[AW] The mechanics of cheap melodrama

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls

She stood atop the parapet, her gaze drifting out to sea.
 
From her stoop, all the world fell away to miniature. The crowns of trees were level, a series of steps she could so easily navigate over the woodland. Down, down upon the ground her courtiers moved, their business their own. Such laughter and bustle brought a certain peace to the gilded queen. Was this a restoration of order, or was Florentine merely foolish to even think there might be a moment where her court was at peace again? She brushed such a thought aside and lifted her eyes from the trees, looking out to the edges of her court.
 
A glimpse of solitary red glittered like a ruby in the distance. The flower-girl turned her gaze to watch it, memories drifting through her of a necklace she might have once held in grubby, pick-pocketing fingers. She watches the red move, slow, leisurely, a stride that itched in the bare bones of her consciousness. Her head tilted as she watched the figure move like a droplet of blood rolling through the meadow, closer, closer.
 
Familiarity burned within her.
 
Then there was a flick of a leonine tail, tipped with a sharpened horn that glinted malevolently in the light. Florentine’s wings spread wide, her body cast from the top of the parapet. She took flight as silent as an owl, but oh her heart was racing, chattering. What was this? First the unicorn of steel retribution and now Raymond? Such terrible ties these were, but she was grateful, more than she could say, that they were all here now, when Florentine was at her lowest. The Rift, Lysander had whispered as he lay dying, was being destroyed. Was that why they were all here now?
 
As she glides to him, upon wings outstretched, she dares to hope, to look, just for a moment, for different glimpse of red or fawn. She scoured the grasses for a sheen of ice, a flare of flame, but alas there was nothing. Disappointment flared, stealing her breath, pulling her stomach down, down, down. But she looks up beneath her fringe, driving away her sorrow, she had to be better, stronger than this. So she looks to Raymond, but oh, she is always searching now and her eyes soon stray from his solitary figure. It is a small, fast look, but when her eyes return to his she wonders if his face reflects the loneliness hers had, just a moment before. Raymond should not be so alone. Not now.
 
“Raymond,” She hums lightly, “You seem to have lost something.” Florentine says with a smile, small and mischievous that hopes her fears are not true. Novus was cruel, so many had come and all had lost something. “Where might she have gone? Shall we see if we can find her?” And it is a question that offers to search not just Novus, but Space and Time and everything that lay between it. She did not save his cat for him to lose her now.

@Raymond Ruth

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world