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A Perfect Illusion - Florentine - 02-14-2018
She goes to him, the castle trembling with her resounding footsteps. The halls cry out, an echo for the roar of her heart. It thunders, like a drum, like a storm held too close, too tight. She is fit to burst, this ragged queen, with blood upon her lips and blood upon her chest.
But the blood is found not just there. It is also smeared upon her limbs and her sides. It tangles in her hair and paints its way across her cheek.
This presence of blood is menacing and beautiful upon her skin. It turns a flower girl from something innocent into something malevolently wild. She is a savage queen, made of tangles and snarls and ragged breath.
Florentine is a Viking queen; a nymph turned amazon.
Magic, telepathic and fierce, bursts ahead of her and throws itself against doors. It blows open the throne room doors and they fall away before her. In the lavish gold of this room she sights him, more decadent still. He has come, dutiful, when she called for him so suddenly.
Like dust, like a sandstorm that swells and surges against the wall of the throne room, Florentine enters. There is no corner of the room that is not aware of her, there is no part that has not fallen to stillness. The gilded gold holds its breath and Florentine’s presence sucks it in like a wraith.
But there is nothing wraith-like about this girl. She glitters more brightly that the jewels atop the boy’s crown and it is not with the wealth he adorns himself – for Florentine is not concerned with trinkets and jewels. No, Flora is adorned with life. She is lit by the fires of vitality, by the wind that picks up sand and throws it hard and coarse against glass and gold and marble.
She turns to him, her petals the mildest part of her, the tangles of her hair are bound with blood. Savage queen. Rising queen. The dusk night weeps for her in this moment , for she is more a savage queen with iron in her blood and violence in her bones than a creature forged from starlight and sunlight.
Unkempt, the flower girl surveys him as her storm subsides. Fear, fury, regret have all turned her soft leaves to sharp thorns and her sweet fragrance to a lethal poison. The girl has never known anger like this: a creature so wild not even her skin can contain it.
But she steels her heart, her soul, her everything. “Forgive my delay. I was tending to the sick.” She says without regret to warrant her words. She is not sorry, she would make Isorath wait an eternity whilst she healed Lysander.
It is his blood she wears. His blood seized by Night and spilt by jealousy.
Flora takes a breath, her lungs so full of ivy; oh wild, voracious, ivy! She binds herself in it, for what other choice have Reichenbach and Isorath left her with?
“I have not been so covered in blood since I died.” The flower girl begins, factually. Her voice is a splinter to press beneath the skin.; she hopes it will bother him and settle too deep he will need to dig to pull it out.
The blade at her throat, suddenly roused, glows warm, warm, warm. Come away, it sings to her. Time beckons her. Reichenbach had chained her once, kept her here through love and desire. But Time works now, it changes things, so many things. Is Isorath ready?
“It was the overreaching greed of a man that killed me.” She pauses, thoughtfully and she can, even now, still see her body, broken far beyond what even youth could heal. “All of my court stood together to fight him. It bound us tighter. Loyalty brought us together.” The dusk night calls to her, with its myriad stars awakening to peer down upon this court of theirs.
“I had wanted that for the Dusk Court. I still want it for us, but I was not made to be a queen, Isorath, you know this.” And she smiles, small and soft, vulnerable despite the tornado of sand within her. It is abrading her from the inside, it picks up the pieces of her heart that Reichenbach tore apart and throws them. But they swirl and swirl and swirl refusing to fall. She keeps her heart light, for when it falls it will bring down the sky with its weight.
“You also know that I asked if you wished to leave Terrastella for Denocte… I was a fool then, Isorath, for I did not ask if your loyalty lay with me. When you asked so much after Reichenbach and myself…”She laughs, self deprecatingly, “I did not think to wonder why. The Dusk Court may be your home, but I have seen no evidence that your loyalty lies with me as its queen. Not when you have been secretly meeting with my lover. Nor when both you have the audacity to do so at my festival. I might have been young and naïve. But only a fool makes such errors twice.” Her eyes hold his, where once her eyes might have been the amethyst of delicate petals, now, now they are hard like minerals, forged from the earth. They glint like the blade of a knife.
“You are no longer my Regent, Isorath, for no Regent makes a fool of their queen like you have.” Her chin lifts, “You are still a member of this court, but I would think long and hard about if you wish to stay here. I no longer tolerate the greed of men who spill blood in their jealousy.”
And it is no matter that her heart still aches for such a man as Reichenbach, for its agony is from that pledge and where it is etched deep, deep into the pieces of her soul.
She breathes and wonders when she might wash Lysander’s blood from her skin. “I shall give you a moment. You may say whatever you wish.”
@Isorath - drama llama alert.
RE: A Perfect Illusion - Isorath - 02-14-2018
I S O R A T H
Time weaved it's web with little regard to whom or what it made wait, Kings and their crowns, the Beggars and their rags. Each one was a servant to the ebb and flow, each grain of sand in the hourglass unpeturbed by the woes and anguish of that which it effected. It is a lesson all must learn, whether they wish to endure it or not. So he waited as any one with a meeting with destiny would, composed, elegant, refined. Even as ice coated his skin and seeped into the marrow of his bones, turned his blood from the fiery veins of magma to the frozen landscapes of the West, jagged rivers of ice ready to snag and tear. Somewhere in the distance, a Dragon roared, and it's ardent song only serves to fuel him forward. A taloned grasp wrapped tight around the melody between them. 'She will be angry, no doubt.' 'I know.' 'What will you do?' Aether's gruff voice rippled across the vastness. Amused. Curious. 'What a Prince does.' Is his simple reply, elegant and sharp as the swords he danced with, how he longed to feel their weight in his grip once more — to feel the spark of magic in his veins as he used to. Those would be a boon and a comfort as finally the grains of sand ran out. Florentine arrived in a swirl of magic and petals, bloodstained with fury in her veins, and he met her with the force of an ancient glacier. Cool, composed and unyielding down it's frigid core. He turned into the onslaught, wrapped in his gold and silks, hair wild and coiled like venomous serpents snapping at the bold and foolish. Forgive my delay. I was tending to the sick. "I knew where you were, Lady Florentine, I assure you." The Kirin replied simply with an elegant shrug of a scaled shoulder, a neutral look of understanding on his face. He had seen the blood on Reichenbach's dark lips, splattered on his iron hued hooves. He had lanced Reichenbach with a spear of ice and contempt for the move. Yet, the irritation now bloomed in niggling needles that Florentine deemed it appropriate to fill their inevitable exchange with paltry excuses and reasoning for her delay. He had never cared much for such trivialities when he had been King, and he had cared even less in his home. Better to simply rip the bandage from the assailed wound and let it bleed, so it may eventually scab and heal. He had born witness to greater tragedies that rogue hearts and young maids at the dawning of a new day. Blood is just the paint of war, the paint of treason, the paint of life. He had witnessed dragons incinerate the damned, watched with unreadable eyes as their ashen remains billowed in the morning wind as the land howled in lament. Except, Florentine was new to such realities, where Isorath had grown old. Her words are absorbed with keen ears, delicately curled forward to better drink in her words, but he remained unmoved. A marble statue dotted with gold and offerings one might find in the shrines of the Gods. Perhaps he was just as unmoved and cold as the marble which they carved their faces, maybe not. The Kirin felt deeply...but this. "And I did not wish to leave Terrastella for Denocte." Isorath answered, his head tilted a fraction so the moon charm clinked against his antlers. "You assume my loyalty tied with my emotions, which they are not. Loyalty to ones Court is separate from the desires of the Heart. To muddy them both together is a fatal and foolish mistake." He elaborated after a long pause, his tone clipped, but polite. A diplomats tongue, years of hard lessons and hard handed tutors. He can see them all now, see the gilded trappings of the Solar Palace and the Court which held it's games within. They knew better. He knew better. In the time where he had blurred the line only once, there had been an iron rod of reasoning within which his emotions fastened to. His Kingdom needed their Queen, and their Queen happened to be the woman he had loved. He's content to hear her out after that, the glacial cool of winter settling deeper and deeper until the star fire in his chest is crowned in it. He wore it like well fitted armor, a digniaries satin cloak. Even when she denounced him as her Regent, a single brow was his only response, quirked inquisitively as his pale lips twitched. Even when she gave him an opportunity to speak, he does not. Not for a long stretch. He let the silence echo between them as a God might, a breath in the span of a mortal's milenia. Then he spoke, slow, calculated. Cold. Gilded talons peeled from the floor to clutch against his chest, standing tall. Towering. Like those cold marble statues in long slumbering temples. "While it matters little, I feel I must at least indulge you for just a moment, if only to declare my innocence, at least of the flesh. Upon me and Reichenbach, we knew better than to act upon our feelings. We did not seek the embrace of another, stolen kisses where none can see." Draconian pupils narrow to slits as they regard her, lilac's hardened to amethysts and then back to the softness of silk. A dragon unfurling from it's pile of treasure, to let the beholder have just a peek, before it's sinous body enveloped it once more. "My loyalty is not tied to my heart, nor the whims and wants the selfish parts of us feel. Those whom I come to share an affection for. The Court has my loyalty, the equines who call it home, have my loyalty. As such, I will not continue to swear fealty to a Court who allows their emotions compromise the betterment of their nation. I thank you, Florentine, for the gracious allowance to remain within Terrastella, but I must decline." Isorath decreed with a short nod, as Aether pulled at their bond, closer and closer the Dragon flew and outside the stained glass — snow began to fall, Aether's storm approached and the leviathan settled upon the citadel tower. The stones groaned underneath his great weight, and deepened his already rumbling baritone. Ready. Waiting. But not quite yet. 'Soon.' 'Of course.' "I will leave immediately, I see no reason to stay in a place that no longer shelters me nor cares for the talents I possess." Now he turned, graceful and ethereal as he ever was. A ghost of mist and gold, and glided for the Doors Florentine had dragged from their slumber. "I do so hope you and Lysander find the happiness you desire, and Vespera smile upon you both." With that, the Kirin left the confines of the Throne Room, diadem pulled from his gilded head and tossed aside for the next, sliding until it clattered nosily against the cold and shadowed walls. TAG: @ "sunshine dasies butter mellow!" |
RE: A Perfect Illusion - Florentine - 02-18-2018
It is a curious thing that their words should push them worlds apart, where in truth there was so much common ground between them. Florentine was a creature conceived by a dragon of fire and king of ice. She was made in a room of gilded gold and lavish shadows. Silken drapes had billowed across a dragon’s golden scales and born patterns of spiraling ice. So when Isorath wraps himself in ice, his demeanour turning cold, cold, cold, Florentine does not even shiver within his gaze.
Their amethyst eyes, each one imbued with the purple of a sunset, collide and rub. They scold with fire and they burn with cold. There is a dragon somewhere close and for once it is not Florentine’s mother.
She does not tell him of Lysander as an excuse for her delay. Her apology, present only in words, was truly anything but. If Isorath took it so, then that is the first way the Regent had failed to understand his queen. Her apology was a mere vessel, empty of sincerity for it was the information it carried that was important.
But, maybe it was important only to her and Dusk’s healers for: I knew where you were, Lady Florentine, I assure you. he says with a neutrality and a shrug that pierces her with its indifference. Did he not care for his people? As Regent, should he not have also be seeking them out and offering what help he could?
“And you did not think to come and give your aid to your compatriot? Where is your compassion?” Incredulity reaches every part of her like lightning and sets her nerves ablaze. The flower girl is lit, she glows bright and fierce and beneath her shock, her wrath, her grief, the throne room falls away to nothing.
This hurt from his indifference and her wild anger, was not about Lysander, no matter her complex heart, this was about her people. Her reaction would have been the same were it Isorath or any other attacked by another court.
He thinks he is the only one to witness a dragon’s fire melt flesh from bone and reduce bodies to ashes. He thinks he is the only one to hear the whimper of a blood soaked land as it falls into shocked silence as the last warrior fell. Isorath knows she is unschooled in the ways of politics, but he does not know that her death upon a battlefield is a scar forever emblazoned upon her timeless soul. She knows war and she knows death.
The silence he allows stretches on and on and on. She does not make a move to end it. She feels its weight, indeed like a god’s breath upon her skin. She lets him speak, as he once had, but where he was filled only with a cold calculation, so Florentine remains wild and earthen. This girl is a forest deep, deep with mysteries and secrets not even she dare know.
“Then I fear for Denocte.” She says at last. Florentine may be young, but she had seen what drew a Court together to fight in war. If there had not been a bond between them all – a bond forged of affection and even love – then they would never have stood together. “Loyalty is born of emotion, Isorath. How can it not be? You cannot be loyal to something if you do not have feelings towards it. I love my people with my whole heart, it is what keeps me loyal to them. Without that connection, what else would keep me loyal to them? But without any emotion, through keeping my feelings so apart from me, then what is to keep me with these people? There is nothing. A position of power is one that requires decisions of the mind and heart. You can make rational decisions with your mind, Isorath, but the heart will always keep you true to the needs of your people. It will always keep you grounded in the love of and for your people and striving for their betterment. The heart will always love what it loves. You cannot stop it muddying the personal with the political. If you ask me, it is part of what makes it an asset.”
She pauses, her eyes drifting to the window, to gaze at the sunset and a dragon’s shadow that darkens the window for a beat. She looks back to the boy of gold and white.
He moves on, accusations of hidden kisses pouring from his lips and her head tilts. Through petals and twined gold Florentine watches him with a steady gaze, “Where did you find such information?” She asks him slowly. “If you seek to accuse me of kissing Lysander, Isorath, you are very much misinformed.” She takes a breath. “It seems we are all equal parts innocent and guilty.”
The kirin continues on, with artic words designed to cut like blades. She lets him stand tall, but she weathers him, like rock, like a tree that has seen hundreds of years and all the storms they bring. There is nothing grand or lavish about the flower-girl-queen. Not like this boy, who could be forged from the golden diadem he throws at her feet.
“What you fail to have understood, Isorath, is the reason why I have removed you as my Regent… It is not because I am jealous that you have fallen in love with Reichenbach and he with you. It hurts, of course it does. It is because you have given Terrastella a weakness. It is the fact that you were meeting and flirting with your queen’s lover at a public event for Terrastella. You were talking like lovers and because of that you put Terrastella at risk. If you were an enemy looking for a weakness in an enemy court, would you not chose the one where there seems to be a scandal? Would it not appear that there is a weakness and breakdown in relationships between the Dusk Regime when the Queen’s Regent seems to spend more time with her lover than the queen does? Does that not make the Queen look weak in the eyes of others? By making her look weak, you made our Court look weak. You jeopardized the very Court you claim to have loyalty to. What is more, when I talk of loyalty to me, I do not expect it to be of love, but driven by enough caring to want the best for Terrastella through me, and you failed there, Isorath. You are right. This is not about matters of the heart but politics and you have been shortsighted.”
She pauses to take breath, to hear the groan of the citadel’s tiles where his dragon lands like a fierce, warding gargoyle atop a cathedral. Her eyes close, golden lashes snagging upon her fringe. When Flora’s eyes open they are tired and wounded. The crown, the invisible thing upon her skull, weighed more heavily than it ever had. Oh if only she could cast it away like he had his diadem. “Whilst I disagree that matters of the heart can ever be truly removed from political decisions – for we are all fallible after all - if you had only come and told me about you and Reichenbach, then things might have been so different. But instead you both chose to meet together secretly and you asked your prying questions the night of my coronation. You say you do not wish to leave Terrastella, Isorath, yet you are choosing to run straight to the court of your lover. You have made your decision, but I would be careful, for it seems to me, you are letting your heart drive you there.”
The ringing the fallen diadem makes is a melody in the throne room, a song to end an episode.
A new age will be formed here, Florentine knows this, but her eyes lift up to her old Regent. “Good luck keeping your personal affairs separate from Court life, Isorath. I wish you the best, I truly do.”
As the kirin leaves, she wonders. If he truly sought to keep his personal affairs separate from his political ones, then could he ever truly be with Reichenbach?
@Isorath - I just wanted to give her a chance to clarify why she did what she did and answer him. <3 Also, she never actually kissed Lysander. She lipped at his muzzle and mouth the way horses do when they are being playful and affectionate. Her thoughts lingered on the gesture because she is starting to have feelings for Lysander beyond that of a friend, but it was never intended to be a kiss. I have also clarified that with Spaced :) <3 <3