FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
If she were a child, then he was her Pied Piper. With a tilt of his head he guides her on. Obedient and full of curiosity, Florentine falls into step behind him.
The dark streets welcome them in. His words bid their secrets be unveiled and obediently she looks and sees, everything. “And does Solterra not wish to keep secrets, Eik?” The girl breathes as she keeps close but lets her eyes reach for the children left as paupers in the streets. Ah the ravages of war reaches its fingers out to claw at her rich skin. Its fingers are gnarled, is grasp clammy and unrelenting. It is a sharp wound it leaves upon her heart when it passes on to haunt another, phantom black with a knife of guilt stowed benwteen its fingertips.
If her heart bleeds, Florentine keeps it quiet. Still she keeps close to her guide, still her eyes reach for justice and finds it rising from the rubble. The sun is dawning here and it is as bright as Delumine.
In silence, with the warmth of that rising sun, Florentine’s muzzle touches the smooth of his shoulder. Florentine had never been prim and she had never been proper. The path she carved was her own and she holds no shame nor impropriety as she touches him so. Only comfort is found in the places where their skin touches. Only alliances were built on such foundations.
Ah, a revelation! A sister.
Florentine laughs at his bewilderment. She laughs again (such like peeling bells) when he wonders of Asterion’s omission. In silence she lets his eyes rove over her, to see in the places where she is gold and her brother is star-struck. Her shrug is liquid, her smile radiant. “We didn’t know until recently either. Sometimes even we forget each other.” And that is the first lie she tells Eik. For Florentine has never forgotten she has a brother, but she thinks the Solterran might allow her this small fallacy if only to ease his ignorance.
“We have the same father but different mothers. We grew up far apart. I was never born in Ravos. I turn to my brother for tales of that place.” With a breath she closes her eyes as her mind fills – not with Ravos, but with the Rift. “I was born in the Rift.” And this is the second lie she tells Eik this day. Yet this too is only a partial deception. She was indeed born in the Rift, but it was not where she came into existence. Note even Florentine knows the moment she began to live…
they are silver and gold as they stand beneath the sun. It turns them both to metal and in turn they gleam rich and bright. Over his skin her bright eyes roam, over each dapple, dark like the shadows of the moon. “Then may I teach you one day and show you all the ways it is not a waste of time?” Her smile is bright, her soul alight as her limbs long to find the music of these desert sands.
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
