FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
There is nothing that works. Even together they cannot shift the great stones that have fallen to block them in. The gods are silent and there is naught but the resounding efforts of the regimes to fill the quiet of the temple.
The light blazing in through the window she cut does little to melt the stone. Slowly, naturally, the seam between worlds begins to knit closed. The girl’s heart is thunder within her chest. She thinks she hears a cry from the other side of the rubble and her thoughts drift to the ebony unicorn.
Together they toil on, striving to fix what does not wish to be fixed. Though movement catches in the corner of her eye and the flower queen turns. Trees are shrinking, turning back to saplings, young and fresh. Their branches shrink and the world beyond begins to creep back in.
For a moment Florentine simply stands and watches. Such magic reminded her of her childhood in the Riftlands, where Time and Magic would slow down and speed and turn upon a dime to run in reverse. A part of her gilded soul warms with the sight, but then her recollections are lost when her brother moves. Beside him she reaches the exit and her ears twist forward to listen to the world beyond.
Her lips tip into a smile as the Day queen leaves like a caged tiger freshly released. Then Somnus and Florentine’s lips reach to brush the edge of his shoulder as he departs. “The same to you, Somnus, always.”
It is only when the girl turns back to her brother and Cyrene that she begins to feel the creep of exhaustion upon her body. It gnaws at the edges of her yet she smiles a sleepy smile up at her brother, a shoulder rolling with indifference. (Had the gods not bothered her so?) She wonders how like Ravos this might have felt for Asterion – but it is a fleeting thought because her gaze then fills with the red of Cyrene.
“I think there is much for us to tell our court and even more for us to talk about. We shall have to meet soon.” Her lips touch each in turn and then her brother is gone – stars swallowed up in black. “I shall see you back at home, Cyrene. I am going to find everyone who came to wish us well.” With that the fae-girl steps out into the darkness leaving gods and temples behind her.
| | FIN
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
