[AW] The mechanics of cheap melodrama

[Florentine]

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

He has been brusque with her the day she saved Ruth, but she was a child then and did not dwell upon his tone. But lately, there had been too much hostility cast her way. Oh to be the child she once was who bowled boldly into trouble without any thought for herself. She is not so free-spirited now, not with the weight of a crown like fetters around her golden ankles.
 
Her ears fall to her skull at his tone, her eyes close, to shield herself from his sorrow. She knows it is grief, she can taste the bitterness of it in the air. She sees it in the twitch of that sharp, leonine tail.
 
“You do not know for sure, Raymond.” The flower girl says, softly, warily. From beneath the sweep of her hair she watches him, waits for his dismissal of her hope. “If there is one thing I know, people very rarely die in the Rift.”
 
The terrible truth that she does not say lies unspoken between them: any stolen away into the Rift always come back changed. Always.
 
It was up to the Rift as to what would happen to Ruth, good or bad. A shiver slides along her back, cold and damp. One look at the crimson warrior and she knows such thoughts have haunted him too. Sympathy oozes from her, though she neutralizes most, for what backlash might it cause?
 
Raymond does not smile with her or because of her. The flower girl’s smile, small but hopeful, shatters against the solid wall he builds between them. Yet he is discontent to leave it there and his retort is a whipcrack that cuts her as sharply as his tail might. “If you do not like my joke then do not start with one yourself.” Florentine says firmly, but not coldly. Her nape arches, its curve soft, it keeps her gentle where her words might make her sharp.
 
“You are new Ray and you know nothing of Dusk yet, otherwise you would know why I mentioned the need for our presence in the swamp.” Florentine stands her ground and thinks how well Reichenbach and Jude have trained her, how she does not bow beneath criticism and stress anymore. “Besides,” the fae-girl continues, “are these important things any more important than finding Ruth?”

@Raymond 

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world