FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
Estelle.
The name hangs as heavy as a prayer between them. Though she does not speak it, for in this moment it is only appropriate for Moira to speak such a name, Florentine does feel its weight upon her tongue. She feels how the name rolls, how soft its ending is, like birds alighting. A wing upon the air, a brush of paint over a blank canvas… how can a name convey so many things with only a few letters?
Lysander.
Asterion. Florentine tries each and oh how they hold such weight too. How they draw for her images so perfect, so vivid, so painful and yet so utterly wonderful. Upon her lips is a private smile, it plays along the gold of her. It dances in the low light of the bathroom and presses her gilded lashes down toward her cheek. Florentine thinks, if Moira’s feelings are anything like hers, that she might know what it is to love Estelle too.
Her gaze tips up from that secret place it went to. It rises to behold Moira once again, but no longer is it through a mirror where glass can obscure, make dull or taint. No, the Dusk girl beholds Moira with her own eyes. She drinks in the phoenix of her, the crimson of burning feathers, the gold of a flame hotter than the sun and the slivering black of the ashes.
“You are a phoenix, Moira Tonnerre.” Florentine says - as if Moira did not know! But, as she steps closer, as she lets the Night girl begin to plait her hair Flora asks quite softly, “Are you due to be reborn, or have you already?” And there is no shame in her question, not for Moira to feel and not for her. Florentine is a phoenix by any other name. Ah, she has died already (so many times Florentine hears Time whisper) and been reborn to touch her father’s ice flowers grown at her burial site and seen herself cremated by her mothers flames. So Florentine knows too what it is to be a creature like a phoenix and that is why she no longer cares to see Moira through glass, not any more.
When she is done drinking in Moira (her gold, her red, her vitality) the Time-girl’s gaze shifts to Neerja. Her lips lower, just to brush the orange hair and starling black lines, just to be reminded of her childhood and another tiger that waits for her return. Florentine’s smile is full of delight and only the barest shadow of sorrow when she speaks. “Oh, my mother’s tiger was a fierce creature, but I was a rebellious girl. I did not stay where my parents told me to, I got myself in trouble more than I should. I died because I did not listen to them – though it was right, though Fate commanded it, like it has and will and will again and again for all of eternity. Florentine does not say.
“My mother’s tiger could turn things into gold with just a look… I think she did it to my father’s legs once, much to his displeasure.” In her voice is laughter. It rings out through each word that tumbles like a novel from her lips. “He walked strangely for days afterwards.”
The girl’s amethyst eyes close as she feels Moira’s comb within her hair. “Roses,” She whispers thoughtfully. “I have never had roses in my hair. Only these amethyst flowers that grow and die forever here. Shedding petals is a nightmare. One day I might charm a broom to follow me around. Or a hoover.” Then she pauses and tilts her head as she regards Moira. “You may not know what a hoover is… Sorry, throwback from a previous life. Heh.”
She steps closer to the phoenix girl, feeling the heat of her skin, the press of her unblemished wing against Florentine’s broken one. It might be time, she thinks, to go home to the Dusk healers….
“What braid have you made?” Florentine asks as her eyes pour like water down Moira’s hair. “I should like roses in my hair too.”
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
