After fifteen minutes of encouraging okay, and-ing, Truman said, “That is not a storm! That’s like a-a-a leaky faucet!”

Ash let out a choked sound that was half giggle and half harrumph and wholly undignified. Truman grinned.

“Just…don’t second-guess your ideas,” he said. “No bad ideas in a brainstorm! Like, okay, how about, um, a flower of the week sale where one kind of flower is half off. It’d get people in the door, but then they’ll see the other stuff and want those too. You can make a sign to put in the window.”

Ash’s brow was furrowed, but he was nodding. “That’s a really good idea.”

“Yay!”

“Maybe I could do a punch card thing where if people buy ten bouquets, they get the eleventh free?”

“Yes, love it, creating customer loyalty and incentivizing purchase through gamification. Uh, I was a business minor,” he added when Ash raised an eyebrow.

“Lucky me.”

“Are there any flowers that are super cheap for you to stock?”

“There are a few that are always cheap, but they aren’t very popular. Then, in the summer, there are always people who grow wildflowers that you can get pretty cheaply. But they’re not what people think of as florist flowers, you know?”

“Okay. But what if you did some kind of specific and different kind of bouquet? Like, if you did wildflower bouquets in recycled jars or something and sold them as picnic bouquets for tourists. Or—wait, better—sold them as a souvenir of Owl Island. You could have little clear stickers with Thorn and an owl on them to put on the outside of the jars. Then you could tie the bouquet with colored twine or something with a loop and say that as soon as the flowers start to wilt, they should hang them upside down and dry them as a souvenir. They could keep the dried flowers in the Owl Island jar. And you could sell it for more because they get a fresh bouquet, a souvenir glass, and a dried bouquet that’ll last.”

“That’s…also a really good idea.” Ash looked thoughtful.

“What are you thinking right now?” Truman asked, energized with ideas and wanting more.

“I’m thinking that I don’t have the cash flow to print stickers, much less signage and labels and all this stuff. I want to do it, I just…”

“Okay, money is always a sticking point, but there are ways around it.”

“Ways around money? I’d love to hear them.”

“Well, I’m still holding out hope for the toppling of the white supremacist capitalist hetero patriarchy, but in the meantime, I meant something slightly lower key. Do you know someone with a printer?”

“I know Greta,” Ash said, and he pointed at the small desk setup she had in the bedroom.