![[Image: lothaire_by_destrierdesigns-dbelvo5.png]](http://orig10.deviantart.net/a7f1/f/2017/181/7/8/lothaire_by_destrierdesigns-dbelvo5.png)
Florentine seems to pulsate; blooming and shrinking with each delicate breath she drew. As though the myriad of thoughts in her mind were as alive as the flowers curled between the strands of her hair. True to say Lothaire had never met a girl quite like she, but this was not an uncommon occurrence - he had spent his life watching weathered souls in ragged clothes, hearts coated in a bloodied silver he could almost taste. He wondered whether this winged violet had seen them too.
His patterned skin feels the cresting water and a shiver is suppressed from within, as though his reptilian ancestry had run his blood cold as night. The girl feels it too, keenly, and Lo glances back toward the shore, his ears meanwhile catching her gossamer voice. A flush of air falls heavily from his nostrils at Florentine's words; she did not need to like him - nor he her, Lothaire had always sought more than that; more than he could fathom, at times. Starless eyes had searched deeper, burying himself within a labyrinth of phantasmagorical rumination until he had lost all sense of time. Often, his dreaming had fallen into macabre mire; nightmarish, haunting - and he bore the scars, the inner halls of his body were riddled with them. But never had he sunk beneath himself, never had he drowned.
"I used to think as such - until I made a home within myself." His tone was straight, sober, but designed by softer chords than before - caught in thought. And the following words Flora almost threw upon him pulled his head toward her quite swiftly; no one had ever asked him such a question. A moment the length of an entire lifetime hangs between them, until finally, "Always."
"My grandfather would tell me stories as a boy," he held his breath, the cold gravel of his voice drenching the air, "perhaps I listened too closely, too filled with hope." If Lothaire closed his eyes, still, he could see the castles in the sky; perhaps that then was why he had kept them open for as long as he could remember. Caught in compass, torn between a fathomless longing and the dreamless strength that had kept his knees from breaking beneath his childhood pain. And yet ... and yet, there was something about Florentine's eyes he couldn't shake. Dare he ask? A whisper born from something he couldn't name: "Have you seen them? Those worlds."
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