Summer blazes through Terrastella, and it does not leave anything untouched. Flowers bend in the heat; white light refracts itself off glass and silver; warmth shimmers like quicksilver over the fields and cliffs, and the world is calm. The sun is gentle overhead. Birds chirp and fall silent, swooping through the balmy air. Even as the grasses fall away to cobblestone and brick, a sense of peace blankets the Dusk Court. As she wanders through the gates Bexley hears the mutters of the commonwealth complaining of the heat, their good-natured gripes, and smiles quietly to herself in pleasant disbelief. To her the weather is almost-cool, the breeze that comes with it an unexpected luxury, and she hums something happy and tranquil as she moves toward the center of the Court.
There is a moment, casual and momentous, in which she feels at peace with her anonymity. It comes in the easy step of her hooves over cobblestone, the breeze that washes over her like water. The chain heavy around her neck. The weak sun overhead, her own brain and body. All of it comes into clarity, then ebbs away again, unendingly peaceful. It is a feeling which has not come to her for quite a while, and it’s absolutely relieving.
It lasts for only a moment.
Some Terrastellan youth whips past her with his friends, and as much as he’s careful to wait until their paths have diverged, it’s impossible for Bexley not to hear the tail end of his phrase: “Gods, look at that scar.“ Her heart plummets inside her chest. By the time she registers it the boy is long gone, disappeared around a corner, but the sting of it still puts Bexley out of breath. Her lungs constrict, pulsing involuntarily. She stumbles on an upturned cobblestone. Look at that scar. As if given a life of its own, she feels new pain pulse along the rift that splits her face in two.
Look at that scar -
She pulls her head down to her chest. Shifts the lace of white hair to cover her face. Pushes forward against a nauseating wave of unease. Now Terrastella’s court flashes by in a blur of stone and glass, blurred by the speed at which Bexley forces herself to walk, the sting of tears which collect involuntarily in her already glassy gaze. Focus. Focus. Buildings rise and fall away on each side, and none of it matters, not really.
She’s not here for much. A moment with Florentine, a conversation that doesn’t cripple. From the beginning her options were limited. Vaguely, she thought about visiting Rhoswen, or even Reich, but those ideas were discarded as quickly as the came, and really - who else is there? The days of Bexley’s involuntary popularity have long left her, and as sickening as it is to admit, she is here to search for, quite possibly, the only friend she has left. Friend. There are so many things wrong with this situation, and she names them off in her head one by one: My only friend. The people I live with are not my friends. Florentine is - just a friend.
Perhaps, at last, her sins have caught up to her, and this is to be her punishment. A world devoid of friendly faces. The salt of pain inside her bones.
Suddenly, the door of the citadel looms overhead. Bexley’s heart catches in her throat - bang bang bang. To the guard that stands still against the gray walls, head bowed to his chest, she asks almost nervously, Is Florentine here?
A beat passes, one that sets all Bexley’s nerves to sparks, practically turns her brain inside out. Is she taking visitors?
@Florentine <3
05-01-2018, 12:06 AM - This post was last modified: 05-01-2018, 12:06 AM by Bexley
i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls
Bexley Briar
The name still curls itself through the library. It dances on the breeze that pushes in through the open windows. Florentine drinks in the messenger, stood in the doorway of the grand library. Her heart stutters in her chest, a strange staccato beat.
Bexley Briar
The name is no longer whispering and swirling through the library, but it drifts through her mind. Over and over it goes as she slips down the winding staircase. Petals and feathers fall away like the tears Florentine has shed over a girl with such a name.
Bexley Briar
The name is stolen from her mind and presses upon her lips. But Florentine does not speak it, not even when her eyes at last fall on a summertime gold, bright enough to match her own.
Florentine is greedy as she drinks in the Solterran girl. How long has it been? Their last meeting was fraught; it had wound nerves tight and stretched the Dusk girl thin like gossamer.
But…Oh Bexley Briar, who are you now? The question lingers in Florentine’s mind as she studies the picture of a girl so shy. Where was the brave and bold creature that once so won the flower-girl’s attention? This creature, stood before Flora now, is golden curls and woven skin, but oh she is so quiet with her fringe pulled forward and a timid look within her eye.
“Bexley Briar,” Florentine says at last, and drops her head just an inch, a small smile playing across her lips. There is a hope that never dies within her, it flares from ember to flame each time they meet. Oh its hope is so palpable within her now. It burns, it burns, it burns.
You were right. All along, you were right. Such confessions beg to be spoken, but she holds them back even as they drive against her like waves upon the cliff face. Was this the time to speak of a Night King and Bexley’s fierce warning?
How many times had she shed tears before this girl? How many times had Bexley brought justice down upon her like a whip? Such words! Such stinging, hurtful words and Florentine knows now that she deserved them all.
Oh yes, you were so very right, Bexley Briar.
But Florentine does not speak, not when her gaze is tumbling down the sorrowful curve of satin lips, not when she drinks in the pointed tip of a dark, angry mark hidden beneath a wash of tangled fringe and not when she takes in the retiring, nervous stance of Solterra’s boldest girl.
Dusk’s queen steps forward, to press lips to a cheek she already knows is smooth like silk. When she steps back, she beckons the sun-girl into the shade of her home. “Come, I have missed you.”
And the truth has never rung so true.
@Bexley <3 Reunion! they have ALL the things to talk about.
The sound of her name sends a shiver down the Solterran’s back: it takes all her courage not to look away, not to step back or turn inside herself. When she meets Florentine’s eyes, so awfully, unbelievable familiar, not even the waves of white hair that touch her face and muddle their scene can stifle the wave of wanting-sickness that rises in Bexley’s stomach, a warmth so unmistakable and overwhelming she almost wants to cry.
Florentine, she tries to answer - but her voice breaks in her throat, so many shards of glass. All those layers of silence on silence. The sun flares overhead, and Bex turns her eyes away. From under fluttering lashes she watches Florentine’s face and the emotions that flit across it like moonlight over water, inscrutable except for in the briefest, most exhilarating moments: a glimmer of concern here, something soft there. Bexley cannot decide whether it is comforting or cause to rage. For all their merits, they are both still human. This seems like the worst punishment of them all.
It is utterly quiet, then. Nothing but sunlight bleaching skin and the cool kiss of a faint breeze. Bexley’s mind turns to what will happen next. Is she expected to break the silence? Must she apologize for their last meeting, for the warning that came from her mouth like gunfire? She’s heard stories of them - of Dusk and Night, of Flora and Reichenbach - of hypnotism and absolute betrayal - of the fires burning in the Arma mountains - but how much of it is true remains to be seen, and wouldn’t it be smart for her to, for once, refrain from making assumptions. Perhaps everything is fine, and Bexley is the only one who still owns her suffering. It would not be the first time.
The distance between them closes as Florentine steps forward, and Bex must fight the urge to flinch. She does. Barely. Lips brush against her cheek, and the world turns over again, cloudy now with the smoke-scent of jasmine, the silk of hair that is not her own brushing against her skin, the heat that washes over her, intimate and irresistible; she sways on her feet, unsettled, but does not falter wholly, thank Solis. I have missed you - the briefest smile crosses Bexley’s lips, but still she says nothing, too unsure to answer.
The shade beckons, and Bexley obeys. With slow, liquid steps she follows Florentine deeper into the citadel, each stride a small noise in the empty hallway, head held lower than it should be. The chain around her neck drags heavy.
Forgive me.
And still, she cannot find it in herself to speak.
@Florentine <3
05-05-2018, 03:43 PM - This post was last modified: 05-05-2018, 05:44 PM by Bexley
i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls
Florentine looks and looks at Bexley Briar, waiting for the seductive curve of her golden lips. She waits for the words to fall off her tongue like a Solterran whip. But nothing comes; Bexley Briar is as quiet as the dawn.
The sun-girl is soft in all the places she used to be sharp and fierce. How many of her barbs had cut Florentine so? And how many of those barbs had the Dusk girl admired, despite their pain? But they were all absent now. The Solterran girl standing before the Dusk queen is beautiful in only her hurt. Her wild spirit is a shadow, a mere spectre that threatens to blow away upon the wind.
Bexley is a flame reduced to embers.
That kiss, that press of golden lips to golden skin should have inspired wrath. The mere idea of it, when their skin connected, made the flower-girl’s stomach tumble and clench. It was too bold, too daring and yet… where was the fire Florentine so expected? Where was the bite of words designed to bring Bexley’s adversaries to their knees?
Beneath her fringe, heavy with the weight of this girl’s presence, Florentine watches. Those amethyst eyes trail over golden skin as it turns to shadow in the shade of the citadel. Within the sandstone walls their delicate feet are a dance, a tattoo upon the flagstone floor, but Flora has never wanted to dance less… Not when Bexley is here, with her eyes downcast, her hurt a river between them, a roaring waterfall that drags both girls down, down, down.
Even her head is low, weighted by a sorrow that grasps its fingers into Bexley’s necklace and pulls. What would it take Florentine to tear her eyes from that heavy, glittering chain? Florentine is not sure that is a price she can pay, so with a sigh she remembers what it feels like to pick that necklace up within her lips and feel the weight of its ghostly love. Such history it is, an emotional connection that is settled deep into Bexley Briar’s heart.
Oh it is agony to watch her, it is poison in Florentine’s veins. It pulls the girl apart, sinew by sinew. It burns in her veins and soon she knows she will be but smoke and dust. So swiftly she stops. So swiftly the fae-girl turns to drink in this wild, gilded creature she once met in the meadow, a long, calamitous year ago.
In silence Florentine regards this sun-girl, with her gilt skin, her wild curls like sand dunes rippling in a mirage. Flora thinks she longs to touch her again, to comfort to love, but Bexley is akin to a feral creature, wounded and low, and Florentine has already touched her once. “Where is your fire?” Florentine whispers, for she misses it so. Bexley is a plume of smoke dispersing, her fire gone out, her body soft curls and scented burning.
Her heart is a flutter in her breast, “Can I help?” And how many times would she try to patch Bexley Briar up? To hold her together with the twine of her own broken heart; if only to keep them both from falling to pieces.
A headache throbs deep in Bexley’s temples, and it is growing worse by the second. She feels it tap-tap-tapping against the inside of her skull with increasing force. It drills away at her, a kind of eating that turns her brain to pulp, turns her heart soft and painful - she is dizzy as she walks, head tucked to her chest, pulse pounding - the whole world is smoke and jasmine and something irredeemably dark, and then Florentine’s voice sounds, chiming in her head, and her throat tightens. Where is your fire -
Gods have mercy. Those words are a slap in the face when they hit her. Where is your fire, as if she hasn’t spent weeks searching for it, scraping her way up and down the desert with biblical devotion, looking for prophecies in wet tea leaves, as if her heart doesn’t ache for it even now, as if she doesn’t recognize acutely the lead that now lays in her bones and the coolness that freezes her veins and the way her nerves have been cut to blunt edges - where is your fire. Fuck off, says the evil thing inside her. And the good part says, It’s not her fault. Only yours.
She blinks, and realizes that they have stopped. In cool shadow the girls face each other now. Bexley feels her heart loud in her mouth and wills it to quiet. Blue eyes meet amethyst, and under those long lashes the Solterran’s anxiety is bold and clear to see, never mind how much she wishes she could hide it. Her lips part, but she can’t find words strong enough to break the air. Instead she stands there for a moment, staring, chin lifted, expression wavering, and focuses as hard as she can on fighting everything in her that is asking her to turn away.
I - her mouth twists into a hard frown. It -
And the words don’t come, they just can’t, and, at a loss for what to do, Bexley flicks the hair from her face and stands, trembling, with her scar on full display. It tingles up and down the length of her face, insistent in continuous suffering. Her pulse beats through the cut. She swallows the pain. What is more womanly than to be silent in your suffering, she thinks, and hot, sudden tears brim in those ice-blue eyes.
That. That’s it.
Her jaw grinds, grinds, grinds away the tension, but still it runs rampant in all the pathways of her body - that’s it, the problem, a few inches of raw skin, the pain that accompanies, the memory that flashes like gunfire across her mind every time she thinks back to the Canyons, to Solterra, to Seraphina looking down on her with pity. That’s it. So simple, and yet so incurable. Silent in your suffering, she reminds herself. Silent.
@Florentine <3
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
Oh those little words slipped from Dusk lips as soft as feathers. Yet Flora watches as they turn to steel, as they grow power and wicked strength and strike gilded skin harder than she ever meant. Florentine’s breath holds, as if one more inhale and she would taste the blood of the wound she just inflicted.
It was not meant to hurt so.
Bexley Briar was steel painted in gold. She was made of more.
The flower girl longs to imagine it, she longs to forget the way Bexley’s eyes are dark and spark no more. This Solterran girl is the sun: struck down by night she rises to burn hot and bright once more. Bexley Briar is a renegade fire that threatens all in her way. But oh, her spark is gone and her flames burned down to embers and ash. She is the dark of night, the cold in the depths of black and there is no sign of dawn. There is no flame to keep the cold at bay and it seeps out.
Would she be cold to touch?
Anxiety ripples. Florentine feels it. With eyes darkening, she sees the trembling of this Solterran girl. Between them, in the spaces between their golden skin and sunlit curls, memories of wildfire looks, of hot touches and ultimately a hurt that burned wild and savage press and creep. They beg them to remember and Flora holds them close – has she ever let go?
Bexley simply watches the Terrastellan queen, silent and beaten. Her tongue was a blade, but it is lost now. She keeps it held behind lips pressed tight.
Florentine looks and looks but it was never going to be enough to see the edge of the scar. It is not until, with twitch of her head that her golden hair falls away and Bexley exposes the truth of her trembling. Cursed shadows darken the scar ever more and Florentine looks upon a changed face.
But there is no gasp, no terrible intake of breath. No, that is kept for Florentine’s heart. What little thread she had bound it together with, unravels and it falls to shatter like glass. It is sudden and brutal and cuts like shards.
Slowly Dusk drinks in her Solterran girl, so cowed and wounded. Such a scar ran deep, its roots sinking deep, deep into the core of Bexley’s being. It leeched poison like ink and Flora watches the girl tremble; a leaf in an unforgiving wind. Was this all that Bexley had become? Was she now fragile enough to be plucked by the world and cast hither and thither against her will?
No. Never.
Florentine had held back at first, too afraid to touch, too afraid what it might start: terrible words, wounded hearts, latent feelings between them. Yet it is all water beneath the bridge of this scar. And Florentine is there, her muzzle against Bexley’s, her forehead pressing where the scar does not. Her eyes close as she holds gold close and then closer still. She exhales into the warmth of Bexley’s skin and she does not need to know the words that come, but feel the trembling of this small sun.
“And you let it steal your fire?” She asks again, insistent yet gentle, for what was a scar to the masterpiece of Bexley? What was a blemish that could be turned to art?
Ah so close in the warmth of them as Flora pours warmth and love and fire into every place with golden bodies touch. They stand so close they could be back in the meadow when youth ran strong and lust struck deep. "You are more than smoke and ash, Sun Girl. You need no healing wounds.”
And was Bexley not the one to rise from the water wounded and strike down a girl with a foolish, wayward heart?
A smile creeps upon fae lips, it reaches into the spaces between them where their skin does not touch. "Rise up, Bexley Briar.” And stop your trembling."You have always stood fierce and brave, do not waver now.”
@Bexley | We <3 Bexley so very very much | notes: text
The longer they stand there in the choking silence, the more Bexley begins to loathe this side of her: girlish, quiet, utterly subdued. Her own voice is a weight now, a rock lodged in the curve of her throat. Close-to-tears brim in those blue eyes. And as she tilts her head upward, curls falling away, the moon-lace scar finally making itself known, the rapid heartbeat growing and growing inside her chest, some part of her begs to be let go, to fall apart, to give up.
And what part of her is that? A part that has lain dormant sine she first left Greer-Briar, since she was a small child, golden and helpless in the forests of her homeland as a civil war raged on around them. A part that she has spent years suppressing and shredding and warping to force silent. A part of her that is still a girl with a penchant for violent romance - a part that reminds her, everything you’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it. Every person she's ever poured her heart into, everything she's ever loved is ash and
The weight of Florentine’s eyes on the scar is something wild and magical, sets Bexley’s teeth to itching and her nerves ablaze. What judgement awaits? What is the Dusk Queen thinking of her - what disappointment is hidden in the slow curve of her mouth? There must be something Florentine will hold against her. The dull flicker of a fire blown out, the blackness like smoke in Bexley’s previously bright gaze. How can Florentine not be disappointed in the Regent when she is so disappointed in herself?
And then, like magic, the distance between them closes. Bexley watches it with bated breath. Her heart pounds in her mouth like an animal of its own. The steps between them close at an excruciatingly sluggish pace: moments upon moments passing in syrupy slowness. It is all so strange, so astronomical. Before her body and mind can come to terms, can even overlap, Florentine is there, stepping close, and they are face-to-face, and all the world’s love comes flooding in, almost knocks Bexley off her feet as she feels Florentine’s satin skin against her own, smells the faint waft of lavender staining the air, their foreheads pressed together and the space between them warm and bright; those blue eyes flutter shut, and she struggles to draw breath, flooded by warmth and emotion.
You have always stood brave and fierce.
Something like a laugh escapes her involuntary. Have, she repeats, hoarse and bitter. I am not sure I know that girl anymore - the one I was. The one that people still see in me. The one who ever had the nerve to yell at you. Her gaze flicks up to meet Florentine's from under thick black lashes. Guilt swims through her eyes, vile and bright.
Guilt for so much - for her jealousy over Reichenbach, for the bitter words that escaped her the last time they met, for this showing up announced, all wreckage and burnt gold, fighting for even the littlest bit of righteousness.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
The citadel fades away beneath the gold of these girls. They are gilded and bright, bright with their sorrow. All that is broken is them, all that is scarred and ruinous is upon their skin. Yet there is no fear within them. Bexley Briar is a satellite – did she not know? She moves and the world moves with her. She turns and the world bends to follow. There is no star that might shine brighter than Solis’ child. There is no wind that can strip her of all she has adorned herself with.
Though that scar is a raise and ugly mark between them, it stands for nothing. Their skin is hot and smooth where the scar is not. The girls touch like silk and burn like fire. Sin is as dark as the shadows between them. It crawls out from their hearts and their souls like ants from a den. But this embrace, that Florentine and Bexley hold, is its poison. Their sins cannot return, not with this love, and not when love poisons the well from which sin drinks. Love is a fountain of water upon their bodies and in silence the girls drink as though they drown with groping fingers clutching tighter, tighter.
They lay together at the foot of a fountain once and though they are far from one now, Florentine thinks they have never been closer to that moment they once shared.
Bexley‘s laugh is a rumble between their bodies. Florentine shivers with the cold of it. Ah desolation is close. It is a bitter taste upon the air and that laugh brings it closer still. No, no, no. The flower girl’s head is shaking, her skin warming with friction. Golden lashes lower over her eyes. “You have never stopped Bexley Briar. You feel low now, but you aren’t. You never let yourself fall low.”
Florentine listens to the ache, the cry of Bexley’s wounds made known in the agony of her words. Slowly she withdraws, her skin suddenly cold where they do not touch. Amethyst eyes drink in gold and curls that roll like wild waves. “You are not that girl anymore, Bexley.” Ah, was such a revelation what Bexley expected?
In the space she made between them, Florentine takes a breath, long and slow and deep. “Like I am not the same girl who fell in love with Reichenbach. And he is no longer the boy I loved…” She trails off, her delicate head tilting like a doll – a crow with fine wings and knowing eyes. “We are all changed, like the world is ever changing. To remain so is to deny time and life. Embrace what you have become and what you have yet to be, Bexley. You will never stray too far from yourself.”
Their eyes meet, blue to purple – day to dusk, seamless and imperfect. “I won’t let you.”
Nothing has ever felt so familiar as the press of Florentine’s forehead to hers, gold on gold on gold; Bexley is almost a child again, as lovely and as innocent as she was when they first met in Ruris, unscarred and unbroken. Oh, how they’ve changed. The weight of it in Bexley’s chest could almost bring her to drowning. Every part of her aches to return to that time, when Novus was still its own world of possibility, and not ones of terror or toughness - the gilded days of her first weeks here seem unreachable now, so far away she might not recognize them even if they came to visit in memory.
But this - this she recognizes. The stubborn overlap of their heartbeats. Heat radiating from Florentine’s skin. It is dizzying and blows her starry-eyed, estranged, off-balance. For the first time in weeks, Bexley does not tense at someone else’s touch; it seems she might even fall into it, fall over and over and over herself, giving in at last to the comfort of another person, and as she thinks of this she thinks of Acton, and hates herself for it, a little bit. (Why does he seem to follow her everywhere? Stupid boy. Like the scar wasn’t enough a reminder of him.)
You are not that girl anymore. They fall apart, finally, and Bexley’s tear-shiny eyes flicker up to meet Florentine’s, as scared and childish as they’ve ever been. She feels weak. She feels wrong. It is not like her to be so delicate, so terribly fatigued, and yet this cloudy darkness has followed for so long it almost seems normal now, like the Bexley Briar who used to lovable has disappeared, been buried and burnt, inaccessible from where she stands now.
She is not that girl anymore. Is she anything, anymore, but the anger that burns its embers in her heart and follows her like a storm cloud, but the want that thrums its own drumbeat inside her chest.
The name of the Night Court Sovereign makes her nerves spark. He has gone missing, she knows, and is heartsick with worry over the loss of her first-ever friend here, but still his presence lingers, as immutable and impressive as ever. I am not the same girl who fell in love with Reichenbach… Only a few months ago, that would have been a relief to hear. Such an admission would’ve sent Bexley a wave of new hope, turned her soft-hearted, light-headed, in love again. But Florentine is right. They are not the same girls they were - they never will be - and for the first time Bexley feels the truth of it rung like a bell deep in her brain, so forceful it’s almost nauseating. Thank you, she murmurs, and her voice is softer than ever.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
None have passed by them. Though they stand together in the atrium of the Dusk Court citadel, surrounded by doors and windows and intricately carved stone, no one has dared pass by the sovereign and her visitor.
Though they pull away, the air stretches between them. They are bound – hearts and minds and souls. That day Bexley and Florentine met in the summer grasses, they became so complexly intertwined.
Hurt was their bedfellow, it pulled them apart and now pushes them back together. Closer, closer it urges and obediently the girls had listened. But now they stand, older, wiser, but no less broken than they had made each other that one terrible day.
Thank you. It is spoken in a whisper, it is a kiss upon the shell of Florentine’s ear. Her head tilts and her lips lift up, welcoming, adoring. “Always.” She says simply, softly, for of course it was simple. Florentine would always help her sister of gold and wild love.
Oh but then Bexley turns the lamp upon Florentine. The Dusk girl turns her face away, to better drink in this court of hers with its healers, its stone and its art. “I am-“ And she pauses, wondering just what she is, ‘well.” Such a tentative response, though she smiles to warm such a word, to make it more believable.
But then she laughs, free and bright and earnest. “How have I not changed?” Florentine murmurs still laughing like bells, still drinking in this court of hers. Then she turns to look at Bexley. “I have learned so many things. I have been hurt so many times and loved so many more. I am a queen, with all the responsibilities that come with that. I have upset people, tended to the dying…” A small, sad laugh is all she has left, then. “So many things, Bexley Briar. But I am glad you are here, so that I might see what has become of you, and you of me.”
A wing reaches out, a golden feather sweeping back the wave of Bexley’s fringe to reveal her scar. “You will always have love here. I did not lie to you that day I said I loved you.”
