There is no snow when she finds him this time, no tiger to stalk her steps and direct her home. The dusk is not giving itself to night and the trees are still so thickly laden with leaves and fruit, not bare and sparse in mid-winter’s keep.
Above all, she is not the child she was that day they first met.
That encounter was so long ago, and she has experienced so much over the last few years, that Florentine almost does not recognize the serpentine man she met in the Winter Court of her birth.
It is fortunate then that she does recognize him and that her mind drifts back to that icy scene of a snowy forest, gleaming and glittering - almost purple beneath the bruising gloaming. Her heart stutters in her chest for the memories this boy recreates. Her skin is sure she feels the fall of snow. Oh how Florentine longs to shiver beneath the icy bite of a northerly wind once again.
Yet alas, there is only the sway of the grasses to tickle her knees her. And the heat of the sun chases away any memories of ice and snow that flourish upon her spine. The flower girl drifts to him, stalking the scaled boy as she once had. The girl is quieter now, more skilled than ever at following a subject unnoticed. She has had years to hone her art and a tiger to learn from.
Today however, fortunately for Only, Flora is too keen, too impatient. She has already followed him for sometime and assured herself that this is indeed the ebony and gold man of that childhood memory.
The twilight girl lets her caramel wings flare, their feathered tips brushing through the grasses, their soft hiss playing like music in her ears. Casually the Dusk girl follows her old acquaintance.
“Only.” She says at last when he seems not to notice her. The question in his name could not be shaken for there is a lingering wariness in her breast - this still may be some stranger, or her memory a mere dream she has created for this stranger alone…
Her head tilts, avian and wild, as she peers through her amethyst eyes at the boy before her. “Do you remember me?” She asks in a voice soft with curiosity, her smile small and playful. Her muzzle lifts to better gaze out at him from beneath a fringe now so much longer, so much thicker and more laden with flowers than ever before.
“My mother’s tiger is not here this time.” Flora says with a small smile, whimsical and just a whisper of sadness tingeing its melody. Her golden skin gleams in the sunlight, matching the gold upon his own torso. “It is good to see you again…” The girl pauses, thoughtful and curious before the gleam in her eyes turns mischievous. “Do you still say ‘oh’ a lot?” Her sly smile curls the corner of her lips. “It was your word of choice the last time we met,” She sings as she laughs and lets the wind tug the petals from her mane.
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
