FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
Lysander’s breath upon her hair is a mist of frost creeping through a garden of vines. It tangles between threads of gold and petals soft as bruises. Florentine feels nothing of the bite of winter – for where was cold when she was here, adorned in love and blood that runs, hot, hot, hot?
Everywhere his warm breath touches, her skin shivers. Florentine turns to him, a flower turning towards its sun, and, just for a moment worries for his mortality. Her own mortality is a dress she has worn for so long. She knows it well, feels its weight. But his, oh, his is new; does it itch him still? She wonders. Does it rub him raw? She fears. For her, mortality is a comfortable fit, lycra to stretch and be forgiving of all the mysteries of Time. But upon Lysander, it seems an ill fit.
Oh the stars hide their fires behind clouds that wander aimlessly by. Only when the final one blinks its last does she lower her gaze to find her flower boy’s eyes closed. Florentine is lost in the thick of his lashes for they are a dark woodland brushing against the curve of his cheek.
Where, oh where would she go and what would she do for all eternity if not to find her god of earth? The flower girl smiles with him, despite her worries.
Everywhere within Denocte is a memory, bittersweet. It is the taste of blood upon her tongue. It is a bruise pressed upon, worried, harassed. To be here, after all that has gone before seems like a sin. To be here now breeds within her anger, frustration and hurt. Each are terrible aches within her stomach. To be here at all feels like blasphemy, to be here with Lysander is worse.
So oh, what it is to step closer to Lysander then. Beneath the silent roar of a million stars, her lilac eyes lift up to his and beg them open. With her dagger pressed between them, warming with the heat of his throat, singing with the hum of his blood (blood it knows more intimately than any), Florentine muses lightly, “Do I?” She is quiet contemplation, golden lips held tight together before his lips find her cheek. “I only have worlds so long as my dagger finds them.”
The traveller pulls dagger’s chain free from her throat, only to fix it about her lover’s. “Now I only have those worlds, so long as I have you.” The dagger hangs over the curve of his breast, the clutch of bones and muscles hiding the thump of his heart. It is two beats before she peers up at him again, her nose crinkled, “Too cheesy?”
Florentine pulls away from him then, a smile adorning her lips, laughter bubbling in her throat. “I do tire of Novus, Lysander. But,” her eyes drift over him, her dagger hanging about his throat. ”I think it has just become interesting.”
She makes for the water, petals brushing a final embrace across his skin before trailing in her wake. The girl unfurls her disfigured wing, relishing the ache of it. “Come, we may as well take advantage of the hospitality of the locals. I fancy skinny dipping for tonight – until you are ready to show me your home and let me meet the anthousai...”
@Lysander EMBRACE THE CHEESE
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
