[AW] shadows seeping into skin

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls

The woman before Florentine was a spectacle. There was little about her that was not intimidating. Her beauty pulled from Florentine’s lungs each of the breaths she had pulled in tight. Grace was fierce upon this creature of gold and bronze and wicked red. Elegance drew itself in glorious curves and forced Florentine’s eyes down, down.
 
As a child, Flroentine had never cared of how she looked. Not even as she ascended to the Terrastellan throne with muddy limbs, tangled hair and eyes too wide, did she even consider how she might look. Only when a boy first truly saw her did she think she might like to look more beautiful, more… desirable. Yet even that was effort. Florentine was as Florentine is. Even this day she cares not about appearing elegant or graceful and yet, beside this creature, this woman who studies her through liquid gold, she begins to feel quite inferior.
 
A crimson cloak pours from the stranger’s slender back as crimson wine from a spilled glass. All of Florentine is slender and shaped by soft curves, but there is something sharp, something heavy in this stranger’s gaze.
 
“You are right.” Florentine says, for the stranger is. There are eyes that watch them, yet Flora does not think of horses, of politics, but of birds and wild animals. They all watch, they all wait, and as they stand, Florentine thinks that even the earth itself watches and waits. The woman, who glows before Florentine, who wears her skin as gods might, is worth the earth’s attention.
 
Forseti, as Flora might come to know her, steps to her side. The flower-girl stands statue-still, as if her skin is not warm and soft, but made of golden metal and cold as stone to touch. Her bandage falls away, uncovering her skin, her wounds. It stirs from the very core of her ghosts that whisper in the Dusk girl’s ear. Lysander chides her in whispers in her ear, imploring her to heal. So why can she not? Why does she stand like a deer before this reckoning woman and lets her tie her band of cloak tight about her torso?
 
Florentine is now crimson and gold, she is as rich in colour as the woman before her. Her bandage is as red as the flower-girl’s sorrow. It is roses wrapping about her body and her breath is shallow enough to barely stir a flower’s petals.
 
I will mend it- The stranger says and Flora’s eyes close. Lashes of gold press upon her cheek. She tilts her chin towards her chest, hides her eyes behind her veil of golden fringe, and breathes a breath that rattles her bones like leaves. “You will?” She asks, she hopes, she prays.
 
But then, where are they? And Flora’s eyes open wide and daylight floods in bright and bold and beautiful. “Viridae Forest.” The girl answers the stranger. “In Delumine, the Dawn Court. Welcome to Novus. My name is Florentine.”
@Forseti

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world