always ready {flim!}

[⊱✿ rose ✿⊰]

Rose was alone at her cart today. Since Rose was a bit of a chatty Cathy, it was always uncomfortable for her when there was nopony to chat at, especially if she was expecting to see her best friends but could not. It would have been okay if this had been compensated by lots and lots of customers, but the only thing around for the poor mare to talk to was dozens of rose bouquets and, though she had tried it, the flowers did not provide much company.

Thus, she'd had to turn to new ways to amuse herself. She'd tried singing to herself, but she'd had to sing quietly so that nopony walking by or standing in carts around her could hear. She would have wandered over to another cart for conversation, but it seemed like everypony but her had customers coming from everywhere and buying up everything. Nopony wanted flowers today, though.

She'd next taken to rearranging, organizing all of the roses by color and size, but this didn't work for her as soon as she looked at it because bouquets were not supposed to be uniform like that, so she'd subsequently had to re-rearrange them back into new bouquets, which she liked to think were better than the first bouquets. This had taken a large portion of her time and she had hoped, when she'd finished, that it would be at least almost time to go, but it had only been an hour and it was still mid-afternoon.

With a sigh, she flopped down onto her counter, watching the ponies walk by like her cart wasn't even there. The only thing left to do now was mope and play with her mane, so, chin still resting glumly on the counter, she started flopping her mane forward with her front hoof. She hoped that somepony would see her and relieve her of her boredom, even if it was somepony she was related to, but no pony appeared and so she continued to play with her mane until all of it was sticking out in odd directions, like she'd recently been electrocuted.

[Flim Flim-Flam]

So it seemed that so far Rarity was not going to break so easily in his attempts to make a sale. Since simple charming and sweet-talking wasn’t enough, he might need to go a little further and step up his game. One had to make the customer feel special, like they were the most important thing in the world to you at that moment of time. And so, he figured that he would step up the charm a little, and the best way to go about doing that was flowers, right? He had a feeling a pony like Rarity probably would enjoy a gift like that, get her trust up and everything like that.

Besides, this would be a good excuse to head out into to town and get a better lay of the land. Since he had gotten to Ponyville he hadn’t had that much of a chance to see what was going on in town. More importantly, he could look around the market and see what his competition was for various products. Flower selling wasn’t his thing so he wouldn’t bug the owner of wherever he could get flowers about stuff, but he might look at the other shops and stands and see what they were up to, what prices were, etc etc. In short, he was information gathering, a really important skill in the business game.

Just walking around the open market, he soon noticed a stand with a lot of flowers and what looked like a rather bored stand-keeper playing with her mane. It seemed like it was a slow day of business for the flower seller. Poor thing, a slow business day was always such a pain. Well, at least she was about to get one customer.

”Good afternoon pony. My name is Flim, salespony extraordinaire. I was interested in purchasing some flowers for a friend of mine in hopes of cheering her up. Do you have any particular suggestions on flowers?”

He was half tempted to try and sell some service in advertising to get her stand up and moving, but today he was going to hold off on selling stuff for the time being and instead just enjoy a normal day. Well, he could always give her his card later maybe….

[⊱✿ rose ✿⊰]

Rose was much too busy moping and fluffing her hair in strange ways to notice the shiny unicorn approaching her. When he spoke, she squeaked in surprise and scrambled to fix her mane, flattening it as best she could. It didn't go back into its usual semblence of normalcy, but it was now at least less like the bride of Frankenstein and a bit more like she'd gotten rained on and then it dried while she was wearing a hat.

"Goooood afternoon!" she said, perking up and beaming at him. The good thing about being a flower salespony was that most ponies came to her stand completely intending to buy something, not waffling around and making important decisions. Rose was not the most business-savvy pony nor was she particularly suave, but she knew her flowers, so when it came to just picking some out, she was an expert.

"Cheering her up?" she asked, tilting her head and chewing her lip in thought. She took this opportunity to quickly study the unicorn--he was very shiny and she could see how somepony might be sucked into the shininess of his mane. She tried not to let it affect her judgment. "Well, do you know what she likes? I mean, I always think that daisies are the most cheerful flower, but roses are my favorite." She giggled, not realizing that he couldn't possibly know her name or see her flank.

"Who are you buying them for? I know almost every pony in Ponyville. I can probably help you out better that way!" Rose was not, of course, as social as somepony like Pinkie Pie, but she had lived there her whole life and most ponies had known her from a foal. She was a pretty safe bet as far as socialization went.

[Flim Flim-Flam]

Flim just raised an eyebrow as the girl worked to try and fix her mane, a failed attempt at that really. He probably could sell her some kind of mane gel or some other device for combing that to make it work better (the shininess of his hair showed he really enjoyed it). Unfortunately he did not have any on him, plus he was sure there was already a shop around here with that sort of thing and he wasn’t set up yet to compete effectively in that area. So that meant no sales for the day. Still, the girl’s enthusiasm for her stand was enough to keep his day bright and happy; always good to see another upcoming salespony (as long as they weren’t in the same business as him of course).

”Well unfortunately I do not know for sure what she likes. I just feel like I may have made a bad first impression and wanted to improve it. However, she does seem to be a pony with a thing for the more expensive stuff in life so…”

She then asked who it was he was buying flowers for. He had two thoughts at the moment; he told, rumors could spread about him supposedly having a thing for Rarity. Of course, on the other side of things not saying would spread rumors that he had a secret crush on somepony and then…yeah, he couldn’t win either way. Easiest to just go ahead and say that way Rarity could of be part of the denial. Besides, always a chance this pony wouldn’t take it that way.

”I was getting them for Miss Rarity. I visited her shop the other day interested in getting some new clothes and trying to see if she was interested in any of my fashion merchandise and may have come on a little too forceful so I’m trying to apologize.”

[⊱✿ rose ✿⊰]

Had it been professional to do so, Rose probably would have flailed at the shiny pony's mention of Miss Rarity. As it was, she sort of flailed, making a strange noise that was somewhere between a squeal and a gargle and flopping her hooves about in a less-violent way than she would have liked to.

"OHIKNOWMISSRARITY!" she squealed. Even though she was only a bit younger than the fashion designer and could have easily just been a normal friend to her, Rose looked up to her like she might have a far-away fashion model--her very own local celebrity to obsess over and follow trends from. The fact that she was now being called upon to use her knowledge of her celebrity was the most exciting thing that had happened all day.

Trying to calm herself, she fluffed her mane--as Miss Rarity often did--and giggled awkwardly. "I mean, Miss Rarity and I are pretty close. I can tell you what she likes. Did you want more of a romantic bouquet or an apology bouquet? Because those are two very different things, especially when it comes to roses. Or did you just want friendship roses?" She leaned forward and peered at him. "Tell me exactly what you want your bouquet to say. Miss Rarity knows all about flowers and what they mean." She giggled.

[Flim Flim-Flam]

”Well that’s great…” Flim said in a mixture of cheer and fear as the girl squeed over it. It didn’t take a genius to recognize that the filly must have idolized Miss Rarity. He was not sure how that would affect the rest of this conversation, but he assumed that meant the girl would go overboard and overenthusiastic with the whole thing. That might be more than he wanted, but he was sucked in now and so he had no choice but to go along with it. At least this meant she might now Rarity enough to know how to get on her good side.

When she leaned in on him, he leaned back a little bit, even taking a hoof back. The glaring going on here was making him just a little uncomfortable, especially with the inquisition regarding flower types. To be fair though, she had a point that the kind of flowers you give might give the wrong message, and he’d hate to accidentally give her romantic roses when he was going for, well, the friendship roses would probably work best, maybe with some apology ones mixed it. Try and soothe over the bad first impression and all.

”I guess I would like a mixture of the apology and friendship roses. Just trying to a fix what may or may not have been a bad first impression. Being new in town, and trying to get my own business going, it’s bad to put off potential friends and business partners.”

He was mostly concerned with the latter though. From this girl’s reaction confirming Rarity’s position as a big name in town, being on her bad side was not something that he could risk. So all he had to do was apologize a little, give her a gift of some flowers, chat a little and get on better footing, and all would be well.

[⊱✿ rose ✿⊰]

Rose nodded seriously, like a soldier who'd just been given a mission, and set out to make a bouquet. It was mostly a dark pink and light pink creation, but she added a few yellow roses and one that was a light peach color. The first arrangement she made in her test vase was dissatisfying to her, so she pulled them out and rearranged them, trying to make it aesthetically asymmetrical. When she was finally satisfied, she presented the bouquet to the shiny unicorn.

"Here you go! This is the perfect bouquet." She checked it over once more to make sure that there was nothing out of place. Even though she'd been tempted to toss a more romantic rose into the bouquet, she'd refrained. This was a paying customer and he deserved to get his order filled as he requested it. Besides, she had no way of knowing whether or not Rarity actually wanted romantic roses from this unicorn--best to stay out of it.

"So, as a business pony, what do you think of my business?" she asked, resting her elbows[?] on her cart and her chin in her hooves. "Pretty neat, huh?"

[Flim Flim-Flam]

Flim was impressed with the speed in which Rose finished making the bouquet, and then proceeding to remake it again. Since he had no idea what any of these flowers meant, he would have to assume she didn't try sneaking in any kind of flower with an unintended meaning to them. He gladly took them, and seriously hoped this would be enough to get into Rarity's good graces long enough to make a sale.

"Thank you my dear, I'm sure Ms. Rarity will love them. And of course here is your payment."

Using his magic to take some coins out of his vest pocket, he paid Rose for the flowers. He was about to walk off to find Rarity when the pony spoke up again. He really just wanted to walk off, but he was already making a bad impression on one pony so he sort of needed to stay.

"Uhm, well..."

Seeing as he was asked to evaluate her little cart, he acted as if he was intently looking over her cart while he really couldn't care at all. After all, she would be a theoretical business competition if he entered the flower selling business, or flower accessories or whatever, so he didn't have a reason to help her. Still, social niceties required him to at least act like it so she didn't go around saying how rude he was or whatever, which would be a pain for his business. And then he got an idea, and the smile on his face was rather sincere as he began talking again.

"You seem to be doing a very fine job Ms. Rose. Hmm, maybe you could afford a bit more razzle-dazzle in your advertising however. The rather bored look you had when I showed up tells me you haven't had a lot of customers today. I'll tell you what though, here is my card," with a glow of his horn a copy of his business card floated onto Rose's cart,"And if you are interested, my brother and I have some products that might help spicen up your cart and make it more appealing to the eye. Display cases, banners, flags, music players, you name it, we can get it."