[P] where the wild things go;

[Florentine]

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What could be more perfect than this? The press of her brother’s skin against hers is firm and warm and wonderful.  Even in this strange place - a volcano place - Florentine cannot help but smile when she stands amidst her family.

She turns as whitelight gleams and Aster appears, less a girl as a divine creature carved of a god’s marble. Her daughter is silver and white cut through with a gold that gleams brighter than any Florentine has ever known. Is this like your blood once was? She once whispered into Lysander’s ear as her lips traced the gold of her slumbering children. Not even a Time girl can dream of a gold more wonderful than theirs. Not even a Time girl can think of children more perfect than these.

Flora knows Lysander’s blood runs red now. Oh she knows how it feels warm and frighteningly fresh as it covers her throat like a scarf. A shudder slips through her torso and her heart trembles for the horror of her memory. This day might never have been, if she had not leant her dagger to other skills that day. She swallows down the thought, pushing it away as she steps instead toward Aster, pressing a kiss to the filly’s warm brow. Then she reaches for Lysander, though she remains beside her brother. Her lips press a fierce kiss to the corner of Lysander’s and she cannot help the smile that grows, for what space is there within her for anything but joy? It swells to fill every inch of space until Florentine feels fit to burst.

She draws away from the kiss and looks at the world still static about them. “I almost wish that this moment can be frozen forever too. That I might somehow remember it as perfect as it is now.” Yet there is more joy to come and anticipation is a lance through her veins. It is electricity that jolts life into her and pours a laugh from her lips as rich as spring earth. 

Her breath escapes her in a whoosh, her smile fades yet her brows rise and the girl laughs shortly, sardonically. “Yes, it was all a bit… fast and definitely unexpected.” The gilded girl pauses as she lets her gaze watch her children and their twin cheetah toys. “She is named after you, you know?” Florentine breathes, suddenly more serious, suddenly anxious of what her brother might think. “Aster and Leonidas.” She says their names, for Asterion, for her, for the wonder of twins.

At last she sighs, at last she pulls herself from her brother’s embrace and moves past Lysander. Her shoulder brushes his, her side, her flank, her hip. Her heart skips, playful desire slips like gasoline through her veins and her tail flicks at his chest as she lays a nip upon his haunch. Her smile is wicked and her giggle a thing of gods and nymphs. 

“I think it’s time we go.” She sighs and cannot help how her heart leaps, how suddenly wonderful everything feels, how suddenly terrifying. She left her father a child and yet returns with children of her own. Guilt bubbles for all the times she has not left to find him, all the times she said no to Lysander. Urgency, desperation to make it right now, slips whitehot through her body and her breath is wild in her lungs.

Florentine looks back to her family: her boys, her girl and she smiles as she turns back and lifts her silver dagger. It warms, oh how it warms and wakens and fills with magic! It leaps to cut, to split worlds before its cleaving edge. She presses and worlds cave. Reality bows and Time whispers and tears. She inhales and it is not Novus she breathes, but the Riftlands, its air metallic and magic laden. It is ancient and feral and it calls them home.

@Asterion

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world