[AW] Invictus - [Meeting]

[Florentine]

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There was a dark magic in Tinea Swamp.
 
In one glance it was dark and dank and dirty. Branches stretch with their great limbs of gnarled and twisted shadow. They are clawed fingers reaching across the tangled canopy above their heads. There is a mist that hangs like silver breath and presses in close. It threatens to smother and, from all eyes, hide the darkest secrets of the swamp.
 
But look again, shed the evil from your lashes, and it is a beautiful, intricate masterpiece. Golds brush with greens as they ripple across quiet waters. The air trembles with the hum of insects and wilderness. And in the darkness of the waters, beasts of myriad colours stir. Their scales are rainbows, even below, where light will never reach them. They twine about Florentine’s limbs, like dangerous words, lies so easily told and set to trip the unaware.
 
The Dusk Queen drinks in the sight of her people. They are mysterious here, art caught in the painting of the swamp. They are shadow and flame, violence and pain. The swamp curls about their party, gathering them all into one. The was a time of unity, not discord.
 
Florentine watches Jude, the amethyst of her gaze darkening the pink of him. Her gaze is a bruise, dark and hurtful and so full of hot, hot blood. The queen welcomes his words, she had encouraged them all to speak and oh they do! Angers flare like sparks and the swamp leans forward those shadows – dark and dank – and swallows them all.
 
The flower girl does not blink and she does not stir. She watches each of them, she gives them their moment and all the while her soul begins to wonder. It has been made sharp; it will pierce worlds with a pin-prick, it will tear them with a slice sharp enough to split even the atoms of the air they breathed.
 
Florentine’s soul is straying, though she remains in body ever gold and bright and full of flowers. There is a tangle of beauty here and the swamp descends upon her, it draws her in like it eats the words of those who have turned up for this important council.
 
Does she become the darkness, or does it become her?
 
Maybe both, for her eyes linger on none of them long. She listens as she gazes out towards the Night Court and, in the darkest parts of her, wishes them hell.  She lingers on the spaces between her compatriots, the bonds made ragged by lies and truth and betrayal. But they are here, here as they are still bound together by loyalty and love for their compatriots.
 
She thinks that might be enough to save them.
 
When Florentine does look at them, her gaze cuts itself on the jagged point of a shattered tine, it slips from a golden feather, drowns in leonine-gold eyes, tangles in hair as black as the corners of the sea and lastly rests upon flushing pink.
 
Jude is a kirin flushed with blossoms. He stands sentinel, even when the winds of his own discomfort come to rattle him so. Florentine might stand to watch his blossoms fall like bride to the sodden earth at her feet. But she asked for this, she asked for them all.
 
This girl will seize peace like her wings the air.

She is grateful to them all. Each one for voicing their troubles, their desires. They needed to move forward now, each to be heard and their reasons known. They would each meet upon common ground and from there negotiate Dusk's winding, unlevel paths together.
 
“My Regime are right, Jude. Cyrene's words hold such truth.” Florentine says at last, with a stranger’s voice and a gaze as hard as flint. It softens, for a moment as she looks to Cyrene, grateful. “Whoever your informant is, they cannot be trusted. There has never been any talk or action toward war with Night. I am not the warmonger you and your informant believe me to be.” She pauses, thoughtful, considering – Were her words so taken apart and analysed? "I have seen the dreadful spoils of war and died in its wrath." Her eyes closed, and she is that child again, dying in the snow, with lungs so full of red, red blood. "I will not bring that on my kingdom if there is any way to avoid it." 
 
The Dusk girl turns a lilac gaze back to Jude, and it is the shadow of impending darkness. Her shrug is a ripple of dark disinterest. “That is not to say I have not considered it, desired it even.” Such an admission sets the swamp to silence. Crickets still beneath the weight of such words, heavy with a malice that, from her, should only ever be petal light. Vengeance and retribution were demanding masters, the weight of them heavy as they drove her on and on and on.
 
“Dusk will not merely lick her wounds but neither will we incite war.” Her fierce gaze is not just for Jude, but it sinks into every one of them gathered. Florentine wonders of this anger within her, of a fury born of injustice. It is an anger she once only thought existed within her mother and the arresting gold of Karou’s tiger’s gaze.
 
This anger undoes her. It unspools all that Florentine is and melts her into liquid gold. But she is forged again, reshaped in the fire of her discontent. These sins she has been dealt have changed the Dusk girl so.
 
“We all want peace amongst us. It is what I have called us here for. Yet I have also been asked to clarify what has happened, and it has only been made clear that this needs to happen. So I will say this, just once.” She takes a breath, expanding lungs that are wound too tight.
 
“I did not cast Isorath from this court. I removed him from his position as Regent because he put his heart before his court. He met his Queen’s lover in private, many times. He did not deign to inform me of his feelings for Reichenbach throughout any of this. Instead, I was left to find out when I discovered them flirting together at our Winter Festival. It does not strike me as the actions of a man who loves his court above everything, including his own desires, for in doing so he compromised his Sovereign and his Court. So then, when I removed him as Regent, his pride saw him leave for Denocte where he is now a part of their Regime. Lysander is right, what has he to be vengeful about? He has the love of the king he desired and he has another position of power. Isorath has done well for himself, what benefit would it do him to bring his dragon down on us, a smaller and weaker court? The only wrong he has been dealt so far is to be removed as Regent. To attack us would only serve to stoke his pride, but maybe you are right, Jude, the Vectaeryn are a proud race." There is no anger, no fire in her words. Flora is, in this moment, almost nonchalant. 

The queen stops, pausing, considering her heart and the way it does not clench, the way she is, at last, dispassionate. Was it that easy to fall out of love? If so, how deep was the love she had once shared with the Night King?
 
“Reichenbach has wronged us. He has hypnotized me in his jealousy and attacked Lysander with his Crows. I will not let that pass so easily. I will not let him make a mockery of us in this way. I will not let us concern ourselves only with healing and fall victim to men like Reichenbach.” Her lips reach for Cyrene, a kiss of solidarity, for the people she lost. “We owe it to each other to be stronger.”
 
Shame is a monster within her, it twists her stomach tight and howls in her veins. Florentine is electric here, turning the water to static that sizzles with the anger born of her shame. “In everything I have done, removing Isorath from Denocte, seeking council with Seraphina for an alliance, I have thought only of Terrastella. These are the things I have done and why. The past is the past, I will not change it now.” Her eyes drift to Lysander and the sight of him stirs memories of blood, ragged flesh and broken bones.
 
There is a moment where she drinks them all in, in a silence as heavy as stone. “We will have our pound of flesh.” Her eyes settle upon Lysander’s and do not sway. They are the broken parties here, but the wounds of Reichenbach’s actions spread to all of Terrastella too.
 
“I do not know what form retribution will take. It will not be war, Jude. But know this: dragons do not scare me. A dragon should not scare any of us, for we can rebuild from ash.” And her eyes settle upon the Israfel’s phoenix. 

“Our numbers are small, but we are determined. I have done what I have done, for right or wrong, and now I look to the future. If anyone has any further discontent, now is your time to air it, for after this, I wish for us all to look towards the future of Dusk. We can all stand together, proud and strong or remain weak, split apart by hurt, animosity and misunderstanding. Taking hold of our future, I have appointed Asterion as our Regent, Cyrene as our Emissary and Israfel as our Warden. There are many more places to be filled and I long to fill them. It is time the gloaming lasted. It is time dusk is not lost in the blink of an eye to night. We will make the twilight last, together.”

@Asterion, @Cyrene, @Israfel, @Jude, @Lysander - what a novel! sheesh. So, my friends, I hope Dusk can move forwards from here. Any questions, hit me up :) <3

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world