Things have changed.

She should have expected as much. Part of her did. She is not all fool, not all bleach-blonde ridiculousness. Things have changed. Of course they have; it’s the nature of the universe. Even Bexley cannot argue with the nature of the universe.

(Or at least, she can’t argue and win.)

(Or at least—she can’t argue and win yet.)

She should have expected as much. Part of her did. Part of her didn't, and this is the part making its appearance now, an untimely anxiety settled in her chest like a rock as she wonders what her world will look like now.

The Ieshans throw at least one party every year. Bexley has ducked into a few during her time in Solterra, and even the ones she’s missed out on attending made appearances in the back of her mind—the invitations shown coyly off in public as markers of station, then stories exchanged for weeks after with the same goal, their house’s name alone enough to sustain excitement. She’s spent enough time drinking and gossiping on their property to know how to navigate it alone, and more than once slipped into a curtsy in front of the princes, close enough to tease; and still, as Bexley comes up on the gates, a brief feeling of anxiety flashes through her, gnawing with dull teeth at the pit of her stomach.

Things have changed. Things have changed. Bexley draws a steely inhale as she walks in and reminds herself of this: things have changed, but it could be for the better.

Whoever was in charge of decorating the estate has outdone themselves. Bexley glances around the rooms and halls in muted admiration. Everywhere she looks there is something to be impressed by—a long, bare white oak tree strung with baubles, frosted in enchanted snow; wreaths of luscious dark-green holly leaves, studded with deep red berries; sharply sparkling chandeliers hang from the ceilings, cast the white halls and marble floors in shards of glittering light. The air is scented with pine and cider. A violin suite floats in from outdoors, sweet and melancholic: without thinking, Bexley drifts after it.

A few pairs of eyes follow her through the door. Their weight transforms her instantly from uncomfortable to at-home; if there is one thing Bexley has known all her life, it is the subtle, sparkling joy of being eyed up. (And besides—she knows she looks good. After returning from the island, cleanup was her first priority. She’s bathed the shine back into her coat, anointed herself at every pulse point with sweet-smelling oils; her hair is a long, rippling wave of platinum, coated in an extraterrestrial level of shine, and the necklace seated snugly against the curve of her throat has also been polished to gleaming.)

A few pairs of eyes follow her through the door, and Bexley grins, even without knowing one of them is Florentine.  

One of Florentine’s many faults is her nosiness. The invitation to the party went out and the fae-woman’s curiosity got the better of her. She longed to see houses she had never seen before, to cross paths with faces new and beautiful  and unfamiliar. Ah she yearned to speak and hear the languages and accents of distant lands, worlds and local places. So it is no surprise she comes to the party tonight.


It has been so long since she last stepped upon Solterran soil, and even longer since she attended a party here. Slowly the gilded girl meanders through the hall, filled with music and dancers who sway, their tails swirling as hems of great gowns. Sequins catch the light, powdered metal, fine as dust, lie pressed upon cheeks and throats. They glitter in the light, catching the flickering of lamps. This whole place is decadent, from its polished statues to its guests.


Florentine might be the only girl here with her hair still strangely tangled, with the scent of ozone still clinging to her skin from when she flew just that breath too high and sunk into a cloud its belly full of rain. Petals tumble at her feet, but she does not watch the way they drift into the dance floor, or out across to the hall of statues. 


Amethyst eyes drink everything in, until they stop. They snag upon Bexley Briar as a rabbit does in a bramble bush. Florentine will always know the shape of the Solterran woman. She will always know how her gold is like the sun at its highest. Being held in Bexley’s blue-flame eyes is akin to being cradled by the sun. Bexley Briar burns the wings off anyone who dares to fly too close, too reckless. Her splendour paralyses, her presence intoxicates. Of course Florentine would go to her.


Light and nimble as she has ever been, Florentine slips like ink through the crowds. The sound of glasses clinking is like a melody. The music of the band resonates through champagne flutes and its sound is holy, otherworldly. Florentine reaches her oldest friend. Her gaze plays along the Solterran woman’s smile. “Bexley Briar, I have missed you.” Then Florentine tips her delicate head to see the stand upon the bar. Truth or dare, it reads stark and bold. “Is one ever too old to play truth of dare?” The Terrastellan asks with a tilt of her head and a wicked smile curling the corners of her petal soft lips. “What wicked games they have here.”


@Bexley - eeeee. <3 

It is the petals that she notices first.

Stalking through the hallways with their needlessly high vaulted ceiling, Bexley is nearly to the courtyard when she notices the first one. It floats in from behind her on a breeze that smells like rain, and comes coasting to the marble floor at her feet with the laziest of ballerina-twirls. It comes in with purpose, almost like an omen. It is a princess-pale color, glittering somewhere  between pink and purple; Bexley draws to a stop and regards it with suspicion, for it is a color, curl and shape of petal she has seen more than once before.

It makes her think—keenly—of a girl she once loved, a tryst that took place so many years ago it hardly seems real. The knowledge of it has stopped her in her tracks. The crowd splits around her, tired of waiting; then they rejoin to keep flowing around the girl who stands in the middle of the hall, staring down at the floor, perfectly still except for the flow of her platinum hair. The world has stopped. All that is left is the petal, looking back at her, and the rough beat of her heart, keeping time with the violin that seeps in from the courtyard.

She almost wants to leave. How many of her old friends have died? Acton is gone, and Florentine she hasn’t heard from in years; perhaps this petal, lonely as it is, is some ghostly sign of a girl long gone.

But then some particularly careless guest comes crashing into Bexley’s shoulder, and all at once she’s startled out of her trance. The music comes rushing back in at its real volume. The blood seeps back into her chest, where it’s meant to sit; and suddenly, almost aggressively, Bexley snaps her head back up and forces herself to focus on the world of the living once more.

It is a perfectly Solterran night—inky and hot, straining at its seams with the suggestion of mischief. And a perfectly Solterran party, brimming with more possibilities than any one attendee would know what to do with it. Despite the ghostly petal that Bexley blows out of her path, and the brief sting of melancholy that accompanies it, life today feels almost normal.

What wicked games they have here.

Florentine slips out of the crowd like a sword slips from its hilt. Or a leopard from the jungle—easy, practiced, smooth.

So smooth, in fact that Bexley almost does not realize how strange it is to see her, does not remember that just a minute ago she thought the girl-queen dead: everything about Florentine, from the petals that trail her to the wind-tangled hair to the bright, breathless smile, is familiar. Like a trail blazed a hundred years ago. A poem committed to memory.

“I think,” Bexley says softly, with a trickster’s smile, “that we have played far more wicked games ourselves.”

If Florentine saw the way Bexley stopped amidst the guests and stared at one of her petals, she says nothing about it. Rather, She lets them settle together beside the table of drinks and wicked games. The air is warm beside Bexley, her body golden fire there to melt the caramel of her own golden skin. Her gaze slides down the platinum of the Solterran’s hair. It runs like silk between fingertips, so soft it is almost a fountain. Gazing upon Bexley now is like sinking into memories of what was and what could have been. Ah, they had been so young then, both so full of potential, the whole of Novus laying like treasure within their grasp. The girls were rich with potential and fate was little more than a whisper in their ears.


More petals fall like autumn leaves. They twirl like the first one had, they gather like snow around Bexley Briar’s toes. The way the girls watch each other… looks laden with so much that has gone unspoken over the years. Upon the fae-girl’s tongue is a hundred things she wished she could have said, when Bexley was injured, when she lost Acton and every single moment of hardship that passed between then and now. Always Florentine had asked after Bexley, always the girl had held a space within her heart, the place of a first love. A place that in many ways should never have been usurped by Reichenbach. Yet, if one thing Florentine has learned, it is that the heart does not listen to reason. It can only lick its wounds after and stitch itself back together with the threads of regret and experience.


Her laughter is a bell and a giggle made deeper, richer, by the warm alcohol that loosens her muscles. The last time she had been to a party was the night she discovered she was pregnant. Now her children are lost and the once-queen welcomes the numbing burn of the amber liquid that helps her forget the shambles of her life. “Have we?” Florentine asks with a grin playful and sultry, “You might have, Bexley.” Florentine’s satin grin grows, lazy and dark with the light buzz of party nights, “But I have never been so scandalous.” The girl jokes, becoming more than fae then. She turns impish, her amethyst eyes a dark, bruising purple that she presses, gently, into Bexley’s skin. 


Leaving her lie to play like static in the space between them, Florentine turns to the game card before them. “But there is no time like the present. So, truth or dare?” Beneath her lashes, beneath the thick wash of her salted caramel hair, Florentine tips her gaze to her girl friend and waits. 


Which will you chose, Bexley Briar?


@Bexley - eeeee. <3 

How pretty she is. Bexley had forgotten it—forgotten the magnitude of it, at least.

Florentine’s face, over time, had lost its focus in her mind. (All memories do.) What used to be a clear picture had become smoggy and unfocused, a picture in a frame of smoky glass. There were moments Bexley feared that she would never remember more than snapshots here and there: the one soft-toffee curl; the deep purple of her eyes, bruised like violets; one corner of her mouth turned into a cunning smile.

Looking at her, Bexley wonders how she could have ever forgotten this girl, even the most minute detail. It seems criminal. How could anyone ever look away? She is like something out of a storybook: baptized by flowers, painted in gold.

Bexley stares at her with a heavy blue gaze. There is something inordinately serious about her eyes as they meet Florentine’s, despite the clever smile on her lips: they burn with blue flame, like the base of a shrine-fire. They are quite clearly leaning toward truth—the confession of something she has not said for years, the desire to come clean with something rabid.

The weight of it builds in her; it crescendos. Bexley feels the words pulling at the corners of her mouth and cutting them open like salt—the same Glasgow smile she wore that one night in the markets, aching all the way into her cheeks. But she says nothing. And the silence between them sits in her chest like a rock.

Florentine teases her with a dark, satin grin; some of the tension slips from Bexley’s body. “Ha, ha,” the golden girl taunts, her voice as warm as it is sarcastic. She raises her head, looking down at Florentine through a thicket of reddish lashes, with her mouth twisted into a cocky smile, and says: “Truth.”

But there is a dare in the sound of it—smooth as velvet, darker than wine—and when Bexley grins, gold glints from in between her teeth.