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

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls

It is strange, she thinks, the feeling that floods her as she watches Lysander step away from her and their son and away into the woodland. It makes her heart skip and stumble before falling into a nervous gallop. It flutters against her breastbone and she finds a call pressing itself upon her lips. It holds the words to call him back, to not leave them, not leave their son..
 
Ah, and that was it. That was the first time Florentine felt the full gravity of motherhood sink into her chest and into the pool of her gut. Her jaw lowers across her son, protectively as she watches Lysander disappear into the dark.
 
She knows why he goes, she is grateful for his leaving, but she longs for him to hurry and return. When he does, she reaches for him like the birds reach for the sky. He is safety and love and she rejoices in his return.
 
Their daughter comes soon after. And this time she would not have let Lysander go, even if he asked. Her pain was not enough to warrant his leaving, not when it was so easily outweighed by the joy of their familial completeness.
 
She leans into him as he lies down beside her. She closes her eyes to sink into and feel more clearly his every touch upon her skin. She does not just feel him, but the moving of her children and instantly misses how she felt them move within her womb. They tangle themselves in sleep as they did unborn. And Florentine cannot stop herself from touching them in awe and love and wonder.
 
Lysander’s comments bring a smile to her lips and she laughs, burying that smile into the secret space between her lips and his neck. She drinks in the smell of his woodland skin. He is magic and earth, everything she can be lost and then grounded within. “I shall remind you how lucky you are every day.” She whispers into his ear and means every day for every eternity that they shall see – eternal, timeless creatures that they are.
 
Suddenly Florentine is wickedly and selfishly glad, joyful that he chose her above others, that his eternity is hers and his family, hers also. She settles back against him, claiming him as hers. And she will continue to, over and over, every day for eternity, with the very same breath that she will use remind him just how lucky he is, every day.
 
And Lysander has no choice in the matter.
 
Florentine’s eyes close and sleep descends full of forest gods and children of soil and sea, earth and pearl, each run through with glittering gold.

[FIN] <3

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world