FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
You were a child.
Florentine has been many things. But, this dark voice, seeping in from the night, is full of accusation and she wonders when being a child might have been a bad thing...
“When?” From her place amidst the crowd, the young queen turns to set her gaze upon her accuser. The question falls to dust upon her lips, waiting to be brushed away by Time. Florentine has been a child so many times before and she will be so many times again. But, as she drinks in this unicorn of crimson hair and silver skin, that accusation soon makes sense.
If she were any other, if the fear of death could ever seize her, then she might have run from this angry woman with her blade of iron. However, Florentine remains fast: even when the moonlight slides like silver blood down Indra’s lethal horn, even when she stalks like a hunter set upon devouring its prey.
Obedient as a doe before her damning blade, Flora stands as soft as caramel. Ah, but that tip of the blade, sharp and fine, is as cold as ice beneath the surface of her skin. It calls her blood and it rises to the wound - red tears are close to falling down her cheek.
I watched you die.
With eyes closed, Florentine is upon that frozen battlefield again. All at once the sting of an iron blade is nothing to the crush of pain, enough to end her life. This girl remembers what it was to be a child: small, breakable and as free and wild as a leaf upon the wind.
“I know.” The words feels soft as the moon upon her lips as she gazes with lilac eyes down the blade upon her cheek. “I saw you.” But Florentine does not mean as she lay dying that terrible day... No, she had been there again, watching from the shadows as her older self lay dying (and then dead) beneath the grieving gazes of her mourners. This witch-girl had been there, just as silver, just as red.
Then the fae queen says, softly, lightly, “Welcome back, Indra.” Her head tilts away, glittering eyes catching a flash of antlers in the dark. Who else from Flora’s previous lives would come to find her here?
It had been just a small movement to look at her flower boy, but it was enough to move the blade and a cut blossoms, red and angry. In silence the anthousai wonders if they might ever stop bleeding for each other.
@Indra | | eeeee, excited! I <3 Indra
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
