Hair and Flowers

This morning I welcomed a new customer into my store. I had been at the back of the shop before they arrived, cutting my latest wolfsbane stock into fine bundles. The sound of the bell startled me, and I looked up. Walking through the door was an older woman, perhaps in her seventies. She had curly grey hair and was carrying a computer in her hands.

As she weaved through the barrels and the desks littered throughout my apothecary, she greeted me and began explaining that her hair had lost its colour. Apparently she had tried to buy seeds online to fix it, but was struggling to find the right ones, as different varieties of plants had different effects on different types of hair. I kindly asked her what colour her hair had been, and she answered that just last week it had been perfectly blonde. Perhaps someone had hit her with a wonky spell, since it was rare that colour leached out that fast, especially in those with magical abilities.

I took the woman’s hand and guided her past the desks and the barrels and the jars over to the rose section of my store. It was filled with every type of rose you could possibly imagine, from standard roses for sale, to miniature pocket roses that changed colour when you touched them.

However, what they all had in common was that none of them had been modified by human genetic engineering. They were all exactly as they had been several millennia ago, which meant they still contained all their original magical properties. I beamed at the woman as I showed her a bright yellow rose the size of her palm. It was a special type of rose that gave colour to whatever it touched. I brought the rose up to her hair and rested it gently against the strands. Almost immediately, the woman’s hair turned blonde again.