A/N: Requested by golden meliades on LiveJournal, drabble post 9/28/09.

Prompt: Limoges

Disclaimer: I don't own the original work this is derived from. This work is complete, and its brevity is intentional.

Enjoy!

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one-up

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In the small pile of mail on her table, there is a package, a small box wrapped neatly in golden paper.

Kyoko kneels down and inspects it up close. There is a little golden ribbon striping up each side to meet at the top in a bow, and dangling from the bow is a small card, in which the following is written:

For: Mogami Kyoko

From: NO ONE

in painfully exact black letters.

Inside the box, after she gets the wrapping off without damaging it, is the second-most beautiful thing she has ever held in her hands. It is a rose, tiny and delicate pink, painted by hand with wide, careful strokes. Just below the lip of the curling petals, a ring of gold circles it-- a hinge. Kyoko cracks it open and finds that it has a tiny space inside, into which is crammed a tightly rolled bit of paper.

This one says To keep Princess Rosa in when you're not wearing her. Nothing else.

Kyoko leaps to her feet and does a wild dance of joy around the room-- quietly, because her guardians are sleeping in the room beside her-- and plants a kiss right onto the flawless porcelain top. Her broad smile makes her forget how tired she is, so she puts her coat back on and dashes out into the dark and rain.

She has a best friend to bear-hug multiple times. She knows Moko-chan will pretend it wasn't her, but it was, it totally was, and Kyoko knows it. It's just like her to send a gift and deny doing so, always searching for ways to be Kyoko's friend without seeming to do more than tolerate her existence. She is a silly, silly woman and Kyoko loves her more dearly than all the makeup and pretty things in the world.

It's not even her birthday yet.

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