FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
Rather insistently the matron pushes the bowl before her. Curiosity abounds where wariness should, and Florentine peers down into the cup. The liquid is a tranquil pool of spilled gold and black. The girl is sure it is a stolen elixir of the gods, but she says nothing, for once.
The air rustles as her tail switches nervously. Another insistent push from the matron and Florentine is clasping the ivory bowl. The maid urges as she had with Eik and with an awkward chuckle Florentine forestalls with a bleat, ‘It’s not like, addictive is it? I am sure I already have an addictive personality and this would not-‘ With a scowl the mare thrusts the bowl at the Dusk Queen. Chastened and far too obediently, Flora hurriedly lifts the liquid to her lips.
Warm gold pours itself against her lips, passing like silk down her throat. All too swiftly Flora lowers the bowl and sidesteps the insistent mare. Hazy shadows swirl about her. Incense clings to her skin as the tent presses the air and the dark in upon the gilded girl. The perfumed clouds swirl with the idleness of daydreams. They morph like nightmares and her world begins to tip.
Her heart is a slow thing within her chest, her breath lighter than air. To breathe now is nothing at all and to live is to fall into a thousand dreams. Each limb, each movement, is transcendent and bright. Florentine’s skin is gold, but her soul is sunfire.
The body that glides to a bench feels nothing like her own. It lowers her next to a boy and a girl she thinks she might know. Ah, what must she look like to them: with her skin of air and her limbs of liquid wonder? In silence she sits, feather light. Heavy lashed eyes hang low – what thoughts are pouring away from her mind like water through a statues fingers.
Dreamily her gaze peers out and, with the elvin grace of a girl freshly intoxicated, she leans in toward the gathered pair. An ear twists to catch their laughter, her own lips curling into a lazy, enchanting smile. “I think I might know you both…” Florentine sighs, slow and lazy. Slowly her eyes drift by them, her body humming, her skin a pleasant glow that warms even the air around her.
Euphoria and sedation rise like water within her and sanity clings to the fringes of her. Just before sense is lost, it has Florentine leaning into her cushions. Her eyes glitter as they peer into the dim mist. In the clouds of incense she is sure she sees shadows she recognizes. To the boy and girl reposing beside her she whispers, “I just wanted to see what this place was about but that lady is rather insistent, isn’t she?” She pauses, her breath slow, slow, slow.
A long moment passes as silence and bells fill the space between her words. For a long moment she peers at the boy’s face for familiarity creeps like a slow, slow spider through her mind. She smiles for him, to him, because of him. She smiles into her soul and the darkness that creeps in her every corner. Ah Florentine is floating. She blinks slowly and then she breathes the satin of her lungs back out. “Eik.” A lazy blink as her eyes carefully paint his name across his face. Slowly she turns her chiseled face to Soleil and again she looks long and deep and not at all. “Soleil.” Flora at last says with too much effort, but she is pleased with her remembering and turns to water beside them, her wings a blanket across their bodies, her hair a pillow of lavender and spun gold.
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
