[P] ain't it a gentle sound, the rolling in the graves?

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
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She has always thought of her own birth as the most traumatic. But as she stands now, pressed slick against the comfort of Lysander’s shoulder, she comes to know that all births are traumatic, and vital.
 
Their boy moves as if he swallows time. He stands upon limbs bolstered by days and not mere moments. The summer-sweet grass, damp with rain and effort should still be a nest to cradle him as he gasps his first breaths into freshly opened lungs…
 
But he steps, each moment more sure. He looks, each moment more clearly. He breathes, every breath more even. His hair grows like a wild wood. It tangles in roots and vines about his face and throat. Leonidas. The name gilds the ends of his mane in sunlight, the underside of his wings in ichor. Oh the boy who watches them is leonine and bright.
 
“That’s quite long.” She breathes (through a rippling ache) and does not know of which she speaks: her son’s new mane or the name that stalks perfectly across his skin.
 
“I like it.” She sighs, sleepy slow, watching as Lysander’s kiss rests upon their lion boy’s brow and how the child nips, with useless gums, at his father’s cheek. “I am no expert…” Florentine muses softly, each word laborious upon her tongue, “but I think newborns are supposed to be slower than this.” Then lower, a whisper, “Is he going to be an overachiever?”
 
That small twitch of her lips, that bubble of laughter blossoming at quite how they managed to make such a child, are gone as fast as they come. They fade like mist before the sun for there is nothing urgent in her body now. There is a new wave that moves through her stomach with the quiet calm of a river carving through its valley floor. 
 
“I – I think I might lie down for a bit.” Florentine sighs, sleepy, depleted, “and wait for the contractions to ease.” For they should, be it not for another child.
 
Hour passes into hour and the contractions do not cease, but swell like a wave. It is not clear at what point Florentine realizes that she is to bear, not one child, but two. Yet, sunlight fades, idly bleeding into twilight and soon moonlight gleams across the ivory skin of a filly foal. With eyes limned in silver, Florentine turn to Lysander. “TWO?!” She hisses, dismayed. “This is your fault. My family don’t have twins!” Yet keen are her eyes as she turns back to gaze in wonder at the twins that lie curled together, yin and yang, in dark and light. Gold paints their points identically, dappling across their skin.
 
“Lie with me?” The words rise like a prayer as her lips reach up to touch Lysander’s shoulder. The grasses sigh, as if content with the day’s effort, and brush idly along Flora’s skin. “I once thought myself an only child because my father never told me I had a brother.” Slowly, thoughtfully, her lips trail, over her daughter’s face. Carefully she follows along the lines that sleep draws and softens, smudging into soft shadows.  “Finding him changed everything.” Her eyes are dark when her gaze returns to Lysander. Worlds ache within her for their discovery and to look at Lysander is to know he feels them too; how many times had he asked her to leave with him? She presses a kiss, an apology to brand itself into his cheek and, deeper yet, his soul.
 
“Her skin is light starlight.” And now she surely knows what it is like to touch the stars. “Can we call her Aster, after Asterion?” Slowly she shifts, her gaze trailing over the curls of her flower boy’s mane and she reaches forward, the taste of his immortality upon her tongue, sparking like magic might. “I also think it is a flower. So you can have two, flower girls. Aren’t you lucky.”
 
Florentine’s smile, as she presses a daisy into her daughter’s mane is wide, wide, for how could she ever have thought that she was to have just one child?

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world