He feels that this should not be so familiar – that the pattern of her words should not echo the kinds of things they always say to one another. Always she has named him with her words, claimed him, told him what he is – dangerous, foolish, mine.
She claims not to believe him, but none of those things are wrong – she knows more than she thinks, wherever her memories have fled. Florentine always has had a way of seeing things as they are, no matter how many think her too blind by whimsy, by fanciful dreams.
Lysander watches the slow lift of her wing, the dust motes that are set to drifting in the wake of its motion. He watches it reach for him, and almost he reaches back – but he swallows the desire.
If she touched him he is sure he would crumble, and he has never been a fragile thing.
Liar, she names him, and Lysander smiles. He says nothing to her questions, chimed off from her tongue like a riddle or a child’s rhyme. But in his mind he ticks them off - brave, foolish, friend, lover, and he knows which he is, and which he is not yet, and which he has never been.
His smile still lingers as she continues, and his gaze lingers too, on her, not even straying to the pale blue wreath of flowers when she lifts them. He does not wish to see how fragile they look beside her. “I am glad your injuries have not changed you so much. Still so talkative, and so demanding.” He lets that smile stay until at last she obeys, until he is released from the clear amethyst of her gaze.
It is easier to study her when her eyes are closed – to trace each line of gold, each wisp of hair, each shadow on her cheek cast by a curved eyelash. To consider the truths that have passed between them, over the years and worlds – and the ones that have not.
Tell me something about you. Make it something I have never known.
Lysander pulls in a long breath. It tastes of rich old wood, and bitter herbs ground to healing paste, and of flowers ever-growing.
“I was born a god,” he says.
Outside it begins to rain.
I can play the fool you need
make me make it up to you
@
