[AW] The mechanics of cheap melodrama

[Raymond]

Long has it been the preoccupation of mortal men to leave marks upon the world that will persist beyond their inevitable deaths. Great monuments, vaunted towers, sprawling castles fashioned to ensure the safety of both their throne and their legacy.

Raymond respected such colorful history inasmuch as it illuminated the paths before him, but the feelings stirred in his belly by the sight of the Dusk Court on the horizon edged far more toward suspicion than reverence.

His tail lay in a relaxed arc behind him, blade turned upward in the standard rendari display of peaceful passage. Diplomacy is difficult when everyone is armed; even now, the red stallion tried his best to speak plainly in both words and actions. Much could be assumed of those that built this place. Could the same be said for those that called it home?

He felt the empty space at his withers more keenly than the sting of tiny claw marks could justify as he exchanged Sussuro Fields' comforting openness for the Dusk Court's storied walls, but he carried himself with kingly confidence all the same.

Raymond.
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around

@Florentine

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls

She stood atop the parapet, her gaze drifting out to sea.
 
From her stoop, all the world fell away to miniature. The crowns of trees were level, a series of steps she could so easily navigate over the woodland. Down, down upon the ground her courtiers moved, their business their own. Such laughter and bustle brought a certain peace to the gilded queen. Was this a restoration of order, or was Florentine merely foolish to even think there might be a moment where her court was at peace again? She brushed such a thought aside and lifted her eyes from the trees, looking out to the edges of her court.
 
A glimpse of solitary red glittered like a ruby in the distance. The flower-girl turned her gaze to watch it, memories drifting through her of a necklace she might have once held in grubby, pick-pocketing fingers. She watches the red move, slow, leisurely, a stride that itched in the bare bones of her consciousness. Her head tilted as she watched the figure move like a droplet of blood rolling through the meadow, closer, closer.
 
Familiarity burned within her.
 
Then there was a flick of a leonine tail, tipped with a sharpened horn that glinted malevolently in the light. Florentine’s wings spread wide, her body cast from the top of the parapet. She took flight as silent as an owl, but oh her heart was racing, chattering. What was this? First the unicorn of steel retribution and now Raymond? Such terrible ties these were, but she was grateful, more than she could say, that they were all here now, when Florentine was at her lowest. The Rift, Lysander had whispered as he lay dying, was being destroyed. Was that why they were all here now?
 
As she glides to him, upon wings outstretched, she dares to hope, to look, just for a moment, for different glimpse of red or fawn. She scoured the grasses for a sheen of ice, a flare of flame, but alas there was nothing. Disappointment flared, stealing her breath, pulling her stomach down, down, down. But she looks up beneath her fringe, driving away her sorrow, she had to be better, stronger than this. So she looks to Raymond, but oh, she is always searching now and her eyes soon stray from his solitary figure. It is a small, fast look, but when her eyes return to his she wonders if his face reflects the loneliness hers had, just a moment before. Raymond should not be so alone. Not now.
 
“Raymond,” She hums lightly, “You seem to have lost something.” Florentine says with a smile, small and mischievous that hopes her fears are not true. Novus was cruel, so many had come and all had lost something. “Where might she have gone? Shall we see if we can find her?” And it is a question that offers to search not just Novus, but Space and Time and everything that lay between it. She did not save his cat for him to lose her now.

@Raymond Ruth

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world

[Raymond]

Florentine might get a tiny bit older every time the red stallion crossed her path, but she seemed somehow like a fixed point around which worlds revolved. Perhaps it was the reality-warping dagger she wore sheathed at her neck - a weapon more unpredictable than any Rendari blade. He did not trust it; he did, at least, trust her for the time being. Even in the shadow of the strange edifice that had about it all the trappings of a gilded cage, that echoed the scheming whispers of countless schemers past.

Raymond's expression offered only steel for the asking. Ruth was not stalking the surrounding overgrowth to kill the flowers in Florentine's hair, and however inviting her smile he was not of a mood to be swept up in the sunshine of her innocence.

He straightened, voice low and grating with an undertone of dangerous, smoldering...something. "She fell into the rift." Only that. Florentine did not need described for her the details of the chaotic moment that replayed itself perpetually in some hellish corner of his mind, and as far as he was concerned anything taken by the rift would not be given up so easily even to a horse with such a strange implement as hers.

The rift was a jealous dog. If Ruth was taken, she was dead, collar or no collar.

"I hate to cast a long shadow across your doorstep, but when I got here I had the choice of either this tower or a swamp and I left my hip waders by the crater." The red stallion joked easily under stress, though in that moment it rang ever so slightly hollow. The quip pushed the conversation forward every bit as forcefully as a demand.

Raymond.
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around

@Florentine

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls

Florentine’s mood, a fragile thing to begin with, darkens as she sees how Raymond smolders. He is angry embers – a wounded glow that is hot, hot with its pain.
 
Her questions hang and he does not rush to answer them, but darkens ever more – a storm was coming. She might tremble like the earth beneath the mighty call of lightning, yet she doesn’t. Her chin tips up to regard him, ‘But have you looked for her?” Florentine asks, even though she knows the Rift can be a wild, savage thing. It holds its secrets close.
 
“We should look for her.” Florentine repeats, though already Raymond is moving them on. Already he draws her to back to Dusk, to her home.
 
Her mouth opens, to resist his deflection, to keep their thoughts on a companion who should be here with pin-prick claws and bright, sharp eyes. “I have never seen you without her.” And she regrets the words as they fall from her lips, she regrets the loss of the kitten she once saved and the hurt such a confession might cause. Oh how could the Rift have stolen her back so soon?
 
Finally the flower-girl caves, finally she drinks a breath and lets their conversation be pushed onward with only phantom claws to press into his withers and ghostly teeth to snap at her petals. Ice and fire are only memories across her skin but she shivers nonetheless. 
 
“Then you had better find some new waders. There is much afoot in the swamp, I demand all my citizens to partake in some wading.” Her smile is a tentative thing, curling her lips just a little.

@Raymond 

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world

[Raymond]

We should look for her.

Typical of Florentine not to leave well enough alone. Typical that she should, in pursuit of a child's sentiments, pick at scabs half-closed and set the bright blood flowing again.

Raymond was an old soldier, and said his goodbyes the way old soldiers do. Sometimes people die. Sometimes you lose things that are precious to you. If not today then tomorrow; if not you then someone else. You pour one out for the deceased and you move on.

And what did she hope to find? A broken, empty shell? A grotesque parody of a kitten neither of them could ever even recognize as Ruth anyway? They were as likely to fund their own deaths, all in the name of her feelings.

"Ruth is dead," he replied, his voice low and sharp.

His lip twitched.

It should have soothed him for the flower maiden at last to bend to his desire to move on, but the nerve had already been rubbed raw and her words sounded all the more hollow - somehow mocking - for the sudden shift. Absently his weight shifted to one side, a novice bladefighter's mistake that -though perhaps subtle to others - would shout his disquiet to the high halls.

He should not have been so harsh. After what had come before, there was very little she could have said that wouldn't have merely provoked his quiet rage further. But he was here because here was where he'd been sent, and until he bent the knee he was as much her citizen as she was his queen.

Which was not at all.

Raymond did not bother returning her smile, confining the severity of his response only through sheer force of will. It was difficult, when his heart was a powder keg beneath an open flame.

"I believe there are more important things for me to do than splash about in your swamp, Flora."


Raymond.
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around

@Florentine

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls

He has been brusque with her the day she saved Ruth, but she was a child then and did not dwell upon his tone. But lately, there had been too much hostility cast her way. Oh to be the child she once was who bowled boldly into trouble without any thought for herself. She is not so free-spirited now, not with the weight of a crown like fetters around her golden ankles.
 
Her ears fall to her skull at his tone, her eyes close, to shield herself from his sorrow. She knows it is grief, she can taste the bitterness of it in the air. She sees it in the twitch of that sharp, leonine tail.
 
“You do not know for sure, Raymond.” The flower girl says, softly, warily. From beneath the sweep of her hair she watches him, waits for his dismissal of her hope. “If there is one thing I know, people very rarely die in the Rift.”
 
The terrible truth that she does not say lies unspoken between them: any stolen away into the Rift always come back changed. Always.
 
It was up to the Rift as to what would happen to Ruth, good or bad. A shiver slides along her back, cold and damp. One look at the crimson warrior and she knows such thoughts have haunted him too. Sympathy oozes from her, though she neutralizes most, for what backlash might it cause?
 
Raymond does not smile with her or because of her. The flower girl’s smile, small but hopeful, shatters against the solid wall he builds between them. Yet he is discontent to leave it there and his retort is a whipcrack that cuts her as sharply as his tail might. “If you do not like my joke then do not start with one yourself.” Florentine says firmly, but not coldly. Her nape arches, its curve soft, it keeps her gentle where her words might make her sharp.
 
“You are new Ray and you know nothing of Dusk yet, otherwise you would know why I mentioned the need for our presence in the swamp.” Florentine stands her ground and thinks how well Reichenbach and Jude have trained her, how she does not bow beneath criticism and stress anymore. “Besides,” the fae-girl continues, “are these important things any more important than finding Ruth?”

@Raymond 

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world

[Raymond]

Raymond straightened, the impersonal stiffness of his stance akin to a heavy gate clanging shut between them. There was no way a creature as delicate as Ruth could have survived passing through the eye of the rift - and if, by some miracle, she had, what then? What would be left of her? Would it be worth looking for?

Where would they even begin, when the rift was the nexus of a thousand, thousand worlds? Better to hunt for a needle in a haystack made of needles sitting on a planet comprised entirely of needles. It would never happen.

No, there was nothing to discuss. He would not humor her with some misguided attempt to recover Ruth's body. Sometimes, that's how it is in war. Sometimes you just have to let go.

The red stallion met her eye with a dark, unblinking look, and his expression didn't change as she spoke of the swamp, of his priorities. Normally what she said might have piqued his interest - strange intrigues on a friend's doorstep - but he had no patience left for the conversation. He waited for her to finish, but that was as much courtesy as he could muster.

"There is nothing to find. If you cared for Ruth, let her rest, your majesty."

With that, Raymond nodded curtly and gave her his back, stalking away from the gates of the Court like a seething lion.

Raymond.
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around

@Florentine

[Florentine]

i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls

Grief pushes them back, back, back and swells in the space it creates. Through soft eyes she studies all the parts of Raymond that are sharpened with his distress.
 
A breath slips past her lips as he disregards her. Where was his faith? Where was the belief that she might be found?
 
So easily you give up. The words do not come, but the question resounds within her mind. Florentine wonders if he might see the question behind her eyes, feel the words strike his stubborn skin.
 
It does not matter if he does, for again he shies from his pain. Again, Raymond reaches into himself and finds no desire to search for his absent companion. Was it fear? Was it sadness that stopped him? Florentine knows, was it she, that she would want to know, no matter what. But she and Raymond were not the same. Her lungs burn with the pain and, as flames thirst of oxygen, so this hurt steals the warmth of her.
 
The flower girl looks to him as he speaks but her ears do not rise for him. They remain down, her manner as stiff as his. Raymond throws her words back at her, twisting them. Was it better to leave Ruth?
 
She considers the question as he stalks away from her. His feline tail continues to twitch and his desolation is a shadow that hangs between them. In silence Florentine turns and considers her dagger as she leaves the red warrior to his misery.

@Raymond wrapping this up with an utterly terrible thread, I am sorry! O.O

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world