she made sure never to talk to Louise until mother was out of sight.

When the frost came and Louise died, Rapunzel cried for a week.

I'll never love a flower as much as Louise, not ever, she thought.