FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
And is your curiosity sated? She had asked him with hurt and anger writhing like serpents through her every thread of gold. Florentine had watched him, even as she shivered, even as she quaked with turmoil and sadness.
The answer he will give, she already knows it will make her a martyr upon the pyres of the festival fires. He does not deny her, moving closer, stealing her space; her judge and jury (she does not know yet just how much).
There is only smoke between them and the air expelled from their lungs. He has stolen everything else, but her eyes gleam firefly bright. She is gold, buried in the dark of his mahogany skin.
If she were any other girl, Flora might have leant back as he pressed in upon her. She doesn’t, though her muzzle pulls in toward her chest.
Never. Ah, Florentine had known to be wary of his answer. She had known it would bring her to her knees, but she did not think it would be this way. Feline, she had waited for his answer, ready to seize it with sharp teeth and justify her anger.
It does not burn her, but rather it was the spark and she the match. He lights her up, electric and so full of fire. Her gaze is fervent amethyst glittering in the dark of a cave. A thrill slips like electricity through her nerves, the air between them crackling where they do not touch but stand so close. She begins to smile, knowing, feeling, relating. Florentine knows what it is to never have her curiosity sated, to strive for more, always.
Ah, she begins to reach for him, as he to her, a moth for the flame he holds. Her hurt is forgotten, replaced by a traitorous thrill. But Lysander never touches her. He stops close enough to touch, yet still as far from her as the stars in the sky. With soft, deft words, he rouses her from the heady drug of such a thrill.
That is when she remembers her anger, though with that look, with those words, he douses her with ice.
He steals the words from her tongue and the breath from her lungs; Florentine lets her flower boy take them all.
She opens her eyes, her tenacity retuning, seeping along her limbs. Her ears fall back as feline fury melds with a rabbit’s hurt. Lysander undoes her with words and Florentine no longer knows who she is in the wake of his damning questions.
“Yes!” She breathes at last, all fierce fire. She leans into whatever space is left between them. “In any of those times, in all of them you should have told me!” Flora’s sad eyes close, even as she relishes their proximity, dragging in the scent of him, the familiarity. Oh how his anthousai wants to hate him, but a part of him is Home to her.
Lysander once told her he had never been in love but this was different – was it not? “Have you never loved anything enough to want to bend everything for them? To want to know at the first instance if they are in trouble and keep them, even a second longer than existence will allow you?” Florentine asks of him. Each word is an explosion, each one rips from her tongue, dragging a piece of her soul out with it. There is something dangerous within her questions, something powerful and consuming and darker than she has ever known.
So, when he speaks again, his every word a mirror he holds up to her. He delves deeper in the dark of her than any have ventured before and the anthousai reels with what he finds. Realisation is a cold, fetid shiver down her slender spine and needles through her heart. Reichenbach might have pulled apart her heart, but Lysander so deftly breaks open the rest of her. There is no part he leaves unexposed with his words.
Petals fall in disarray; she has no answer for him. Softly, gently, he has exposed her contrary heart. His voice is a a cool balm across her fevered skin. She might have naively wished for her sins to end there, but they run deeper still.
Her flower boy’s revelation that he followed her here, ah what a thrill it is. How long had she hoped he might have come for her? It was there even that first day, when she still loved Reichenbach (though their love was already threadbare and breaking). It is a terrible, contrary girl who stands before this fallen god and still hopes he came for her and not to tell her of the Rift.
Though her every folly lies between them, she tips up her gaze to his, prepared to walk naked before his judgement. “I came because I was curious.” And she pushes his words back at him (though they are true) as she dares to keep her eyes on his – where she might fall, where she dares to ground herself in his earthen gaze. “I was trapped as Novus stole my magic.’ Florentine need not tell him, But it is restored now. So she takes a breath, solemn and heavy, “In one timeline I will have gone back to them.” Of that she is sure. But she curls into herself and away from Lysander as her shame crowds in like shadows from the deep.
“I could go at any time to change the past, then return here, to the moment I left, before even a second passes.” Her gaze holds his, her brutal truth cutting like a knife between them. “I haven’t wanted to go back, Lysander,” Such a small voice it is that reveals the Dusk girl’s deepest sin yet.
“I challenge you about love, but wont even go back to save my parents.” Florentine concedes, her blade as quiet as the dead.
@Lysander | | notes: text
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
