"I wouldn't say that. I wasn't always so obedient," he said, "when I was a child." Although he hadn't been particularly interested in flowers, he could imagine himself charging into a flowerbed while fighting an imaginary opponent, or "training" as he'd put it back then. He wouldn't have considered the flowers at all.

She had made him a little more mindful of them, perhaps. "Hopefully they remembered." Although he liked to think that they listened to what he said and followed his rules out of respect, he had to admit, if only to himself, that that wasn't necessarily the case. "If not, they can repair the damage themselves, and they're unlikely to forget again."