FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
Life was a terrible tangle, but it was not as bad as the tangle in Florentine’s hair. The mess had occurred when she stopped to watch the dawn sun rising upon Denocte’s horizon. The flower girl had ascended to the highest heights of the citadel turrets, the place where the mountain winds blew fierce. There, she spread her one good wing, the feathers rippling with the rush of air. Oh how that wild wind tugged her! Oh how tempted she was to throw herself from the citadel heights and fall until her two wings caught her - it would not have been the first time…
Florentine was made for falling: into life, into death, into love, into tangles…
But there would be no catching her now. She bore a broken wing and it hung, a twisted, wrong thing at her slim side. So the gilded-girl stood atop the citadel wall (a safe distance behind the wall) and watched the sun rise as the wind continued its relentless appeal. It tugged and tugged and toyed with her mane. It plucked petals from their nests of golden hair and threw tendrils across her eyes. All the while the flower-girl did not sway. Not until the sun had risen above the mountain crown, lighting their edges like jewels upon a diadem, did Florentine turn away.
And when she did turn, and step inside the still of the citadel, removed from the wind’s toying grasp, only then did she realise the terrible tangle of her hair. For a girl with so much hair and flowers woven in at every turn, a tangle was an inevitable, every day risk.
Slender limbs carried her along the flagstone halls, her feet echoing in the still of the early morning. All the dark corners of the citadel whispered of its missing queen and Florentine’s heart ached with Isra’s absence. There was no part of the castle that was not touched by the dream-girl’s magic. Every hidden corner was wrapped in the beauty and mystery only a storyteller could imagine. Florentine walked like a dream-girl borrowed, her eyes shut tight, the tangle of her mane falling down her throat as her chin tipped up and she tasted the wonder of magic here.
Ah, for a sweet–sorrow moment she missed her dagger so. But she missed it’s wearer more. Lysander was gone and with it her magic, no longer was Time whispering in her ears, no longer were hidden worlds warming the metal of her dagger. It was gone, to find blood and war, not the whimsical worlds dreamed up by a girl of gold and flowers…
Slipping through another door the girl entered the bathrooms and before a gilded mirror she stopped. Within the mirror’s reflection stood a girl with amethyst eyes bright with dawn’s first light and skin gilded with the haze of the morning sun. Her face was delicate beauty, her shoulders slimly carved, but her hair was a wild thing, a tangle like a phoenix’s nest. Slowly Florentine began to pick at the tangles and the girl in the mirror followed suit.
A door clicked and opened and a second girl appeared in the mirror. This girl was fireborn. If Florentine was the gold of a licking flame, this other girl was it’s burning, crimson heat. Her wings were broad and perfect and oh how it made the flower-girl’s twisted wing ache with longing! Amethyst eyes met glowing gold within the mirror and a smile curled the Dusk girl’s lips.
“Moira Tonnerre,” the once queen hums, the name put upon her lips by her brother’s confessions. “A pleasure to meet you at last.” Flora’s dusk eyes glitter, the twilight of a thousand stars warring both day and night. “I am Florentine. I am not sure whether my brother ever mentioned me...?” Her lips curl into a smile as gold as the lavish frames about each mirror. Her voice echoes in songs and bells upon each tiled wall of the ornate room.
It is always interesting who you meet in a trip to the girls’ bathroom…
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
