This was not the first time that Florentine had crept up upon another but, had she considered it, she would have deemed it fair in the grand scheme of things. She had, after all, been crept up on and startled by others many a time.

 
Coming straight from Rannveig’s most recent court meeting, Flora had entered the swamp still mud splattered, and rather wind swept, from her earlier landing. Since she was already disheveled, this had made for a perfect time to explore Terrastella’s swampland.
 
The flower girl moved with her wings outstretched and arched to better catch the small drafts of air that wafted through the swamp. It made each step feather light, yet the deeper Florentine drifted into the swamp, the deeper and thicker the bog became. All too soon, her wings were arched high, high enough to escape the stagnant waters as algae clung to her golden coat.
 
The smell here was pungent, yet familiar. As she waded the girl kept a weather eye open for the shadowy form of the beautiful swamp witch. It was not Yana who intercepted Florentine’s path, but rather a newcomer. His form was now familiar to Flora’s amethyst eyes, for she knew his curves well. Yet, for all she had studied him at the meeting, there was still much that was strange and new about the quiet boy.
 
In silence, with only the idle bubbling of water and the hum of insects meeting her ears, the girl watches the boy eat. It was a crude manner to acquire fruit, or so Florentine thought, blessed as she was with wings. For her, getting fruit from the bough of a tree was a simple, easy feat. Despite this, she had never tasted the fruit this boy so keenly ate. Maybe the ease of the task took away the satisfaction?
 
The longer the watched him, the wetter her tongue became and her stomach more restless. From the shadow of the trees, beneath the low hanging vines she asks him, quite pleasantly, “Does it taste sweet?”
 
To merely ask was not enough, and with a smell of stagnant water and sodden leaves, the flower girl wades from her vantage point. Petals float mulishly on the disturbed water that ripples in her wake. They long to linger with her, to cling to the flowers that nestle and grow vibrantly within her mane and tail. Florentine, golden and violet, brings the vitality of a wild forest and a scent of rosemary and lavender that is so foreign here in the dank swamp.
 
“Would you be so kind as to get me one too? Court business can be frightfully hungry work.” She asks again. Then, with her voice dropping, she steps close to him. Heat brushes against heat, rubbing, as she brings their bodies closer in the humid heat. Her bright eyes peer out conspiratorially from the long tangle of her forelock, ‘…Not to mention boring.” Her smile is slow and warming. She was not made for court life. No, this wild girl would rather fly to the ends of Novus before finding herself within a meeting.


@Auru <3 <3 sorry for the wait! i look forward to where this will go :) 

this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

   Auru took a terribly long time to fall.

 
In truth it was actually all over rather swiftly. However, Time has this way of drawing out the dramatic moments. Milliseconds ticked by like minutes and afforded Florentine time to process the steady rise and twist of his body and the flailing of limbs before it all ended. It all looked rather athletic – in an unfortunate way.
 
Auru’s reaction was a special kind of startlement (she made up that word and she is running with it fyi). There were surprised reactions and then there were surprised reactions. He was flamboyant (albeit unintentionally) and it warmed Florentine’s heart to the poor boy.
 
All the newly appointed Emissary had been hoping for was a piece of fruit, not a boy throwing himself at her feet. However, when such things happen, one has to make do.
 
The push off from the tree had been rather exuberant in hindsight and so it was no surprise that it should have ended thusly. His awkward twist and the flailing of his front feet had sent one hoof whistling past the flower girl’s ear. It was with an undignified squawk that the girl had narrowly managed to scramble out of Auru’s firing line, purple petals scattering in disarray. That cry was chased by a rather startled and perplexed, “Down boy,” as his feet continued to flail.
 
Whilst Auru was no dog to be commanded, he still obediently went down. It was with a heavy thump and a good deal of swampy splashing, that the boy bonded with the sodden earth. The spray of murky green water met with not only his skin, but the flower girl’s and the bouquet of flowers that littered her tangled mane. Mud splatter and swamp spray unified and melded upon her limbs, blending themselves into a mess of dirty tears and a dank smell of decaying vegetation.
 
“Well, at least I am not the only one who needs practice on their landings.” Florentine observes lightly, her head tossing to clear a rogue droplet of water that was valiantly streaking its way down her forehead towards her eye.
 
Peering down, with amethyst eyes to where the boy still lay scant centimeters from her she chirps a little too brightly, “Well, it’s not everyday a boy falls at my feet.”
 
Carefully, for it was difficult to miss the boy’s wide, startled eyes, Florentine steps closer to him. Her eyes trail over his body. “Does anywhere hurt?“ Concern for his welfare began to creep in, but upon seeing no obvious injury her clenched heart eases somewhat. “Let’s be grateful for swampy landings eh?”
 
An odd tap at her foot captures the dusk girl’s attention. “Oh!” She exclaims as her eyes flit to the fallen fruit and its only slightly bruised skin. ‘Well thank you, you at least got me a piece of fruit down.” With little to do she takes a bite before peering back at where the boy still lay, his limbs skybound.
 
“Fruit? We all need a little sugar after a bad experience.”


@Auru Flora and I had so much fun writing this!

this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

The swamp does not stop to watch the recumbent boy. After the murky waters settle, their startled babbling receding, the forest resumes its bird chattering, insect buzzing and idle water lapping. Business resumes as usual, the spectacle now seemingly over. For them, maybe, yet the girl of honey and wild lavender is still really quite entertained by the whole event.

 
There are many thoughts and memories that race through the boy’s mind. Florentine sees their ghosts within his too-wide eyes and feels the wall they build between the compatriots; one that Flora is not sure she could overcome.
 
The soft skin and sweet taste is delectable upon her tongue as Florentine takes another bite of the fallen fruit. In silence she eats on, considering the boy with an amiable manner. Since the meeting had come to an end, she had all evening to spend with him and the more his eyes cried out in silence, the longer she wished to stay with him… To hear the words his eyes don’t speak.
 
She is just about to fold her limbs and lower herself to the sodden earth beside the boy - since he shows no sign of his shock receding or any plans to right himself - when suddenly his body convulses.
 
Florentine springs away from him like a gazelle startled from the water’s edge by a breaching crocodile. “Steady,” the dusk girl murmurs, her amethyst eyes as wide as the moon that begins to rise. She had dodged his flailing feet enough today…
 
Auru rises, most inelegantly it has to be said, but the girl of wild honey steps back to graciously allow him a little more space – and of course, to further avoid his wayward limbs.
 
His cry captures her attention, ears twisting forward as her eyes narrow to take in the curve of his shoulder and the red that seeps sullenly from an angry graze. The boy stands before her is as stiff as bark, as unbreakable as steel – or so he tries to convince himself, much to Flora’s confusion.
 
Her eyes fall to the lip he worries between his teeth and her smile returns – not that it ever really left – warm and surprised. “You are quite cute. If a little smelly.” She says as she catches a distinctly swampy waft of air and leans closer to affirm it was indeed him.
 
The smell stalks her as she steps back, just as strong, just as pungent. Her eyes fall to the damp splatter of algae and mud that covers her limbs and chest and she nods to herself,  “Gosh, it seems we’re both quite smelly.”
 
Today was definitely a dirty day.
 
Her mouth opens to impart more words, but suddenly he is speaking and he sounds nothing like she expected him to. Shock has her hear lifting and her eyes flitting between his stuttering lips and his wide, wide eyes. She was quite unsure exactly how she expected him to sound, but this wasn’t it.
 
“Which part did you not hear?” She asks him quite amiably. “I have said quite a lot. It’s a consequence of not saying anything to me. I hear silence and I have to fill it. Its an unconscious compulsion.” Or so she had been told. Florentine pauses for a moment, her head tilting as she takes in the bird boy and his fluttering heart.
 
“I had been offering you fruit…” She raises the piece in question, extending it to him. “Little bit of sugar? Makes you feel better?
 
“Or did you miss everything I said? In which case, let’s just start from the beginning. I am Florentine.” She offers a dip of her head, slow, careful, as the poor boy looked for all the world like he might flee at any moment.
 
She lets another pause pass between them, and anxiously, in case he loses the ability to use his tongue again, she leans in close and whispers, “Now’s the time to give me your name.”



@Auru Excuse Miss Motormouth. <3

this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

She watches as emotions and thoughts flit across the dusk boy’s face. He flounders, his eyes so wide they become windows to the sea of confusion he finds himself within. Flora’s words are the waves, heavy and relentless, albeit harmless, even as they pull him this way and that.

 
Florentine’s ability to be quite so talkative, was both a blessing and a curse. In this moment, with a boy so utterly stupefied beneath the onslaught of her monologue, the dusk girl realized that it was indeed a curse.
 
Her lashes lower to her feet that, dirtied and slender, shift awkwardly in the damp foliage.  She longs to pick through the feelings and thoughts, that tangle and twist their way through his addled brain. Had she offended him? Or was she merely too forward? It had never been an issue to the twilight girl before, and yet it does not stop the embarrassment from twining itself tightly through her abdomen.
 
When Auru speaks at last, she welcomes the words with bright amethyst eyes. Her gaze drinks in his face, the curl and dance of his lips as they form each word. She forgets that he ever spoke before, that he ever questioned what she had been saying, for he answers her at last.
 
His words are small, a paltry amount given how many she has shared with him, yet his name beckons a smile from her lips and the easing of her rosy blush. “I do not have a surname, Auru Geniven.” She whispers, quite enviously. It seemed like such a mythical thing, such a lavish thing for one to be in possession of a surname. For a girl born in myth and mystery, she hungers for one of her own.
 
The fruit lies forgotten at her feet, though its taste still plays upon her tongue even as she moves to draw his name upon his skin. She dresses him with it, just to see how well it fits. “I think it serves you well.” Flora adds gently and wonders what her own might be, had she been born to different parents, a different world away.
 
Her mouth opens, to ask another question, to comment, to converse yet further. But before words can tumble from her lips, her mouth snaps shut. She says nothing, eyes trailing the rise and fall of his raised brow, cocky, yet shy. With a dip of her head, she allows the silence to reign, allows it to sink between them, waiting for him to shatter it with his own words.


@Auru gosh i am so sorry for the museless drivel :( <3 <3

this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart