Nothing.
Florentine wished she hadn’t breathed, she wished she hadn’t taken that small easing breath. But what a relief it was to hear that word, like a glimpse of sun after a storm.
But it was false hope...
For more words come. They arrive like a tsunami, pouring from Bexley’s pale lips. Their power is unrivalled, they veil knives within Bexley’s satin voice and the weight of them push Flora back, back into the water.
One step, two steps, the dusk girl doesn’t know how many it takes until she stops. Shock is a canyon between them. The cool of the oasis, the water still clinging to her hair from her joyful flight through the waterfall, they are all reminders of what was… But this creature that stands before Flora is as tumultuous as a storm. She is completely different to the girl that so seized Florentine on the fields of Ruris. Upon her lips, this girl of visceral stares, tells Flora of what could never be.
The dusk girl’s eyes shut, as if closing them might lessen the force of each word, might ease their cuts that slice so deep, too deep.
Somewhere her soul lies bleeding. Somewhere her heart is shattered, and burned to little more than ash upon the winds.
It is impossible to know which hurts more, which statement has razed her so low. The girl is flotsam in the terrible wave of Bexley’s ire and she was not ready for any of it. She is set to drift upon the waves, ragged and bitten by winds and salt water.
It is a naïve, childish thought that sweeps unbidden into Flora’s mind, but, alas, it cannot be stopped: Was this the girl she met so long ago within the meadow? It was hard to think that such a girl with golden smiles could harbor this wild fury and resentment. Maybe that was Florentine’s fault all along… To love so openly without opening her eyes…
And yet, and yet Florentine is the fool who still cannot think of Bexley with anything but love, though her wounds are deep and Bexley’s knives are sharp and wet with blood.
A creeping little voice begins to wonder how deep Bexley’s own wounds are. The ones inflicted by Flora’s own lips, her own words…
Was she unlovable? Or was Reichenbach incapable of love? Or was this all just some game for him? Questions, so many that throw themselves upon her tongue, that fill her mind. Questions filling her with an anger so dark, so wild it is terrifying to feel. Questions that steal the breath from her lungs with their grief. Questions that fill her with shame, like an inexperienced child in this adult game of love. And all are questions that gather like ice, ice to leave her numb. Ice that worries her nerves until she feels nothing.
Just, nothing
Florentine’s eyes blink, lashes sticky with tears as they fan her drying cheeks. She hopes this might be the last time she cries over love, the last time she feels her heart ache with such wounds. She is not sure she recognizes what her heart has become, it is different now.
She is different now. And she knows they are all such foolish thoughts.
Another step back.
“I will go then.” And this voice is as alien as her heart has become. It is a voice so terrifyingly numb, so bleak.
Eyes that have cried too much, fall to the bag at Bexley’s feet, still filled with tinctures to heal, to ease pain. But Flora is sure there is no remedy to ease this pain of theirs. “Keep the bag, for your wounds.” She says anyway, for even this alien heart cannot help but find some form of small, small love.
Only the water stirs as she leaves, as her wings spread, numb and unfeeling, to carry the girl towards the sky.
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
