She's walking along arm in arm with a friend(?), giggling, and yep, that bracelet sure does strongly resemble a black vine with red-tipped black thorns. Also, if you get the right angle on it, it looks like it's sprouting directly from her wrist. There's even a trace of blood on the skin.

The friend's denim jacket has long sleeves that don't ride up so easily, but is that a hint of a thorn? It might be.

Thorny vines growing from the skin. Maybe on both of them. Are they part of some kind of--weird plant cult? Okay, this has potentially shifted from light curiousity-based stalking to altruistic espionage. She works harder not to be noticed.

They don't appear to notice her! But they are seeking out progressively more secluded locations, very much in the manner of two people who want to go make out right now but don't want strangers to watch.

Potential Plant Cult Member #2 is super into this! Giggly kisses ensue.

She giggles at that, too. Even when the other girl cuts her. Repeatedly. That is definitely blood, but... not nearly enough of it, like the cuts are healing over almost before they're finished.

"Did you hear that?"

"Nah."

Cass follows the other girl's gaze. "Shit!"

"I'm sorry!"

"Who follows lesbians into alleys to watch them kiss?!"

"I mean, straight men, but besides that same question," says the other one.

"I saw the thorns on your wrist and I was worried you were being taken advantage of by some--weird plant cult!" She winces. That sounded less stupid when she didn't have to say it out loud.

...She starts laughing.

"Well obviously I know better now. And I am sorry."

"Well, we're not in a weird plant cult," she says. "We're just, you know, making out in an alley."

"With convenient healing magic, apparently."

"Says who?"

"...Says I saw that knife leaving rather more temporary wounds than ought to be possible."

"...Is this the part where you give me a plausible way out because outsiders that get a peek behind the Masquerade get memory-wiped or killed or something?"

"No," sighs the other one. "It's not even that big a secret, we just haven't told anybody because it would be weird. Do you really want the whole story?"

"Yes, please."

"So a few years ago I found this flower just kind of lying on the ground outside my school," she says, tugging up her sleeve. A lovely red rose sprouts from her thorny bracelet. "It looked like that. I took it home and stuck it in a vase and it never died, which was weird, and one day I was playing with it and it started burrowing into my flesh, which was way weirder, let me tell you."

"Yes, I can imagine."

"But once I got over the extreme weirdness it was actually kind of cool? And the roses do a bunch of magic, and one of the things is, yeah, healing," she says.

"Which is convenient!" says Cass.

"Sure seems that way. Probably convenient for the burrowing part, too."

"We have tried some fucked-up stuff and the roses are really fucking impressive about fixing it all," Cass says cheerfully.

"Roses plural?"

"Yeah, we've got four colours. Red, blue, pink, and black," says Cass. "We're pretty sure there's got to be at least one more, because of how the magic lines up, but we haven't found it yet."

"How'd you find the others? And why does how the magic lines up mean there ought to be another?"

"They were still just lying around, but I was on the lookout for weird flowers lying around by then. And they each have one main kind of magic and four extra, and one of them has three of its extra magic from the other three flowers and then one we haven't seen anywhere, so it seems logical that the fourth one might be from a flower we haven't seen yet."

"Makes sense. I've never seen a flower like that in my life, so I can only assume there was a reason that there were four of them easily findable for you."

"I mean, do you go around picking up random weirdly coloured flowers off the ground all the time?"

"No, but I've never seen random weirdly colored whole roses lying on the ground, is part of my point."

"Maybe not nice tidy ones like the red one was when I first got it, but I mean, some of these flowers were pretty fucked up when I first found them," she says. "The pink one had a bunch of petals missing and the stem was all chewed up, the black one was caught on a barbed wire fence and I wouldn't have even tried to disentangle it if I didn't already have healing magic, the blue one was in the road looking like it'd been run over by a truck."

"Oh. I'll keep more of an eye out in the future, then."

"Do you want some flowers?"

"Yes. Magic is awesome."

Cass cuts them free and offers the cut flowers to Emily.

She takes them. "So how does this work?"

"If you cut yourself with a thorn, the flower grabs you. It'll hurt a bunch. The black ones are the worst. It's also kind of hard on your clothes what with all the thorns everywhere, or I'd just demonstrate," she says. "To start with you get one kind of magic per flower, but you won't be very good at it. Red cuts things, blue moves things, pink heals people, black makes stuff. And you can only do the magic while the flower has you, and unless you're really into pain you probably don't want to go around with four flowers on literally all the time."

"So trying it right now isn't really feasible," she says, looking down at her relatively destructible outfit. "I wouldn't say I'm into it, not the way it's usually meant, but..." she shrugs. "Makes stuff like how?"

"That is so cool." She looks down at her clothes regretfully again.

"I know, right? Don't count on that to stick around, by the way, Cass can make permanent stuff but mine still disappears after a couple hours."

"I guess I'll just have to see if I can get good, then."

"I recommend being in the shower when you use the red flower because blood, but the other ones don't make you bleed so much," she adds.

"Red one was cutting, right? Doesn't sound as useful as the others."

"If you're only going to use one flower it's kinda the best one because it's the borrower," says Cass. "After you get good enough at the cutting magic you can start on one of the other four and they're healing people, moving stuff, the weird one that's the same as the weird one from the black flowers, and light."

"We don't know what all the kinds of magic do because we haven't tried them all yet and the ones we've tried we haven't totally figured out, but you can tell which kinds of magic are the same as which other kinds without having to use them."

"I suppose the shower thing is less obnoxious than it would be if the thorns weren't hard on clothing anyway."

"I mean, you can put clothes on over the flowers, witness how I'm wearing clothes, but yeah, the red ones are really messy especially when you're just starting out."

"I just meant for putting the flowers on. I observe that you are wearing clothes. The alternative would be so much more awkward."

Cass snickers.

Emily's phone pings. She takes it out and checks it. "My sister appears to be overreacting to my last text."

"Yeah?"

"Well, remember that I thought you guys might be connected to a cult at the time. I told her where I was and that if I went mysteriously missing I didn't just get lost."

"...Do you maybe wanna tell her that we're not a cult and you haven't gone mysteriously missing?"

"I didn't say anything about a cult specifically or even technically mention I was trailing anyone, but yeah, I'm reassuring her," she says, typing at the tiny keyboard on her screen. All cleared up, no worries! Also, magic exists.

"Is she going to want flowers too?"

"Probably. Do they--reproduce, once you have them?"

"Not really. I can make more of any of them but Cass can't do pink or blue yet, you have to use the flower a lot before you can do that."

"Use like be wearing, use like do magic...?"

"Like be wearing, I'm pretty sure. It's hard to tell because it's not like we know a ton of magic flower users."

"Makes sense. Do you want to exchange e-mail addresses or something? So we can let you know anything that we figure out and vice-versa."

"...My name's Emily, by the way. Emily Lehnsherr."

"I'm Anna and this is Cass."

"Nice to meet you."

"Despite the initial circumstances, I'm sure."

Cass giggles.

Anna grows four more long-stemmed flowers to give to Emily.

She holds them carefully enough to not prick herself on them and accidentally destroy her clothes. "Thank you."

"No problem!"

"I think I'm going to go placate my sister in person with a more complete explanation and then find a bathroom stall to test one of these things."

"Have fun."