[P] you belong among the wildflowers;

[Cyrene]

CYRENE

the monarchs flew free;
yet they circled around her.

“Blessings?”

Are they not blessings? Cyrene frowned, blinking gaze skimming back over the plethora of pots and jars, swirls and emblems. 

“I suppose they are.” 

So they were. She hadn’t been wrong in her assumptions, hadn’t misled an inquiring stranger before she’d even known his name. A breath of relief puffed out of rosebud lips, hushed and tender.

Though Cyrene’s crimson skin itched to be marked with vows to tame her wild blood and bind her winged ankles to the earth—her arrival was still too fresh, too fleeting, to demand gentle Vespera’s gracious favor. Yet hope nestled like a little songbird close to her wavering heart; next winter, then. Next winter, she would paint her skin and dance under the stars with Vespera’s touch in her hair and another’s kiss upon her crown.

Crimson petals twirled delicate and fragrant through her bobbing curls, every turn of Cyrene’s head eliciting yet another round of floral revelry. She felt like a spring goddess—like Persephone, or Demeter. Thinking about her childhood goddesses brought a radiant smile to elfin lips, and leaping amber eyes zipped to settle back upon the tilted planes of the gentleman’s face. 

Yet those bright, dancing eyes were quick to puzzle, to brood, as his lightly worded confession seeped into her avian bones deep and poignant—stronger than the rum that colored his breath, darker than those endless pools of molten brown. 

A silent breath drew itself taut between them, where each studied the next with a fierce intensity. Probing, waiting, daring. Had they each found what they sought?

"To belong,” she began, amber gaze distant as the girl reached for something deep within her sealed memories. Fists closed tightly around a tale her mother had whispered to her, so long ago. "Utterly and completely—that cannot be done with a trembling constitution. You must seize it by the shoulders, shake it harshly until your conviction alone silences its taunting laughter.” Cyrene fixed steady, ageless eyes upon the caustic worries tramping along the man’s weary shoulders. She was speaking in metaphor, in rhymes; but that was the way Mamá had told it. That was the way her people had kept magic alive and pulsing through their ancient, crimson blood. 

"It is no easy task—some spend their entire lives wandering, their hearts never brave enough to settle.” And then, suddenly, she was talking about herself. "But when one does, I’ve heard… that they wish they had done so sooner.”

So why do you hesitate? she wanted to ask. Of herself, and of him. But another matter pushed at her tongue instead. "Why don’t you paint one? To feel the weight of it against your skin, to slip Terrastella’s crown over your eyes like a floral wreath.”

A grin spread itself magnificently over silken lips. "I'll gladly offer my help, if you do.”

@Asterion | much dialogue from cy :)

rallidae