[AW] as ghouls along the shore

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
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The sun was fire along her spine. Coolness came in waves that rippled along her back. Florentine cast her eyes at the ebony sea, black like ink, so very, utterly, strange. She would have dared to set a foot in it, she might have dared swim if the waters allowed her. Yet it was no longer just her – could she forgive herself if the water was less welcoming and her child paid the price for her recklessness? A sigh slips, whimsically past her lips and she turns her gaze, bright with longing, from the water’s edge.
 
Beneath the bow of her gilded lashes Florentine watches as the stranger laughs. How much like Seraphina does this girl look? Except for odd difference in appearance and her laughter – oh when did Flora last see that other once-queen laugh? Had she ever in Florentine’s presence?
 
A breath slips past her lips and it is so much like a huff, “no consideration at all.” She agrees with a wry smile, though her skin is dark and gold runs in rivulets down her sides.  Sweat beads like diamonds around her eyes and she glitters, darkly beside the water, sunshine in the darkest of night.
 
“In your experience…” The Dusk girl muses as the stranger’s lips drop their smile, “do you have children then? If so, give me all your tips, this –“ And her wings flare at her sides as she indicates to the generous swell of her belly, “-was only supposed to be a fond farewell to my mate. So I am a little unprepared.” She ran a kingdom at the age of three and yet, the idea of raising a child – giving it manners, teaching it life lessons, keeping it alive, was far more terrifying. “I can barely keep myself alive.” Flora muses softly, her eyes darkened by the past’s looming shadow. If her child was to be anything like her, then keeping it alive was truly the greatest challenge.  The laughter comes, soft, gentle, playful. For even in death Flora could laugh.
 
Her wings rub, soothingly at her belly and she nods lightly as the stranger leads her on toward the shade. Slowly she moves behind the other girl’s lead, her stomach swaying, pendulously with each step. “Ah, that would be nice,” Flora says as the dark of the treeline beckons them forwards, reaching with shadow fingers to grasp coolly at the gold of her torso.
 
How far along are you? “All at once terrifyingly close and yet not close enough.” She murmurs in answer, another wry smile slipping across the gilt of her lips as laughter rings like a bell. “A day or so, I think? The baby feels ready. I am Florentine, by the way. What is your name?” And Flora does not see the way shadows team within the sea. She does not let her eyes linger where the water moves like silk and suede and nothing at all like oceans should.


@Locust

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world