FLORENTINE

-- ♕ --


You taught me the courage of stars before you left.

If she closed her eyes, the sound of her broken wing upon the floor was not feather over wood at all, but a brush across a painted canvas. Such a thought, of vibrant colour and graceful lines, made something beautiful from a wing so terribly twisted. Could she dance? Move as if her body were the artist and her wing the brush and the wooden floor the canvas? Could she?
 
She does not know, so she tries. The girl moves to a rhythm of twilight and the chime of evening stars blinking awake to watch a girl move like a comet. Florentine twirls across the floor – and watch how her wing swirls too! Dust lifts from the floor where gilded feathers drift. The lazy grey clouds twine with her dancing feet and rises like up, up, up as glittering stardust. No gravity could pull it down, not when the girl’s good wing reaches, reaches, as if ready to pluck the moon out from the sky.
 
Florentine still has not opened her eyes, for to open them is to see the way her wing does not straighten. To open her eyes is to see the way it hangs, twisted and wrong, like the fall leaves upon the tree. Does her wing also wait to fall like a leaf from the bough of her shoulder? She prays she might keep it.
 
Ah! She presses her eyes tighter still and dances, dances, dances. She begs for a queen who can make anything from nothing. Might then her falling petals (cascading like tears from her mane – for Flora’s eyes have already shed too many tears) turn to glitter and stars? Might they be filled with something other than grief and pain and worry? Might her wing turn straight and right again?
 
There is a music that fills her ears and it is the sound of hooves, the sound of laughter, the sound brushes and trees and twilight winds. The music draws a smile upon her gilded lips and on she dances, through the moonbeams falling from great lattice windows. The dust follows her like a veil and still Flora does not dare open her eyes. Down the hall, down the hall the slender girl dances listening to the walls that sing of her song and whisper of a wing upon wood.



@Lysander 

FLORENTINE

-- ♕ --


You taught me the courage of stars before you left.

There are swirls through the dust. Great sweeping patterns of polished wood furl and unfurl in silent grace down the length of the hall.
 
The tip of her wing is dark with dust and its gold is turned to copper in the light.  Her other wing still extends up, up. It is an arm beneath which she dances, a wing outstretched to catch the sigh of midnight air. The wind does stir through open lattice windows and it might draw her into the sky and ease her mind to forgive her other wing, the one that has forgetten how to fly.
 
But the only flight the girl makes is across the floor. She is fleet of foot and full of song. What rhythm is it that her feet find? She is slow as a lament and then fast as a polca. Her heart spins in her chest for the song, it joins with the moving of her feet and soon the girl is one with the dustmotes as she swirls and dances a waltz along the moonlight hall. Florentine’s amethyst eyes open to watch the particles drift by her through silver light. Oh they are grace and beauty and together they dance, the girl and dust, endless and time-struck.
 
The gyspsy might have laughed then, if she did not smell a scent of pine and flowers. Her steps slow, as if ivy creeps from the ground to capture her limbs. Slower, slower the girl dances and, though she longs to, her eyes do not lift from the dust motes swirling about her.
 
Slower and slower she waltzes, waiting, waiting and then there is green upon her. There is ivy in her heart and ferns framing her soul. He has inspired a forest within her. Florentine is a wild wood, grown just for him. There is no part of her he has not reached and her steps slow, slow. She can feel grasses brushing against her knees, hear her sounds of his breath like a breeze through the forest boughs. Her lashes are the silk of a golden spider’s web hung between branches and her mane the waterfall of a weeping willow.
 
All at once he steals her away, as he should have, once. But war came knocking for Lysander.
 
Keep dancing, his prayer implores her. It is a command that creeps along her spine, each word a fingertip pressing, brushing. Obediently, Florentine does not stop even as her dance slows. The dust motes watch the forest god, a boy kept from his magic, kept from his divinity. They veil their partner, as if she might need protection. But…
 
“Do you remember when we danced barefoot?” The flower-girl hums, thoughtful and soft, “Upon the black glass and beneath a sky full of stars…” and things that swirled in the night. Florentine slows again, until she falls still all momentum lost to her dreams, her memories. Her chin is tipped up, up, up. She hears the call of the stars, feels the warm of obsidian glass beneath her feet. Ah, eternity lay beneath that glass floor and she was not afraid for it to tumble through.
 
“Will you come and dance with me again?” And Florentine looks to her boy of revelry and liquor, and smiles with the gold of sunlight dawning through a temple of trees.



@Lysander 

FLORENTINE

-- ♕ --


You taught me the courage of stars before you left.


Lysander steps toward her and shadows fall away. He walks like a god, commanding shadow and light and Florentine wonders if it was only darkness he shed like a cloak and not his mortality.
 
In light he is the brown of bark growing deep, deep in a bracken wood. In light his ivy is as green as poison and Florentine does not dare to think how easily she would taste any poison he might give her. If only he looked at her with his wildwood eyes she would succumb, so utterly bewitched.
 
She is still as he comes to her, her words enough to draw him from darkness. Oh, that darkness he passes through like sin. He comes close and the dust motes drift from him and then back to dance through the light that halos his crown of tines. With him here the air is moss and peat and wicked flowers. The air is ivy that chokes and twines and Florentine knows there is ivy in her bones, her heart, her soul. She might never be free of them and she begs them now to twine about her wing and hold it up, up. Those vines would bandage her wing tighter than tight.
 
His hip touches hers, his muzzle pressed into the tangle of her mane. His breath is warm across her nape and sets her skin ablaze. Florentine yields, for what else can she do when he holds her heart with his wildwood magic? Her body curls about his, her lips finding the curve of his throat, the junction of his shoulder and neck. She smiles and drinks him in a liquor. Ah, he smells of liquor now but not smoke. She once drew back to look at him yet she is content in the tangle of their bodies, the weaving of their skin.
 
“I did.” She sings like stars and eternity. I laid my ear against your chest just to hear your heart beat. She does not speak of all the memories that stir the pool of her mind, but smiles and laughs and remembers, “And I told you off for smoking.”
 
The flower-girl’s laughter is bright, brighter than the moonlight filtering down upon them, brighter than the promise of dawn upon the hours. “We do not.” She agrees and thinks of the skirt she wore and its memory whispers about her ankles still. “Never have I been so bold in my nakedness.” She chirps and remembers when a goddess fell, only to rise in human form, naked and bold, her unicorn horn clasped tight within her fist. A shudder rocks through Florentine’s body and her lips tip into a smile. “Do you miss being human?” She asks thoughtful, curious. “I miss my hands, it was nice to tuck them into your coat.” And she trails off there, a little shy, a little warm.
 
“I miss my penchant for beer too.”



@Lysander 

FLORENTINE

-- ♕ --


You taught me the courage of stars before you left.


Her wing hangs, heavy and dust adorned between them. She thinks of it, of the patterns it drew upon the floor as she danced. Then she thinks of what it would be to have a hand instead. Would it be broken too? Would her fingers be unable to flex? Never has the flower-girl given much thought to missing her human life, not when Lysander was here too. How small her existence is becoming, that worlds seem less tempting just because they are without Lysander. Can she hear her dagger keening?
 
If Florentine let herself think about it, if she dared entertain the thought of how deep beneath her skin he was, how his vines were everywhere within her, she might despair. But the girl does not. Rather, she closes her eyes and lets shadows draw smiles upon her lips. She lets herself sink into her boy of flowers and forests. He is her wild; the part of her that always grows. His roots will reach her, his roots have founded her and they will not let her go. She will not be without him but-
 
I am going to Solterra. And all else he has said before this is forgotten. Flora is not surprised. They stayed after all, for him, for her, for the war Denocte fights. Her heart is a drum in her chest. Her ears ring and her blood surges like the sea beneath the tolling bells.
 
Raum.
 
He lies like a phantom between a girl and her lover. He dogs a fire-girl left to guard a kingdom. He has sent a Night queen into hiding and he brought Lysander near to his death – over Flora. Her lips are dry, her tongue the barren desert. How empty his words make her and yet how utterly full she is. Florentine is bursting with terror, with wild rage, with clawing hatred and gnawing despair. Florentine bends into him more, she presses against his skin, his body, until they could be one, because, for a day or maybe a year or more, they will be separated. And now will do, for now might be all that they have.
 
I.
 
There was no we. He does not ask her to come. But upon her lips is the declaration that begs to follow. I will go too. The words scream within her, they burn her lips, her tongue. They scold her heart, yet still Flora does not speak. Her eyes close and she kisses her god like fire, she lets her good wing drift along his skin, along the curve of his shoulder, the muscle that ripples strong and thick. Her touch drifts, in static, in friction, until it reaches skin, that is not chocolate but silver. She moves until his flesh is not smooth but puckered, broken and re-healed. It is a scar she knows as well as her own.
 
Florentine bore Lysander’s blood once.  Her dagger drank it deep as it sought the bullet from his flesh and brought it screaming out. That scar is hers, it is Raum’s, it is Lysander’s and she lays a prayer upon it, a curse upon it and then seals it with a kiss.
 
Unwanted, her jests creep back to haunt her. How many times had she joked that her lover kept nearly dying? How much truth there is in her claims too! Her breath stalls in her lungs, he steals it from her with his declaration: I am leaving. Would he return? Would he return alive? Would battle change him? She turns her amethyst eyes upon her god, the only one she would bruise her knees for and knows the eternities Lysander has seen. Time does not touch them, it never did. But never has Lysander been mortal, never has death been so real. It was always she who died, not him.
 
Selfish girl, she aches with the horror of loss. If he died she would find him again. Of course, this is how they were, from one life into the next they would find each other. But now she has him, can she bear the loss of him? Reichenbach cleaved her heart, it was ruined tatters, little more than ash to blow in the wind. But Lysander, he would surely ruin her heart body and soul. Existence would be ruinous.
 
But Florentine will not follow her love to Solterra. This was not her fight and he does not ask her to come.
 
Her teeth find the groove of his throat in anger, oh white rage ebbs into despair. A tear blossoms at the corner of an eye, and it falls with a blink of her gilded lashes. Yet she kisses him where her teeth graze (clawing to keep him) and remembers him and finally pulls away, incomplete, a piece of her already missing. That space aches, but it is filled with trees and vines and his idle liquor smiles.
 
“Well, then.” Flora begins, reaching for her chain about his throat. Her dagger warms with her proximity, glimmering upon his breast. It begs to cut a window for her, for him, but Florentine ignores it for her blood is singing in her veins. She thinks she might be starlight then, she thinks that Time may split her apart, that magic may mold her very bones. Her wing hangs heavy between them but not even it will come between their parting.
 
“If you plan to leave me, Lysander, you had better take me to bed.” And she tugs her to him, pressing her lips again to the shadow of his jaw, to where his heart thrums, mortal fast and mortal strong. There is no joy in her kiss. There is no delight. Her eyes close tight, her lips fierce upon his skin, ah that she would never let go of him. But she does, and her lips are cold where they no longer touch his. Her breath shatters in her lungs but she turns and leads him to bed with rattling bones and an unspooling heart.




@Lysander