FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
You taught me the courage of stars before you left.
There are swirls through the dust. Great sweeping patterns of polished wood furl and unfurl in silent grace down the length of the hall.
The tip of her wing is dark with dust and its gold is turned to copper in the light. Her other wing still extends up, up. It is an arm beneath which she dances, a wing outstretched to catch the sigh of midnight air. The wind does stir through open lattice windows and it might draw her into the sky and ease her mind to forgive her other wing, the one that has forgetten how to fly.
But the only flight the girl makes is across the floor. She is fleet of foot and full of song. What rhythm is it that her feet find? She is slow as a lament and then fast as a polca. Her heart spins in her chest for the song, it joins with the moving of her feet and soon the girl is one with the dustmotes as she swirls and dances a waltz along the moonlight hall. Florentine’s amethyst eyes open to watch the particles drift by her through silver light. Oh they are grace and beauty and together they dance, the girl and dust, endless and time-struck.
The gyspsy might have laughed then, if she did not smell a scent of pine and flowers. Her steps slow, as if ivy creeps from the ground to capture her limbs. Slower, slower the girl dances and, though she longs to, her eyes do not lift from the dust motes swirling about her.
Slower and slower she waltzes, waiting, waiting and then there is green upon her. There is ivy in her heart and ferns framing her soul. He has inspired a forest within her. Florentine is a wild wood, grown just for him. There is no part of her he has not reached and her steps slow, slow. She can feel grasses brushing against her knees, hear her sounds of his breath like a breeze through the forest boughs. Her lashes are the silk of a golden spider’s web hung between branches and her mane the waterfall of a weeping willow.
All at once he steals her away, as he should have, once. But war came knocking for Lysander.
Keep dancing, his prayer implores her. It is a command that creeps along her spine, each word a fingertip pressing, brushing. Obediently, Florentine does not stop even as her dance slows. The dust motes watch the forest god, a boy kept from his magic, kept from his divinity. They veil their partner, as if she might need protection. But…
“Do you remember when we danced barefoot?” The flower-girl hums, thoughtful and soft, “Upon the black glass and beneath a sky full of stars…” and things that swirled in the night. Florentine slows again, until she falls still all momentum lost to her dreams, her memories. Her chin is tipped up, up, up. She hears the call of the stars, feels the warm of obsidian glass beneath her feet. Ah, eternity lay beneath that glass floor and she was not afraid for it to tumble through.
“Will you come and dance with me again?” And Florentine looks to her boy of revelry and liquor, and smiles with the gold of sunlight dawning through a temple of trees.
@Lysander
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
