If the raindrop trickling down Asterion’s nose did not draw his attention, it most certainly caught Florentine’s. It rolls down, past his eyes, chased by the flower girl’s ardent amethyst gaze. Upon the curve of his nostril it clings fervently. It is some remnant of her parting youth that has her wishing to blow upon the raindrop and watch it depart from the warmth of his skin. It is burgeoning adulthood that stops the breath from passing her pursed and poised lips.
The Dusk girl would have been disappointed, she may even have been embarrassed, were she not distracted by his comment. It ensnares her and she breathes the name, Ravos softly into the spaces between them. It plays along the sharp blade of her dagger, and sings with metal and mystery. “I have heard of Ravos before.” The girl’s eyes gleam, twilight-bright, for the world of Ravos that long ago succumbed to the thrall of night.
“My mother lived there for sometime… until she followed a lion into that rift.” Florentine’s thoughts trail off, for how interwoven are their lives already? Together they walk out into the open meadow, beneath the clouds that still churn, despite the winds that thin them. From between their black, blue sky begins to gleam and she looks to each speck of ocean blue and thinks of the worlds, the eternity of existences, that bruise against them.
“I have seen so many places,” The time-traveller begins, her eyes still up cast, her petals tumbling down, down her slender nape. “And seen so many worlds… yet, here you are speaking of one I happen know in an eternity of them.” Slender limbs step forwards, Flora’s feet light as they beg to dance through rain-sweet grasses. “I think fate has laid a snare for us and we are well and truly trapped.”
Even the truth of those words is underestimated until he speaks of his red father with his water-borne power and oh how the girl’s eyes begin to glimmer. “Then let me tell you about mine, and it might be enough for us both.” There is a wondering in those words, a wondering that has her gaze trailing the lines of his face like curious fingertips. Florentine searches him - his face, his body, his eyes - as intrigue whispers in her ears and her soul begins to stir.
“His name is Gabriel.” The flower girl begins as she looks to this astral boy, “A great name, for a great man – not that he ever sees himself so.” Her voice drops to a whisper, for the impact of her next words would be so that she could cry them from Verenor’s Peak and cleave the world in two:
“He was red too.”
Florentine wonders if he feels the world begin to tremble like she does.
She turns from her brother, her soul oddly knowing, though her heart and mind and body have yet to recognize the boy beside her.
The tug of his lips upon her flower-snarled hair pulls a laugh from her lips. It multiplies until she laughs with him, her own teeth nipping as the smooth muscle of his neck. “I should have liked a brother, you know.” The flower girl muses as she leads him through the storm-wet grasses. “I think a celestial name like Asterion, like Gabriel, would have fitted him quite well.”
With that she turns them North towards their citadel, “Will you stay with me in Dusk, Asterion?” And if he thought there was a question there, he was so gravely mistaken.
@Asterion eeeeeeee
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
