Yes, I've had the pleasure of meeting Charlemagne. He's a good, studious fellow.
Florentine’s lips curl, where once they might have made a picture of disdain, they now only draw a look of impish humour.
“Studious…” the flower girl muses as she sways towards Ulric, to better cast an amethyst eye over Somnus and be close to Ulric when she continues playfully, “I can see that you two would get along magnificently.” A look, full of dark mirth, slides its way to Ulric from beneath her veil of flowers. The curve of a wing, bony and only just smoothed by orange feathers, nudges into the soft muscle of Ulric’s shoulder.
Yet her gaze is fleeting, for it pours back to Somnus like water. “Take me to see your pink dolphins, I should like to see them!”
And that was all that Dusk’s girl managed before the hedge began its rustling, before she crept forward beside Ulric, her gaze flitting between her adventurer boys and their potential foe.
Somnus, golden and suddenly sharper in this moment, steps forward to draw level with his companions. His warmth eases the flower girl’s frayed nerves and there is little between them and the hedge but silent and crackling twigs. Oh the leaves rustled like soft whispers, warning whispers and for each moment that passed, for each second that the rustles grew louder, they widened Florentine’s brilliant eyes.
Her breath snagged within her throat, her heart stopping as for one gloriously selfish moment she thinks just how she is not ready to die here, how she does not exist in nearly enough timelines yet to have explored both time and space in their entirety. She was, ultimately, too young to die… again - yet here the flower girl is, bold and brave and so wonderfully foolish.
Her heart is a drum, and its beats are the fluttering of wings that carry it up, up to her throat. The flower girl swallows, her every muscle tense, her long limbs poised for flight. Her wings flare, her breath a quiver in her nostrils that expels with a harsh, startled huff as a ginger tom erupts from the foliage at her feet.
Her wings flare, feathers reaching for the boys like fingers upon clothes; she sought comfort, she sought protection and yet it is the slender, raised limb that suddenly reaches forwards to watch the cat closely. Those searching feathers fall away from the boys, suddenly braver since the realization of their miniature foe.
“Oh,” Florentine sighs, enraptured, “Isn’t he adorable?” She steps closer as Ulric chimes his reply. Even as she pursues the cat along the maze, Flora casts a look back to the roan, “I applaud your choice. You found us a cat.” She walks on, following as the cat leads them deeper and deeper into the maze. It is only as dark begins to ebb in, as the shadows from the walls stretch and begin to writhe and settle for slumber that the girl hears the call of dusk.
The sun summons her gaze and obediently she watches where it has fallen toward the horizon. “I think it may be time for me to go.” The flower girl murmurs as she turns to the boys beside her. “Can we adventure again? I very much enjoyed it.”
Her lips curl into a smile and carefully she tucks a lavender sprig into each of their tangled manes. “Come visit me sometime. I shall show you some secrets of the Dusk Court.” And with that the only thing that remains of the flower girl is a swirling flurry of petals and the breeze of airborne wings.
@Somnus @
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
