Florentine watches the storm girl retreat and how the cliffside breaks away beneath her feet. The Dusk girl’s heart surges ever harder, leaping against her breastbone as rocks tumble down into the sea.
“Careful!” She breaths, her eyes as wide and wild as the waves that churn below. The maelstrom beckons Aislinn down, down to the sea below. This night has turned into something feral and uncontrollable. The shadows are not the comforting ones Flora would usually feel here at night. No, these are dangerous, changing shadows, the subjects left behind the advancing storm. They shall play their ominous games until dawn. They shall ravage these two girls with potent black, leeching their every emotion until they are but husks in the trauma of this night.
“Keep away from the edge.” Florentine appeals, her amethyst eyes stricken for there are no words that she can say that will be a balm upon Aislinn’s wounds. Her every word only seems to serve to push the storm girl back, back, back. The sea rises hungry for the stricken gypsy girl.
The flower girl is helpless here. At once she is both the cause of and a victim in this situation. Her apologies break against Aislinn as though they were little more than a gentle breeze. They wash from the Night girl’s skin like water.
Eyes fall away; so lost, so confused.
Neither one of you were careful.. how could you?
The words hit and the flower girl feels their bite in her heart, in her flesh. She should bend and yield beneath its strike, but like a lion made fretful and filled with worry, Florentine’s anger rises through her nerves and echoes across her body with a riled a roar. A slight hoof collides with the ground as sharp as the bullwhip words that had cracked from Aislinn’s lips.
“I cannot vouch for Reichenbach, but I had no idea there was anyone else who loved him.” Sharp, sharp words. As sharp as needles as sharp as claws. The golden girl is no more a creature of gauzy gold as a wild Saharan lioness. A breath rakes in through trembling lungs and her eyes flutter shut against the thoughts of Bexley and how swiftly things had changed between them.
Calm, calm, calm.
The lioness sinks into the grass and the girl’s heart begins to slow, her nerves no longer needles of electric passion. She speaks with a voice of quiet, simmering passion. Can Aislinn hear the snarl that simmers beneath her words with pain and fury? “If I have not been careful, then tell me how to not fall in love so that I may avoid it in the first place. Or better yet, tell me how I may fall out of love and then your king shall be yours!” Even as she says the words her voice begins to crack and shatter. They are hoarse upon the wind and she swallows them away with a ragged breath and tear-stung eyes.
Her heart scrambles to pull those betraying words back, back, back. It does not want to stop loving him, not now it has begun to learn just what love is, no matter its hurt.
“Did you think there could be another heart involved when you fell in love with Reichenbach, Aislinn?” She asks quietly, so soft the words were barely heard above the sigh of the midnight breeze and the hiss of the restless sea.
“No,” Florentine acknowledges so softly, “who indeed looks out for the hearts of others when you are falling in love… I, for one, did not.”
Dusk laments into the night and if she had a god in whom she believed, she might have then fallen to her knees in prayer. Instead, she stands alone with her love, alone with her sorrow.
@Aislinn
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
