[AW] The Road Not Taken

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls

The hospital was a hum of activity. Upon the air drifted the scent of medicines, or plants Florentine could not name and remedies she had never seen before. Such smells stung her nose and others carried her into a whimsical sleep, stealing her pain, her energy.
 
Ah what a first night it had been when the flower boy left. Pain heated her skin to fever pitch. Sweat itched along her skin, turning the soft of her cushions to abrasive claws that scratched at her tender flesh.
 
When had she been so useless? When had she lain unable to move. Her mind soared where her fractured wing could not. It wandered through memories and daydreams made by herbs and flowers. In and out of a river of unconsciousness she drifted, awake and asleep. Oh how masterful pain was, it stole her energy, kept her weighed down by its anguishing dominance. Obediently she awoke with it and fell with it too. Ah it held her trapped and it made her dance as it lulled her to sleep and back again.
 
A wreathe of forget-me-nots lie upon the table beside her, their petals fallen upon her outstretched wing. Oh they are stark against her golden skin. When did they fall? And did they descend like tears, for they lie like teardrops, blue as the ocean. Florentine might have cried an ocean, if she could remember, if she could find the truth that lay hidden in layers of shock and trauma.
 
Slowly, slowly, her eyes flutter open and drink in the verdant hospital. Vines, laden with healing plants, crawl across every wall and up every step and staircase. All around her are memories of Lysander – for she remembers him now, in the spaces between her sleep and her pain, he lingered there, waiting to be remembered. And how could she ever truly forget?
 
Her head turns and there, beside her, the once empty bed is now taken. Breath traps itself in her lungs for her eyes are full of sandy skin and horns long and black, arched like scythes for the sky. That skin, oh it is so familiar and yet… Yet Florentine stares at the hair of this girl, it is so much and so strange, so different.
 
It is in silence that the dusk girl gazes at the mare and thinks of all the ways her dusty skin and obsidian horns reminds her of her dam. But Karou never had long hair and the eyes of a tiger do not peer out from the shadows. Ah, Florentine’s mother was not here. Disappointment is a bitter taste upon her tongue and her pain rises in anguish. The terrible gash upon her limb bleeds tears she cannot.
 
What it would be to just turn over, to close her eyes and sleep for a millennia! Yet Florentine is too weighed down in pain. To move is to be struck again by claws of fire and a fist of stone. So she lays still and instead swallows deep her pain and sets her gaze curiously upon the cream girl beside her. “And how have you ended up here too?”

@Annabeth <3 and any others who may wish to join us!

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world