FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
Oh she flees. She flees with moonlight as her veil, her body a golden dress peeling from the cold of the midnight lake. Florentine cradles her wing, holds it as she never cared to before – for indeed, she never cared to worry about it before now.
Yes the girl leaves Lysander behind, a solitary ear the only part of her that exposes her hope for him to follow. It is unconscious desire, for her chin is tucked tight, her gaze peering out beneath her forelock. Her wing is a trembling flag at her slim side. Her heart a fluttering bird. Each blink of her amethyst eyes is wet and the world blurs with tears that threaten to fall.
She hears when he moves, when the water splashes with his feet. Should Florentine not be grateful? Should she not be pleased? But simply she continues. Her slender limbs part the grasses that worry at her feet. All at once the Night Court is too much. It is a prison trapping her in and all Florentine has known since being a queen are beds that are not her own, a place in a court that is not hers. Who is she now? What is she now?
Flora stops only when Lysander’s moonshadow covers her. When the light of the moon is a halo gleaming through the twisted crown of his antlers. He speaks and in silence she regards him, through her haze of silent tears, through the beating of her heart and the ache of her twisted wing.
His words bring a laugh to her lips, but there is nothing light in it. There is no chime of bells nor the flyaway laugh of a time-traveller girl. It is a laugh cold like death and heavy with sorrow. “What is not on my mind?” Florentine says for she means so many things and each of them is a burden.
And how can Florentine begin when there are so many things to say? So many things that have gone unsaid? She says nothing, but drinks in his skin like soil, his antlers a diadem of earth and ivy. At his chest her blade hangs and oh it is a part of her, it defines her as much as its wearer. Golden lips touch upon the warm silver of its blade before she withdraws slowly. “Do you think me childish?” And even as she asks, her lips are a grim line, their gold pale in the moonlight. Her expression is one of grim acceptance, for it is a truth she believes of herself.
Never has she thought herself so low.
“I say children and you say nothing, but remind me of all the ways I have to heal.” She lifts her leg, her wing and rests it against the swell of her healing ribs. “You are right. Raymond thought I was a child for hunting his cat and maybe he was right, for it was she who nearly killed me.” And then there are the things which hurt more than the physical wounds she now bears. They are hidden wounds inflicted when her own courtiers betrayed her.
Ah, was it not supposed to have been easier being just Florentine?
“I want to be angry at you for evading me, but how can I when I asked in such a foolish way?” And all the fun, all the play in the water has been tainted. “Regret has a bitter taste.” Florentine says softly, sadly. And into the shade of his moonshadow she steps, and further still until her body presses against his. “If I could go back and change it, I would.” She confesses into his neck, feeling the cold, sharp lines of the dagger between them.
@Lysander
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
