Water laps at her ankles, it both pushes her away and pulls her to him. It is fitful, stuck in the thrall between the black, black murderer and the golden girl whose fate lies upon the fine edge of a blade.
He laughs at her question – the question she herself has answered. No, he is not Only. All at once she has no name for this boy in Only’s body and so she asks, her bold amethyst gaze holding his, “Then what is your name?” A pause, a breath, where Flora considers this new creature within Only’s body. “I am Florentine.” The Dusk girl introduces herself as her wings flare, their feathered tips skimming across the stagnant waters where autumnal leaves drift by in oranges and golds. Her dusky knees lower her gilded torso into a curtsey that sends the waters rippling towards him.
Where Flora would normally lower her gaze to the ground in coy respect, she instead keeps this boy and his dagger ensnared within her sights. From beneath the long wayward tangle of her fringe, Florentine watches this man, in Only’s body.
How did that make you feel to die? Was any part of it memorable for you?
What questions are these? Florentine wonders as she regards this creature of black and silver, with a sad, contemplative eye. “Of course it was memorable.” She begins, sorrowful and whimsical. “What part cannot be memorable? It is trauma and peace. Sometimes it is a bit of a blur… for it is still the stuff of my occasional nightmares now.” She confides without hesitation. Does Stephen know this is the girl he finds? A creature who will share and share and share without any thought to keeping her own secrets. Her heart is a pattern upon her sleeve and it is a wonder if she will ever paint it elsewhere.
“It is all of the past. I will die and have already died again. That is the beauty of time travel you see.” She concludes with a small, small smile. “I like time travel and if you know Only, you may know that about me.”
What is a nice girl like you doing knowing a man like this?
His questions roll on as they stand together: him as black and pitch and the girl as bright as moonlit gold could ever be. “I do not know, as I do not know what kind of man this is.” The flower girl sings as a wing sweeps up and down to regard him. “When I know just who you are, then, I shall say just what a girl like me is doing with a boy like you.” The song of her voice fades as she pauses, her amethyst eyes studiously trailing across the lines of his face, the glow of his metallic eyes. “But between us…” her voice lowers to stress her point as though it were a secret he, unfortunately for him, may not yet be aware of, “I was not the one who started following a random girl…”
The waters come alive, ripples and splashes extending out, out towards the bank, towards the girl and her murderer, as the dagger drops into the water. Between them the dagger swims and she does not miss the tendrils of blood that begin to seep away from it. A breath, a sigh of relief escapes the flower girl as the dagger wades through floating petals loosed from her honey hair.
Winona.
Florentine goes to ask if that is the dagger’s name or the victim whose blood now curls about her knees. But his neck so suddenly snakes towards her. Teeth part and glint wetly in the moonlight and dusk-hewn wings flare, Flora’s body leaning away, away, away. Alas, for he is faster and, at the reaching flare of a wing, he plucks from her a golden feather. He retreats and warily she too returns to her prior position, her eyes glittering like gems in the night’s light.
“That is quite rude – you need only have asked and would have given you one.” She chides him softly as her heart flutters anxiously within her chest. From her hair she pulls for him a wild flower of deepest lavender, “Would you like a flower too? It will compliment the feather.” Her gaze flits for just a moment to the feather he now holds like the dagger had once been. What danger was a murderer with only a feather? The dusk girl begins to wonder.
It is a curious thing when his final question pulls another smile from her lips. Is it bravery or insanity that has her lingering and not running, smiling and not grimacing. “Giving my dagger a name is something I always wondered about, but no, I haven’t. Should I? Winona –“ Florentine pauses, where was Winona?
There was no sign of the black blade drifting through the water. Has it been drawn, at last, to the depths of the pool. “You might want to be careful when you move, Winona is gone. I should hate for you to loose a foot.” Sincerity delicately laced with sweet sarcasm colours her warning.
Eventually Flora’s bright, bright eyes lift from where they scan the silvery-still water about them. “If I do name my dagger, what would be your suggestion?”
With that, the girl steps ever so carefully past him and wades slowly out through the surrounding maze of trees and vines and stagnant pools. Her gaze drifts back to her feather-clutching murderer, “Will you join me?”
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
