[P] waltz of the flowers;

[Florentine]

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

She doesn’t know how well she hides it.
 
She doesn’t know how her brother watches her and wonders too, just how she can smile like she does.
 
Even Florentine does not know.
 
Yet she smiles. She smiles as if her joy is a sun that will not set, as if the clouds of sorrow can pass before her and the heat of such a smile will burn it all away.
 
The Dusk girl smiles because she has to. She smiles because her brother does not, because she knows the shadow of sadness that presses around his heart. It is Caligo’s curse and Florentine knows what it is to be touched by night, to be hurt by stars and moonlight.
 
So she smiles, to keep the shadows back, to be a flame that will light their way. It is a small light, a small flame, enough for just one lit step – but one step’s enough for now.
 
One thing. Ah, he relents. That flame-lit smile grows brighter; one step, two. The smile is genuine, the shadows smaller. Maybe she is not as broken as she first thought. Delight sparks in her heart and spreads out like a fuse to the very ends of her being.  
 
These children of Gabriel stand watching the festival crowds together. Asterion the quiet of their father, and Florentine the bravery he never acknowledged. Her skull tilts as she considers her brother. Long limbs take a step towards him, and her jaw rests along his spine. She peers past him to review the festivities, “That was a very foolish thing to have said.” His sister mocks him lightly, her voice a singsong murmur. “I could choose so many things.”
 
Yet she does not. Even as she looks at them, even whilst she lets the moment drag on as if she considers a hundred things that would make him uncomfortable, she has already made her decision.
 
Florentine will ask him for only one thing. “Tell me a story about your magic.” She whispers. She could go back in Time, she could steal from him any privacy of his past and watch her older brother grow from a child into an adult. Yet she doesn’t, no matter how much she longs to know him better. Instead she will let him choose a story to tell her. She will let him choose which piece of himself to reveal.

@Asterion

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world