FLORENTINE
always one decision away from a totally different life
A phoenix never stops burning itself to ash. Those words. That smile… Florentine looks at both and does not smile in answer. No, she looks upon Moira and knows what it is to burn as a phoenix and rise from the ashes. How many times has she died now? She is the girl who time cycles again and again. She remembers a world so far from Novus, the one where her parents still live, where she died a child in the midst of a battle… She knows what it feels like to die, to have life slowly eek out, for the dim dark to set in… to slowly lose feeling of her limbs, her torso…
Florentine knows what it is to die, she will die over and over for an eternity. She will be reborn for an eternity more. She is the time-traveller girl, a creature of a thousand worlds. Nothing is abnormal to her, monotony is not within her bones. Her magic stirs in answer, it slips through her veins like ichor. It is as gold as she, it glows brighter than the sun as it cleaves its way from one world into the next. It rises in answer and she feels the press of universes whispering to open.
Her lips reach forward and the air shimmers, it feels heavy and hot. When was the last time she opened a new world? Was it when she stood upon Denocte’s cliff side and drowned the world in foreign sunlight? Or was it when she took Raymond to find his monster Ruth? All she knows is that each was too long ago. Her Time-born blood is restless and it calls out in song to the world that press in upon this existence.
Slowly the time-girl turns her head from the ripple of air and sets her sights upon Moira. “And sometimes that is the most right thing it could ever do.” Heavy lashes close, pressing down upon the cut of her fine cheek. Her lashes are gold dust, upon them a thousand wishes for all the worlds she has and has not visited. “Each time it is reborn, it is to something different, something new. Each chapter more wondrous and more painful than the last.” Florentine muses, her voice a song of ages lost and not yet come. “If you are a phoenix, Moira Tonnerre, then you are blessed, no matter the trials.”
You sound much bolder than I.
“Do I?” Florentine muses as she lets her lips slide over the tiger’s silken coat. Upon its rumble, a disgruntled warning that has even the air trembling for mercy, Flora lifts her lips from the creature’s back. Still the brush of gold and black ghosts like whispers over her lips. “Are we not all bold, just in different ways?”
The tug of her hair is a lullaby. Each pull like the sway of a song, the rise and fall, the rocking of a boat. The comb works through each golden snarl of hair. ‘Hmm,” Florentine agrees with a smile, “I am not sure it has ever been brushed. Even as queen I was more inclined to turn up to a meeting covered in mud and twigs than in silks and pearls.” Her gaze is the warmth of Denocte’s bonfires when she turns it back upon the girl beside her. “I am not made for the lavishness of courts. I enjoy adventures far too much.” I am heir to a wild-magic land more inclined to kill you than exalt you.
Her heart is full of Riftmagic. She is sewn together with time and wicked wonder. Her petals fall to the cold stone floor and for a moment it is as if they tumble through universes yet unknown.
So many thoughts fill Moira’s mind and in each of them Florentine would agree. But Bexley. Oh, Bexley Briar. For how long will Florentine’s heart continue to break over her girl of gilded gold and glorious smiles? Maybe it is better Moira does not put voice unto her thoughts for it would surely lose Florentine to memories of Bexley Briar and she, lost in lust’s first reckoning.
Flowers wind through the weaves of her hair, each one placed and twined by Moira’s artful talent. She smells the sweet scent of each, the way they hand heavy from the slender curve of her throat. Her hair feels tight and different, like her broken wing… “I was swatted out of the sky by Raymond’s once-cat… It is a lesson in thinking twice about whether you take a friend to another dimension in order to find their pet. Time-travel has a way of changing those who dare to travel through time. Ruth became a titanic beast, let that be a lesson to you.”
With a sigh she lets her gaze settle upon the bound wing. “I think it might be time to go home and have it healed. Will you join me? It may be another chance to meet my brother.” The smile curling her lips is small and sweet and so utterly devious.
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
