Does Aislinn know the strength she imbued Florentine with? Does she know the way lightning still crackles around the tattered ruins of the Dusk Queen’s heart? It was the stormsinger who taught her what it was to weather Reichenbach’s hurricane. It is fitting then, a gesture of fate, that the stormsinger comes to her after the hurricane is gone.
“No, I wouldn’t believe you.” Flora says with a smile, a laugh that feels wrong upon her lips and loose within the ruins of her heart. She shudders at the threads of her heart, thin like gossamer, still hurting with the memory of its lover’s angry claws. “But I am glad you are here.”
Florentine turns from the sea and into the storm. She has not sent a lamp out to sea, lit with the flame that once burned between her and her Night King. Their flame is snuffed out, not even the sea will welcome it’s flight.
There are tears upon her lips. They are ghosts, but so real Florentine still tastes the salt of Aislinn’s sorrow. Flora had cried before Reich, oh she had tried not to, but her broken heart could no longer contain its sorrow. It ran in rivulets down her cheeks.
Oh Lysander. She should go to him, but the thought of him leaving with her dragon-Regent is a final sorrow she has no room for this night. Florentine is too full of sadness and betrayal, so, as she turns from the shore, there is only one place she goes: into the storm.
She looks upon the storm’s sweet smile, a balm upon their shared wounds. A voice cracks – is it her own, is it Aislinn’s? In those azure eyes Flora sees her absent brother and comfort warms her veins and spills out from a heart that can no longer contain it.
Would I be able to stay? There is a darkness that grows and I do not know what to make of it.
And Florentine’s body is against Aislinn’s. It is a moment, a second so brief, but lasts as long as an eternity. They are earth and sky, bound together in light and darkness. Her body still remembers Reichenbach’s against it, still craves him, but her heart takes comfort here. Their hearts bear twin scars
“Of course, stay, I would not have it any other way.” A kiss, presses upon Aislinn’s cheek. It is full of apology and solidarity. Then her forehead presses against Aislinn’s, they have weathered him, and together they are the passing storm and the return of the golden sun.
“I know the darkness, sister.” Silence, silence descends in the space between their breaths. Such silence is anguish and yet contentment. It weaves through their tangled hair and binds the girls closer, closer. “You may stay for an eternity if you so asked.”
In the snow the two girls stand, a girl of gold and flowers clutching a storm girl closer. There is a new love that comes and regards the broken threads that once wove her heart together. In silence it picks them up and sets to work.
@Aislinn - sisters <3
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
