FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
They are laughter echoing in the cradle of mountains. They are wild song breaching the crowns of jagged mountains and drifting on up into the ceiling of the world. They are the splash of water that shatters a once perfect mirror. And the purple-black of the night sky watches as the lovers wrestle in silken waters.
Florentine fights, with laughter on her lips and vivacity gleaming in her amethyst eyes. She ignores the pain of a bruise nudged by a knee, a healing wing crushed between grappling bodies. Ever has she been the girl to live upon the edge, too full of life to ever be anything but. Florentine is a wild wind, destined to move on, destined to be but a memory.
But this night she is so very present and, as the waters fall still, as she sinks below the surface and watches the bubbles rise from her lips, Florentine knows she is still a breeze too young. Lysander is a statue before her, he is a sentinel tree, his antlers a bough beneath which is shelter and peace.
The traveller girl wonders of his wisdom, of what his verdant eyes see when he looks to her. Lysander laughs, another song to join those already gone before it. He laughs as the last bubble pops the surface, though Florentine has stopped blowing. Her held-breath is a burn within her lungs.
Boldly she lifts her face from the water and it drips like diamonds from her chin. Her breath releases as a shudder, water rippling in a wake from her sides. She is exposed beneath Lysander’s gaze and her smile, her laugh is all gone. Regret is all she feels in her heart and oh, it feels so much worse than any heartbreak before it. Embarrassment curls hot like oil and sharp as a scorpion’s tail.
Her neck curls, chin dipping towards her chest as he laughs again. She does not smile, though she watches him somber as a pyre from beneath her lashes. Each part of her Lysander names, oh she feels its ache, how right he is. How easy it was to forget them all, when inspired by laughter and love.
Her wing, her leg, her ribs… each a reminder of how unready she is. He once laughter is a phantom in the mountain passes and it returns to haunt her. Indeed, she is not ready, she knows she is not, yet the reality of how unready, how close she came – except for his eyes, his wonder for a moment and then her bubbles. Her stomach twists with a second hammer strike of embarrassment.
She was a queen once. Florentine’s wing (the only one that matters) lifts angular and wrong, from the water. She gazes at it. Yes, she thinks. She was a queen once, before her wing broke.
Florentine’s golden head nods, she agrees, oh yes she agrees yet she turns from Lysander. His laughter, though soft and genuine – she knows it is, she does, is thorn in her heart, a fan to the flames of her shame.
The water is too much, the night too still, the mountains stand as too many witnesses, so Florentine turns and makes for the shore. “Yes, yes, you are right,” are the words she leaves behind her to join their phantom songs upon the crowns of Denocte’s mountains.
@Lysander
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
