[AW] Come out, come out wherever you are, Florentine

[Only]

It was midnight when Tinea received him, Summer blew warm air in from behind  and filled the glades with his smell.
 
Stranger,  it wheezes, the grove trees wail and the water rubbles its stones from the mud in quiet murmurs.  Animals silent and still when they sense the invader - the ratfink who dares to upset the peace.  To steal it somehow, some way.

 Go home, Tinea seems to say with its eerie silences and darknesses far beyond the depth of Only's sin. 

Stephan.

The wind sighs its warning to all of those who will listen.  To the pale girl he tracks - she is down wind of him.  Her hunter is smart and impressively seasoned. He is a part of night that no star can attest to - he is a danger to them all and to himself as well.

The swamp shudders knowing what it has let in this night, if it could chase this kind of predator out it might have tried to by now.  Florentine, the pale one he has chosen, drifts like a phantom through the wet woods.  She glows like andromeda and he is a dark, vaccuous space closing in all around her. 

A killer hides in the glades of Tinea tonight - there is blood on his brow.  With his exhausted mind he clutches a knife to his chest that he has stolen along the way, one he's used not more than an hour ago - one he's not ready to give up to the black murky water just yet.  Alligators may come to eat him - lord knows they've been waiting for a sinner like that. But even they know that a man like Stephan won't go away just like that.

Even the gators know he'll find a way to make them scream before he kills them.

His mind is a division of feelings and sensory details, half of him knows where he is going while the other blindly follows.  Stephan walks with his head low as if his heart is full of sadness, no one can safely assume  that it isn't.  It is just filled with blood and it beats for no reason other than to keep him alive. He remembers his moonwhite hydra, the red cup of wine that felt bottomless when he drank from it.  When he sees Florentine float in thin air he thinks of her.

That sick, sad, angel of death.
A merciless mauler, that girl.
That unfeeling bitch.

Faida.

Stephan thinks he sees ghosts tonight as Flora floats like a memory, a broken, feverish one that ended all too soon.  Her wings attract him in all the wrong kinds of ways.  She is a canary to the prowling panther.  Stephan licks his lips and slides through shadows and lithely sails over slumps, he is incredibly light on his feet when he wants to be.  Florentine goes between wandering and waiting and Stephan both watches and wonders, curious, his attention to her acutely focused.

You are abnormal. Only manages to say.

Stephan laughs outloud in the dark and gives himself away entirely.  His barking laughter is loud enough to scurry the vermon from the surrounding brush.  They race away, dashing off towards Flora as if she will be the one to save them.

All he feels is hunger for that.


Where will he hide the knife?

@Florentine 

.only
si vis pacem para bellum

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For many are called but few are chosen.

[Florentine]

florentine
Tinea Swamp is fretting. With eyes wide open and waters trembling like damp, damp skin, it watches the girl pass by. Yet its eyes are not just for her this night, and maybe that is why she misses the way silence dogs her every step. Stephan is there, lurking within that silence, enchanting the dank swamp until it is fitful with worry.
 
Leaves rustle their warning whispers, back, back, back! They whisper until they are hoarse, but does the twilight girl listen? No. She listens, not to their words, but their voices - oh it is their myriad of voices that pull her at last to stillness.
 
There Florentine stands, a ghost of golden gossamer, illuminated by a pallid moon. She wonders how much further it is until she finds Yana. Until the swamp witch of black and silver can make a more welcoming scene of this dank woodland and its stagnant waters.
 
Golden lashes dust the dusk girl’s cheek as Stephan’s eyes send chills along the curves of her spine. But oh that touch, it is just the same as a chilled autumnal breeze and it is such a traitorous thought that at last smoothes the frown from the girl’s delicate face.
 
Finally Flora moves on, pausing less now, more assured – if only she saw the glint of a blade that winks with a predator’s eye, deep, deep in the darkness. It is a blade that thirsts for blood, a foe to the one about her neck that thirsts, instead, for worlds. Her own subtle blade strikes a rhythm against her throat, an SOS, a warning and it is only slowly that she begins to heed its frantic warning.
 
Again the slender girl stops, enough to hear the swamp come alive with laughter. It is a terrible malevolent song that resounds like a striking gong through the dark. Even the swamp is shocked as silence, complete and suffocating, descends when his laugh abates.
 
Florentine lights the dark with the curl of honeyed lips that rebel against the frown darkening her brow and shadowing her amethyst eyes.
 
“Only?” The flower girl asks the dark of the swamp, for that laugh… it is one she knows. It is a laugh she cannot help but answer with her own, and yet she feels the chill of danger, pressing like a blade upon her skin.
 
“You mock me.” She chastises with a whisper laugh, for he has already turned her heart into a hummingbird in flight. “Come out.” Florentine laughs again, even as the swamp begins to fret, even as its shadows pulls back to reveal the glint of murderous silver and the shadowed murderer that clutches it close to his chest.
 
“Only.” She sings and implores him again when he is too slow to move. “You are quite terrible if you planned to jump out at me you know.” Dusk steps towards him, her heart knowing what her mind begs not to: this night is not good or pure or full of twinkling starlight and gypsy laughter.
 
Within her chest that hummingbird beat races and races. “You are supposed to stay silent up until the moment you jump out.” She continues chastising, words falling amidst her brave, brave laughter and amidst fluttering, wary breaths.
 
She stops as gently as a feather touching earth as the girl at last recognises the gleam within the boy’s eyes. There is a hunger and savagery there that creeps and crawls its way across her golden skin. It is a hunger she has known once before upon a courtier who was so terribly sick. Her hummingbird heart was right, “Are you unwell?” Flora breathes at last. “I can help you.” She hopes, she prays.

@Only

[Only]

Tinea swamp heaves its warning outward in the form of a heavy sighing breeze.  It wails through the canyon miles and miles away but here in the groves it simpers eerily over the water and snakes through the trees like a hisss.  From his advantage point he can see everything about her, Florentine is as yellow as a daffodil, her smile as radiant as the harvest moon, she is as lovely smelling as peaches, ripe ones, the kind that taste as sweet as they smell.  To Stephan, he can taste her on his tongue.  To Stephan, she is just right.  More than just right - perfect.  

He laughs, she spooks, it is delightful to watch her flinch  - to inflict something more intimate than a kiss upon her - to chill her deep inside her bones, to move her without his hands, to make her heart tremble the way nervous knees do and from what?  The delight of getting something out of nothing.

Only?  

 Stephan narrows his eyes on her, as keen and wily and ever-so-hungry as a predator's might be.  She has thrown a wild card to him by knowing his name.  The killer stumbles ever so slightly from his plan.  But the birds still worry and trill overhead, they sing out of wary intrigue - of the danger that they feel is growing closer and closer yet.  Even the crocodiles crawl up the muddy banks and away as the tall black shadow wades towards her slowly.  She laughs.  She plays.  Florentine's comfort level guarantees to Stephan that she has met him before.  In his opinion she has no reason to trust him otherwise, unless - 

unless...

-- unless that little drooler, Only, has anything to do with it.  At once Stephan's outcome of this game has changed tremendously - if Only knows her then Stephan must get rid of her.  He must punish Only by making this girl suffer for it.  He'll tear her away from him slowly in the most painful way that he knows how.  Inside of her mind he will plant the seed of doubt and in time it will grow into one glorious metaphor for trees after the other.  How dare Only keep something like this to himself.  Goddamn him.  Goddamn him for everything - that lousy faker did not deserve anything - not even the right to exist.  Not even the friends that feel like they can trust him - them. 

Florentine incites a fire inside of him within seconds, it fills his belly before it worms its way into every other part of him - every nerve ending that exists within him burns and itches.  She says the name again.  What name is this?  His name?  His name?

Only?

Are you unwell?  I can help you...  Florentine gives him another opening - another chance at redemption but Stephan does not take it.  "I am well enough lamby-lamb. Thank you.  "  He does not seem himself, his neck rigid his body stiff like a poised snake.  Most of all, his distractions lay in the knife which tick-tick-ticks nervously under a veil of wild moonlight white hair.  The knife is hard to hold onto - even though it takes no hands to keep the blood-soaked handle against him it is slippery.  Very slippery and very eager.  And the girl he used it on has sank deep under the surface of the water and the weight of her death makes the weapon he hides feel like lead.  

Piranha food, Stephan calls it.  Feed them first then kill later - kill now, kill later.  Kill because he has to then kill because he wants to.  The ends always justify the means - don't they?  

Stephan is not well, he has never been well, he never desired to be well in the ways that are considered right in Florentine's world.  And though she has seen many things - the surprise in her eyes and the chill which rumples her skin feels like it could be new to her.  This woman before him dazzles him like a whirling, twirling galaxy, she shivers and glitters with stars he has never seen before and her lilac eyes.  What is worse, she appears to be virtuous and Stephan - Stephan cannot kill anything that is pure.

But he can hurt them. 
He can hurt them and make them remember him forever.  
He can invade their dreams and make nightmares of them.
He will make her remember him somehow, someway--

Only awakens to find himself bound and gagged with duct tape - trapped in some abandoned attic space of Stephan's bat-filled mind.  Eerie music plays suspensefully as he wriggle-writhes to break free of his captor's bindings but face it - happy ever endings are for schmucks.

"Andromeda forgive me, I may give your name to another tonight."  Stephan praises Florentine's beauty with a charming smile and with such gusto that it sets fire to his caiman-gold eyes.  Only looks out the window of the house he is trapped in and looks down over the yard - to his complete despair he sees his worst nightmare taking place before him.  Stephan is reaching his hand out to her and the girl next door in the yellow sun dress is taking it, her smile is genuine and Only's heart sinks. 

The knife, rusty-bloody-true, slides along the sleek black skin of his body as he thinks with it.  A business man with a pen will turn the pen end-over-end as he ponders over his books but Stephan - who is not a business man - prefers to twirl a knife quite playfully beside him now.  He has improved his handling skills with the blade as it swirls the way Florentine's dizzying tendrils of hair do in the lingering breeze.   

Florentine, no.  She must get away.  She must leave this space at once.  Florentine must run fast and run far and for the sake of Life itself she must never look back.  A twinge of familiarity strikes Stephan in the way he can get close to her without frightening her.  It is too easy to cut the throat of a willing captive - too easy to trick such a pretty-pretty little girl into a trap too.  He feels like he knows her but his eyes betray Only's best intentions as they take her apart piece for piece, his mind working many miles a minute to try and figure out the greatest mystery of all.  

"Where you meeting with someone?  A secret love perhaps -- ah, what is his name?  Do I know him?"  He teases, but something in the tone of his voice suggests that, perhaps, he is not.


@Florentine   this ending is crappy?  Uhm...I'm not sure where we are going to go with this.  He's playing with a stolen knife and just stalling because he knows her/does not know her. 

.only
si vis pacem para bellum

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For many are called but few are chosen.

[Florentine]

florentine

I am well enough lamby-lamb. Thank you.
 
Those words slink to her through the darkness. They are a knife’s promise upon her skin. Each one is potent and dangerous even as they sing-song with their childish charm.
 
The Dusk girl’s smile ebbs and fades, her lips tipping until the smile slips and slides from her downturned lips. Oh this boy her heart beats. Florentine thinks she knows this poison of his – but does she? Was Stephen a poison she could ever truly know?
 
The swamp knows there is no virus in his skin, no venom turning his body into a monster. No it whispers, He has always been a monster. Florentine does not hear their warnings.
 
The flower girl blinks gold, gold, slow, slow. Her heart is a flutter and yet with golden limbs steps closer and closer to his endless black. The swamp waters ripple, whispering their warning and she hears their babble, smells their scents of leaf decay. Not once does she hear, or smell the gone girl that goes before her, the one who paints Only’s knife so ruby red.
 
“I am no lamb.” The dusk girl muses softly. Her lips lift up toward a smile and it is this she holds to herself like a shield, a barrier to this boy’s instinctive darkness.
 
He names her Andromeda this night and she thinks of stars and galaxies and Night Kings upon their throne. Her eyes fall to the knife at his throat. “It makes a change from bringing me flowers, Only. Daggers do not sit so well within my hair.” The flower girl sings, her own dagger feeling cool against her breast. It rises as she gazes at her ornate blade. “Yours is made for other things,” she acknowledges softly, amethyst eyes blinking slowly as she breathes, as her heart flutters.
 
Only then does she listen to the forest. Only then does she think of how his words are so contrary to the slippery dagger he holds close. “I have died once before you know.” She says as she steps another step closer and sees the gleam in his eyes. Is he so sick, to be so… other? There is no Only here; none of his warm gleam and mischievous smiles. This is not a boy to tug her hair and blow the petals from their tangles at her throat.
 
Dusk looks to the ground, a petite hoof toeing at the mossy floor between them. When she looks up, they are closer than she ever thought and the blood between them is tangy and sweet and it’s a taste she knows. Her own blood tastes so similar – she remembers with fluttering lashes upon her cheek. Her heart begins to thud, as it too recalls what it is to fall to stillness and it longs to flutter on, strong and bounding and never ending.
 
Florentine moves to ask him if that is why he is here, but this boy is already deflecting her. He asks of secret loves, of boys she holds close to her heart. There is only one and there is no space for him there, for her heart is already gone and Flora does not know where he might keep it…
 
“No.” the twilight girl breathes. “I have not come to meet a lover, only Yana.” She will not tell him, she thinks, for each time she has opened her lips to exclaim her love of Denocte’s king only hurt has ever followed.
 
“He is far from here.” Is all she says to Only and maybe they are foolish words spoken by a foolish girl in the company of her murderer. But truly they are curious words, spoken by a foolishly brave girl who has begun to wonder: “You are not Only are you?”
 
For there are many other infections of the body than a mere magical virus… and Florentine wonders if this man, with his bloody dagger, will strike her where she stands; so close, so foolishly close.


@Only

[Only]

You are not Only, are you?

Stephan laughs a quiet and comfortable laugh that bubbles velveteen-soft and rich like hot chocolate.  It soothes a smile out of his favorite little honeybee and it just makes him sick with grief to know her now.  

She knows him.
She fucking knows him.

Stephan's eyes have always been wily and vibrant like harvest moons and crocodile skins - they shiver with anticipation like spiders in their webs when she comes closer - closer.  His blood buckles and roils as his heart pound-pound-pounds the life-giving vitriol through his midnight heart.  Dusk steps closer - closer.  He is not Night, he is Darkness.

The blood looks like bruises that matte the slippery finish on his skin as he moves languidly in the muck.  Stephan wades closer - she will not be the only one to take what she wants tonight, the knife very obviously drops from him and ends with a splash.  It swims like a piranha in the dark water. It hides with the intent to keep her distracted by his telepathy which takes the blade on a joyride in the places Florentine cannot see.  The water wavers and hiccups at the surface where blood blossoms like lilies as he wash-wash-washes the red away. It is no dirty secret of his if he openly shares it with her. It would seem that his worst secret, Only, has already been discovered.

This is not Only and Florentine knows it. Her knife gleans with such a seductive curve in the moonlight (or is that her aura setting the metal of it aglow?) - she is no honeybee, Stephan thinks, --but perhaps a wasp? he wonders.

Everything else she has ever said to the man before her, burns.  He burns like Hell and not the way houses or forest fires do.  Everything she has ever inspired inside of him melts into cinders.  All the air has cleansed itself as it cycles through the choking cyclone of flames, it ashes then grays - in the afterglow where everything destroyed smokes and steams, He stands there in the ruins of what once was, had been, and is no longer.

No more.

He speaks abruptly and without much point, his curiosity may hopefully appeal to her moreso than the graven change of character but he isn't a betting man. Someone like Stephan looks unusually sober despite the hunter that fills in every black shadow on his long narrow, untrustworthy face.

"-and how did that make you feel to die?  Tell me, was any part of it memorable for you?  Yana is blessed to have such a brave friend who would come to see her at night.  Isn't it lucky for you that you have also encountered one along the way?"  His voice flows rich and dark and like amber - it is just as patient as well as he takes his time to tell her what she wants to know.  Only has been shoved far from him now, so far away that even Stephan cannot hear his weeping fill the bullet holes in his brain.  All he can hear is his own laughter rising up and overflowing.

"What is a nice girl like you doing knowing a man like this?"   Her bluff is called ( or is it Only's? he has nothing to work with being on the spot like this - yet still he keeps calm) - another step is taken towards her.  The lilac in her hair does not make him sigh the way it makes Only sigh but it is the way her wings tango and trill in the pale light that compels him the way laser lights demand a cat's most rapt attention.

He reaches for a feather that tick-tick-ticks in the whirly-swirly breeze that revisits them - with it it brings a failed warning and it simply moans in horror knowing Dusk has found intrigue in a place where no light could possibly live.  Not even Only can breathe in Stephan's darkness.  Her warmth feels like radiation against him and he doesn't dare to touch her - he couldn't possibly stand it, the light on her may very well rub off and stain the sleeves of his suit.

"Her name is Winona." Because that was the name of the girl whose blood he baptized himself with just hours ago and it felt fitting to give the stolen artifact a life of it's own. Or perhaps he was just as magical as the next sage who could turn water into wine and he had filled it from hilt to deadly-tip with his sacrifices' soul?

Then quickly -- lightning quick -- Stephan snaps at her closest wing without warning, the loose feather comes away with a hard jerk of his head and he does not bother to step back. A man who has nothing to live for will never protect his life if he pays for his deeds with it time and time again.  Only gasps to life in the back of his mind. He reaches for control and only catches empty air in his bleeding fists as he hears Stephan talking to Florentine.

'The knife, that is. Does yours have a name?' Stephan says to the dusk girl and Only hears it. The horror of it all breaks him down and makes him weak.

Don't, don't, don't!  Only wails, over and over again helplessly into the vast darkness of his troubled soul.

. . .

‡

@Florentine

[Florentine]

florentine
 

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?” 

@Only
 

[Only]

She is the One...



When did that little church boy, Only, get the chance (or the time) to make friends with such a pretty-pretty-pretty --

I am Florentine, 

She is as radiant and as sweet as a summer-ripe peach, as polite as a sunny pink flower.  He wonders if her mother knows how poisonous Florentine truly is?  He wonders how something like Florentine (yes, something) can even exist in a world that he himself is a part of.  She is made up of finite components that he feels are other-worldly, one sniff of her and he feels light-headed and weak-kneed as if he's been hit with smelling salts.  

He hates it. 

That was quite rude,

--sorry.  An out of character apology jumps from his mouth in response.  It is an otherworldly response that goes unmarked in Stephan's sense of awareness.  He continues on, a flower manifests between them and again - he takes it with nothing but empty thoughts. Only reaches his hand through and takes what he wants without Stephan feeling him slip by.  Later he will wonder what happened - if he is even around to discover the totems inside of his sunshine hair.

Why?  He'll ask later.
Because, Only will say.  
And that will be that.

Only's weaknesses are Stephan's weaknesses.  He ought to get rid of her is what he should do.  Stephan is at a loss for words - he has no plan - he has no idea what he should even do with this surprise that has is as wonderful as it is horrible.  His mind stalls as he lets the air deaden between them.  He cannot remember taking her flower just like he cannot remember apologizing to her for taking(tearing) a piece of Florentine from her herself.  Sometimes Only comes in flashes the way lightning strikes at the darkness, so quick not even Stephan can catch it.  For all of Only's bad luck he is still slippery - so slippery - not even Stephan can catch him at his great escapes. 

Florentine seems to Know enough to keep herself safe - she asks him questions that strangers often do not ask but she Knows him.  Christ Almighty and the Heavens above - she Knows him.  How Only could keep such a secret for so long is a mystery to the midnight killer.  He must remain calm.  He must maintain control over this situation.  Only, that bench warmer, he shouldn't be allowed to see the light of day again.  He should stay in that basement forever, starve, and die.  

She asks him about knives - her knife - and instantly his attention fixates on the beautiful blade she wields before him.  A flicker of a smile adorns his too-serious face, those jackal eyes light up like lanterns as he grins handsomely at it - at her.

"I did not name my first knife - I would have kept it if I knew then how much I would like it now.  When I was a kid, I didn't know any better.  If you can time travel - you should go back in time and tell that little boy that her name was Claire."  

His mother, of course.

He thinks of her other answers - he wonders if she knows Only better than he does (she must!  for she is too-too trusting of a man she should fear) - what will she say when he tells her the truth?  

What does Stephan know of that Only kid?
He's a road block, for starters.
- a real chastity belt, that guy.

"I have mistaken you for someone naive, clearly you are not.  Although I must ask you - when you move through time - have you ever been anything other than what we are now?  I am not what I once was."  He admits as she starts to move past him.  It will not be that easy to walk away from him, Stephan's interest is piqued for both the better and the worst of reasons. 

He considers her a threat to the security he tries to maintain and because she is unafraid of him.  Florentine and her pretty-pretty wings move past him and into the channel which leads to the trees.  The gone-girl has been carefully put to rest but Stephan moves with all the slink and slither of a snake beside her- eyes like lanterns in the dark as they peer knowingly into the deepening night in hopes that they will simply walk past the heap he disposed of just hours before.

"You may find it hard to believe but you are almost impossible not to follow.  I thought you were someone else I knew from before.  Not from here - from the Rift where we came from.  Where I came from."   That is when Stephan realizes that this is the honest truth coming from him and damn Flora for drawing out the rats - his rats.  He goes tight-lipped and quiet with a soft hum of thoughtfulness when he remembers that seeing Florentine made him think of ghosts.

Faida, Only whispers when he feels a familiar memory - a shared one - glow with acknowledgment at the back of Stephan's mind.

Astarte, Stephan argues behind closed lips.  He remembers her.  He remembers her last words to him.  

May they meet again.  He considers it a promise she is to fulfill.  He dreams of her until those dreams turn into nightmares.  Until white turns red.  Until hot becomes cold.

Ice cold.

"She gave us this."  He moves in a way which brings attention to the hideous scar on his neck - he'll never forget Astarte just as Only will never forget Faida.  One red and one white horse, one memory-one horse.  What Only knew of her, Stephan knew differently, and the two ideas of that same creature continued to haunt him beyond the sick, sad world he had met her in.  

"Name your blade carefully - "  he clicks his tongue, his ears turn inward so that the very fine tips of them touch (a very Only move that he is unaware of) - and finally he finds the words he'd like to say, "- it suits you, you are as beautiful as the knife you carry but I am sure Only has told you that.  The way my heart beats makes me think you have known each other for some time, now."  The kindness inside of him goes out like a candle facing a fierce wind and Stephan has nothing else nice to say to her as they walk and walk and walk.  

They walk until the water becomes soft land beneath their feet and the tangle of trees surrounds them.  Stephan cannot help but steal glances of her and feel that the tightness which flutters like panicked canaries in his chest is Only trying desperately to wake up.  He insists on it, for Only squirms and squirms and squirms in the dark until the chair falls over and he can slip the ropes off of his wrists.  

Music filters eerily through the trees on the shoulders of a crisp fall breeze - far far away a pagan saga continues without its Emissary and Stephan finds it a fitting moment to tell her.

"-you should go soon Florentine, you might be missed."  

. . .

‡

@Florentine

[Florentine]

florentine

She sees the way his smile broadens and his eyes lighten as though her knife were the sun and his face the mirror. He glows in the presence of her knife and Flora’s smile is as broad as his. The girl is delighted, for who could not be when her most prized possession was looked upon with such adoration?
 
“It is rather special is it not?” Florentine chirps, filled with pride. Her body thrums with delight and yet the sliver of sadness is a poison she cannot help but feel. It whispers to her, potent and heart-wrenching:
 
 I cannot time-travel, it bleats. The voice is softer, no longer a piercing cry that split her heart in two. Now, now it merely is a tear that trickles down the red of her heart, its path is acid, its path is as sharp as the blade she holds before Stephan.
 
His eyes are wild and canine, predatory and dangerous. She chooses to look at the fine detailing of her knife as she muses softly to the boy before her, “Claire.” She tries the name on for size, “Doesn’t have quite the poetic ring I would consider fitting for a blade, but I am pleased she has a girl’s name.”
 
Florentine turns to lead him through the swamp. She navigates their way through sucking pools of mud and stagnant water, through moss covered groves of fruit trees dying in the cold of impending winter. The air they drift through is sweet with death. She thinks of Winona until he stops her.
 
Stephan cannot hear the smile that curls her lips, but maybe he can hear it in her words. It is a smile of warmth and happiness of whimsical memories laden with dirt. Flora is pleased to blow the dust from these memories that she has not recalled for a long while.
 
“I have been something else. I was a human, a street urchin. They have a drink called beer, it was really quite tasty. I don’t like whiskey though, Kearn let me try it once –“ She pauses, casting Stephan an analyzing look. He seemed the kind that would enjoy it. “It was vile.” The flower girl concludes as she pushes on through vines and shrubs, her petals leaving a trail for the midnight boy to follow.
 
“So, will you give me your name Not-only-Only?” She feels the creep of his eyes upon her spine and Flora wonders if maybe she should have kept him within sight. But again, she was the girl with the blade and all he had was her feather… She presses on, her pace never wavering.
 
“Oh no, I to not find it hard to believe. I am impossible not to follow. It’s the petals, see?” A flick of her tail and the petals scatter like leaves to mark her path. “They do not allow for any sneaking.” It was also how Reichenbach found her that fateful night in the temple. She wasn’t sure whether she should celebrate her petals or berate their wayward manner.
 
She gave us this. Florentine stops, turning to survey exactly what ‘this’ is. Her eyes befall the scar upon his neck and silence drags between them. It pulls tighter, tighter, tighter. “So you are infected,” Florentine breathes at last. “Do you want to bite me? Is that why you followed me?” Amethyst holds him tight, her gaze relentless as she surveys this boy before her, obsidian bright and wild and so, so dangerous.
 
You are as beautiful as the blade you carry, but I am sure Only has told you that.  The way my heart beats makes me think you have known each other for some time, now.
 
She blinks a slow, slow blink. As if her eyelids could act as a shield to his words. Her nose wrinkles, displeasure casting her ears towards her poll. They never quite make it and Flora sighs softly. “He hasn’t and we haven’t known each other much. Only two meetings, once elsewhere and once here…” She looks everywhere but at the murderous boy before her. Her fringe lowers to shield her eyes, awkward shyness ebbing its way into her being.
 
The flower girl was no longer sure how to handle the affections of others, not after she had seen how much unrequited love could hurt. “It doesn’t beat with affection… does it?” It is a whisper question, barely heard over the lapping of the near-still waters, for fear of the answer. 

@Only - I so nearly tagged Stephan xDD