How long was it since she had been here in the throes of summer? The sun was hot, molten gold pouring along the curve of her spine. It was warm butter melting down her limbs and she was sticky hot. But she kept walking, her skin sighing with every breeze that pressed, ice-cool against her skin.
 
The air is a buzz, a hum of wings and whispering grasses. Lazy motes, laden with pollen and caught by the wind, drift by. They swirl in the wake of a thousand, tiny gossamer wings and swirl languidly to earth, to sleep – to rest. It is a day full of hazy sunshine, surrounded by bees and insects. They skitter away from the fae-queen, dancing over petals and flowers and into dark of hidden, low grasses.
 
But there is a greater beast hiding amidst this wild, meadow sea. He is a rock upon which the grasses break and bend. His pale sides rise and fall like bellows, his breath stirring petals and leaves. Florentine watches him as she walks closer, for he is young, and alone. Beneath the gold of her fringe, she considers this boy, lost in his fitful sleep. Standing sentinel above him, the flower-girl watches the way his rose-lips twitch, the way his lashes flutter with dreams she cannot catch.
 
Flora watches him until a solitary petal falls. Its descent is as slow as the motes of the air. It falls for an eternity and lands with a sigh upon his nose. Ah, the boy twitches and those pink lashes flutter. Above him the queen remains, her feet beside his, her shadow a shawl across his prone form.
 
Cerulean eyes open, wide as the sea and deep as the ocean. Florentine’s lips, gilded and bright, tip into a smile as another petal falls. “Good morning.” She hums, but there is no morning sun in the sky. It is aged and high and hot; reminding them both as it drums upon their backs. “I do miss just being able to sleep amongst the flowers too. “
 
That delicate head tilts and her eyes roam to a distant willow, elegant and wisened with age. “I once slept a whole day away just under there.” A wing unfurls its feathered tip pointing to the tree and its veil of vines and leaves. “ I missed a court meeting and everything...” The Dusk queen’s words flow like a river, winding, weaving but never slowing, never stopping. “It is cool in the shade there.” Flora’s amethyst eyes stray back to the boy and his bed of grass. Her gaze falls upon the pink of his skin and her petal lying there. “You may wish for shade, sunburns can be nasty. I once burned my nose – it stung for days.”
 
And those lips do not smooth away their mischievous smile.

@Florestan

He lay in a bed of flowers and wild grasses. The meadow welcomed him down, down. Stems arched over his neck to dance in the wind. Pollen dusts along his skin. It smells sweet like sugar and turns to powder upon the hot breeze just as easily.
 
That smile does not slip from her lips, not even when his eyes finally settle on her, cool as ice, as welcome as rain. Oh if only she could release the blue from inside him, then the meadow would drink such water for days. Florentine’s skin shivers, trembling beneath the touch of a bee. It searches her mane, wandering for flowers and tangling itself in the gold of her.
 
She does not sway for the bee, does not worry about how it seeks to free itself with a disgruntled buzz of staccato wings. Rather, the fae-girl is studying Florestan. Their gazes are mirrors for one another; his cerulean eyes study her and her amethyst eyes study him.
 
He does not speak, but oh the air is full with words that could have been. Words that might have been said, words that whisper between them unspoken drift by tickling her mind, her ears. They are so full of his thoughts, trapped behind electric eyes and lips as soft as satin – if only his mouth had moved to form but one. Florentine waits, gazing at him from beneath the tangle of her fringe, the tumble of errant petals.
 
Still he does not speak, not even when his too-long limbs fold beneath him and then push him, awkwardly, into a stand. He sways, young and unbalanced, and Florentine’s wing reaches out to touch his side – to balance, to guide. Still in silence, her earlier words lost to the hum of the summer meadow, she surveys him.
 
His youth is silk, unblemished, by the years. He is as a newborn fawn, swaying and leaning. Grace is a brush of fingertips from him, but Flroentine lets him sway like a leaf in the wind. Oh what would it be to be so new upon her limbs again! Such a smile it is that crawls across her lips, warm like dawn and as devious as the setting sun.
 
When the Dusk girl begins to think this boy might never talk, he opens his lips. Her ears fall forwards, better to catch the words that tumble at last from his lips. Her head tilts, feline curiosity gleaming in the corners of her. She is as wild as a bird with the curve of her wings and those bright eyes that watch and watch. “I suppose we had.” The fae-girl concludes at last with a smile as sweet as her honey-coloured skin. Her eyes are upon the falling soil, the dirt that clings to his pallid skin. When all is fallen, when his skin is as clean as the meadow might allow, Florentine turns.
 
She leads him through this sea of flowers, a trail of petals falling down to guide him. Florentine does not pause from the way she moves like a gliding ship, not even when his next question comes. It is as unassuming as the first and spoken just as softly.
 
Do you always wear so many flowers?
 
Florestan’s question pulls a smirk from her gilded lips and inspires a glint within her eye. How many times had she been asked just that? “What if I told you they grow there?” Over her shoulder she peers back at the boy, away from where the willow stands large before them. It is hunched and graceful with its long swaying vines, adorned in blade-like leaves. “Would you believe me?”
 
In the shadow of the tree, beyond the sun’s reach, Florentine surveys the boy, his legs still long with youth, his muscles still lean, his nose so terribly pink. “I have an ointment that might help that at home. Where do you live?”

@Florestan

They cut through the meadow, he a brush of lilac and she, gold. The tips of her wings drift through the wild flowers. Feathers, soft as satin, touch petals like whimsical fingers might.
 
The cool of the willow tree is a respite from an unwavering sun. For a long while now the meadow has trembled before her eyes, for its heat is too much. Not even the breeze, called down from the mountain pass, can cool the grasses that grow dry and brittle.
 
Florentine thinks of rain as she walks. She wonders if her brother might ever be able to command water again. Then her mind strays to the Stormsinger, the only one she knows who can bring the rain here. Ah, such a fantasy it is that has her spine already feeling cold, phantom drops of rain falling along her spine.
 
If the flower girl knows how the boy snuffles in her wake, searching for her errant petals, she does not show it. Though an ear listens to him, to the way his breath stirs the grasses and his feet disturb the business of bees.
 
It is only when the cool of the willow engulfs her, its crown enough to hide her from the sun, that the gilded girl turns back to the night child. A smile, one only found upon the lips of those who know too much – a smile reserved for travellers found in mystical books – curls across her lips. “I hope the sea was easy on you Florestan.” And behind those eyes are imaginings of this lilac boy tangled in seaweed and dusted with sand. “You were made of the earth, not the sea.”
 
Her lips touch his cheek; a kiss for kin, those made of flowers and earth. It was also a kiss for mothers lost. Flora’s had not made flowers, but rendered them to ash and raged in the fires of her anguish. This girl’s parents were ash and water; the only thing that could have ever grown from them was flowers.
 
The Dusk girl does not blink, does not even flinch or even feel the pain of her unspooled heart when the boy talks of Denocte. She should be pleased, but what joy was there in feeling nothing? “You have come a long way from the Night Court then.” A sigh of wind pulls a petal from her mane. It dances and swirls before them, toyed with by an invisible wind. Flora wonders what it might be to see the wind move – she knows its touch, at least, beneath the feathers of her wings.
 
“I hear Denocte’s gates have closed.” There are mountains that smoked with the ice of dragonfire. All was ash and dead along the mountain pass. Merchants caught in the frostfire, a capital divided. There had been asylum seekers they say. Florentine’s eyes betray nothing of her musings – she was learning, her heart was no longer upon her sleeve, though the threads of it still remain, loose and ragged. She has been pulled free and drifts now, like an errant flag caught in the winds. How much of the flower girl would remain by the time she became what a real queen should be?
 
Slowly her gaze returns to the seasalt boy. He is earthbound, but for that horn that yearns for the sky. “I live in Terrastella, in the Dusk Court. My name is Florentine.” She pauses and wonders what fate this might be that brings a boy born of flowers before a girl made of them. The girl begins to smile, for she knows it is the same fate that awarded them such similar names. “I think we might share more than just a similar name Florestan.”
 
And she wonders of all that fate might have them share.


@Florestan - eeee first post back after my break. Please forgive my rustiness! <3