Disclaimer: Since I am still not male, Japanese, and good at drawing, Saint Seiya logically still does not belong to me.

Notes: This will eventually turn into a series. I have an Aiolia one written too, but I really like my Rhadamanthys one, so here it is. There is a lot of flower symbolism in this, and I usually don't write with tons of symbols, but it just happened, so bear with me.

Don't worry, not all of them will be romantic. Just some of them.

Please, PLEASE leave me some sort of message if you like it. Motivation is always nice.

To Lady Pandora

When I first arrived at Hades Castle, you had a garden.

I remember, because that was the first place I saw you--standing amid your coreopsis blossoms and winking white violets, surrounded by clusters of tiny buttercups and dancing dianthus and swaying lilies-of-the-valley. There was dirt swiped across your childish face, and you stared at me with your dark eyes wide, as if you had never seen a man before.

"Is this your garden?" I asked you, and you said yes. "Did you plant all of these?" I continued.

Like a lamp, you smiled in brilliance. Then, you took my hand and showed me all the flowers you had in your garden, told me what each was called and who first planted it and what you had done to make them grow better.

I smiled with you, for how could I resist your innocent charm?

I watched you in your garden after that, for all that summer and autumn. In the later months, as the last of the pink roses died, and only the white chrysanthemums still grew, you first fell into your role as your brother's sister. You grew into a lovely, mature woman.

When the garden withered that winter, you did not tend it.

I did not see you much, for you were the Lady now, and I had my duties as well.

In the early spring, I watched you walk in the garden. When you saw the heads of the crocuses growing out of the snow, you transformed back into the child I first knew, and you glowed as you studied the little flowers. And then I saw you pale, and reach to the helpless blossoms, and crush them in your white hand. The juice of the crocuses flowed along your new rings and froze against your skin. You threw the mangled plant away as you returned to your duties.

That summer, when the daisies bloomed, you plucked them. But when you took them inside, you pulled the petals off of them one by one, and they fell to the floor, whiter than your jeweled hand. You tossed the bald stems with their golden centers to the ground, and one of the lesser Spectres swept them up later.

After that, you never tended the flowers anymore.

For several years, it survived on its own, growing wilder day by day. Dying a little day by day.

This spring, I walked through your garden and found it was gone. Nothing bloomed. The colors were gone, and greedy greenery dominated everything. The paths were covered. Your mother's rosebushes were distorted by excesses of uncut hips, and what blossoms had struggled out were withered and unlovely.

When I first arrived here, you had a garden.

Now it is gone.

But for this.

Wrapped in this letter is a cut of the only two things left in your forgotten paradise: lavender and calendula.

An old, old lavender bush that looks as though it may have grown here for hundreds of years has stubbornly clung to the earth. Lavenders are hardy, you once told me, and so it has survived with its wiry clusters of purple.

And the calendula, what you told me your father called the English marigold, in a blinding sun's spray of gold, has thrived in some of the furthest parts of the garden, where the sun still shines.

But you have forsaken your Eden, and it has become a mortal realm.

After I am gone, Pandora, I will become part of the dying fragrance of the lavender and calendula in your hands.

coreopsis - love at first sight, always cheerful
white violet - chance with happiness
buttercup - childishness
dianthus (barbatus) - grant me one smile
lily-of-the-valley - return of happiness, purity of heart, sweetness, humility
pink rose - happiness
white chrysanthemum - loyal love
crocus - gladness, cheerfulness
daisy - purity, innocence
lavender - devotion
calendula (specifically, the pot marigold or English marigold) - grief, despair