Florentine keeps close to her brother as he leads her towards Delumine. The sounds of jovial folk songs and thrilling dance seep across the valley and twine themselves around the Dusk girl’s limbs. Each step of her slender limbs grows lighter with the festivities, each step begging to dance. The music compels and tugs at the flower girl and with a laugh she sashays in her place beside Asterion. A wing nudges his side calling for him to dance too but it is fleeting for at once they are here, upon the cusp of Dawn’s Harvest Festival.
Flora’s eyes are feverish with the festival atmosphere. The scent of sweet foods and fire smoke curl her lips into a smile that just grows and grows and grows. Together the girl and her brother weave through the crowd where bodies bustle and sticky drinks spill. Studiously the Dusk Emissary follows along behind Asterion for he is taller here and his vantage point better. Yet in his wake, coasting along in the path he forges for them, Florentine smiles and greets and curtseys for familiar faces as she passes.
Yet at once her brother’s demeanour changes. Florentine wonders, if she could feel his pulse, would it be faster now as he indeed asks for her to meet a certain someone? Scattering petals, Florentine keenly pushes forward to draw level with her brother once again. Her bright, bright amethyst eyes peer up at his to see the emotion glittering there.
He pulls her forward and as one they move through this sea of bodies and it is only as they fall to a stop that Florentine finally sees the person, no, the girl who holds her brother so enraptured. Her dusk heart stutters and stops. She waits and waits for it to start again, but it has dropped so low within her chest she is not sure it could ever beat again from where it lies. This was the girl upon the cliff, the girl Florentine’s love has slain: Aislinn.
“Oh.” Dusk breathes and there is no hint of a smile upon her lips, no sound of laughter whispering through her sighed acknowledgement, “I know Aislinn already...”
The flower girl draws back from her brother, from the Night girl. Enough to place some space between them, enough to let her eyes begin to wander, away, away, away from this girl she has no idea how to talk to. Was there still such anger here to burn her? Florentine can still feel its acid rain falling upon her spine, her wings. In its wrath it has burned through her wings and grounded her with fear and wariness. There is another step that carries her back, it is a step that half begs her to sink into the crowds and disappear.
But it is the gaze within her brother’s eye that anchors her here. It is a look so filled with desire. Flora knows now what such a look means and her eyes return to the Night Court Champion. “How do you two know each other?” She asks as her eyes flit and dance between them. There is a deadly quiet that awakens in her voice and seeps like poison through her veins. Was this some-
Her thoughts are halted by a dash of green and all at once there are more than just the three of them here. Pan and Ulric and a black boy she has never known, they filter into her focus. How long had they been there? Had they always? Their presence scatters the burgeoning darkness of suspicion from her heart and her smile grows, genuine, but weak, in the wake of such revelations.
“I only found out recently that we were siblings,” Flora answers Pan as her gaze drifts back to Asterion and she wonders what else she may learn about her star-strewn sibling.
Finally her focus settles on Ulric and in a moment she peels herself from her brother’s side, stepping close to the Dawn boy as she seeks his comfort (for what bond could not be forged by traversing a dangerous maze together?) and turns her amethyst gaze upon Asterion and Aislinn warily.
What fate was this that her brother should long for the girl whose heart his sister had so inadvertently broken?
@Aislinn @
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
