FLORENTINE
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.”
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
