[P] frantic moments of kamikaze love

[Florentine]

florentine
Thick, thick snow silences the whispers of the forest. The soft press of Florentine’s feet, through the blanket of virginal snow, are the only noises the flower girl hears. Even birds are quiet here, the glittering white of a winter’s dawn closing their beaks with its beauty.
 
The dusk girl has never been here before and maybe that is why she moves as slowly as a reverent prayer. Her eyes drink in the forest roof with its cathedral trunks and white, arching eaves. Only her breath moves, spiraling like a ghostly wisp. Even the wisp is reluctant to go and hangs, gauzy and mysterious in the white, white air.
 
Each step Flora takes into this land of lovers, fills her with equal awe and dread. Oh she is so pleased to at last be here and let her eyes drink in the beauty of the gods, but her skin chafes. There is a reason Florentine has avoided the Creek, until now. There is a fear of love and the vicious game it plays.
 
Along the creek’s frozen banks she weaves, following it like a vein deep, deep into the heart of this idyllic woodland. Snow falls in a sheet before her, tumbling like a veil from an overladen branch. It sighs in relief and warning. But Florentine does not heed its caution. Instead, from beneath her own veil of gold and amethyst flowers, she peers out between the sentinel trees and their uniform of white and hazy, dawn gold.
 
There. There within the trees a gold figure moves and it is both a dreadful and wonderful sight. Florentine’s tongue at once knows the figure’s name and it is a lament and prayer; a blessing and a fearsome curse. The name greets the air as all of those things.
 
“Bexley.” 

@Bexley - The reunion has begun, and I actually cannot wait! 
 

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

---

Bexley shivers as she steps - 

Solterra is still warm despite the throttling grasp of winter, and she is unused to the chill of the lands that Solis does not watch over: to the icy graze of snow across the bottom of her feet, the cold, silent wind that bites deep into her skin.  The world is utterly immobile. Birdsong floats through the air, then breaks off a moment later. Trees shed snow and bend in the wind, but the river is frozen to stillness, and Bexley’s is the only body she notices moving in the moonscape. Her mane, gathered today into a loose braid, is frosted with snowflakes that melt into the white of her hair without resistance. In the overwhelming blankness of the creek, Bexley can’t help standing out - her skin pearlescent in the watery light, gold glinting around the hollow of her throat, and dusting the smell of sand where sand should never be - but she is used to that, to the world taking notice of her, and traipses parallel to the icy creek with not half a thought given to what an easy target she makes here.

Perhaps she should have, though.

Entranced by the planet she’s stepped onto, Bexley dismisses the sound of footsteps in snow as too far away to matter, too light to be anyone of threat. Instead her blue eyes skate the landscape with suspicious fascination. Of all the lands in Novus, this is the one she knows least about: Amare is  only ever mentioned in whispers or teases, something too sacred to talk about, or otherwise inappropriate to be discussed in most company. Naturally, she’s too curious for her own good. Carmine lashes shedding snowflakes, narrow hooves slicing open the snow, she winds through the dying forest with purposeful steps, and, ears flickering back and forth, catches again the sound of  something moving ahead of her. Now she stops, and freezes. Another statue in the icy garden of the gods.

Bexley. 

One word, and the Solterran feels her heart skip a quick beat inside her chest, blood pulsing with uncalled-for force just under her skin. Surely Solis is punishing her for something. That voice of flowers and honey does not belong in such a barren place - 

Then again, neither does Bexley. 

Steeling herself, she takes two laborious strides forward, so that most of her body emerges from the trees and into the light. In the bright white light of winter, her eyes are ocean glass, watching Florentine with a mixture of awe and suspicion; she tilts her head at the Terrastellan, so that white curls waterfall all the one side of her neck, and a faint, unreadable smile tugs at her lips. The air between them crackles. Florentine looks just the same as she did months ago. Shedding flowers and sunlight, glowing with some irrepressible, innocent power. It’s infuriating. Looking at her reminds Bexley of all her failures, all her moments of weakness - everything that she’s let go of, but not without leaving claw marks on. Though Bex’s expression remains quietly smug, her brain churns with desperation as she tries to gain a grip on the emotions that are bubbling deep within her chest.

Ah, she says finally, for lack of anything better - her voice is low and silvery, unlike her, but at least it does not waver. The queen of Terrastella, hm? Congratulations. 

With that she descends into a fluid bow, and it is almost sincere.

---

@Florentine eeee!!  

[Florentine]

florentine


Florentine had hoped it was a mere mirage, a trick of the snow. But it is all too clear here, too crisp and bright and white. Bexley is liquid gold and so, so real as she pauses at her name. The moment the Solterran girl reacts, Florentine wishes she could steal the name back. Could she not have kept that name safe and unspoken upon her tongue?
 
With snowflakes resting upon her braid, catching in her lashes and melting upon her lips, Bexley appears. She is more corporeal that Florentine could ever hope and dread fills her every corner. They are both snow-flecked now, both gilded gold and soft, generous curves.
 
Florentine’s heart is a drum within her chest. It beats a rhythm so old she might have forgotten, but its beat is engraved in her bones and they stir, they rouse and they remember. The girls are so far from the sundrenched desert and its idyllic oasis. They are so far from the swaying grasses of the plains they first met upon. Amare Creek seems to hold its mocking breath; such a ridiculous thing it is that these girls should meet here!
 
A whisper in her mind begs that she will not cry like she did the last time they met, for now those tears would turn to ice and be as fragile as glass. Was she turning to glass now? Her skin felt cold and tight and rigid…
 
The sun girl’s knee bends and Flora, the girl of playful curtseys and bows knows exactly what is to come. “Don’t!” She breathes, vehement and embarrassed, but Bexley is already dipped into a bow, fluid and graceful and almost sincere. Flora’s blush is hot, hot shame within her cheeks.
 
The Twilight girl’s lips pull tight, “You don’t have to curtsey to me.” And the words are small and childish when they come. They are so full with sincerity, but even then, beneath them, a childish hurt (desiring Bexley’s repentance) rages war against an inescapable allure. It squeezes Flora’s heart, these feeling of loss, of desire, of hurt and anger. They are too big and they smother the dusk girl so.
 
She looks away, to steal a moment to breath, to try and find the girl she had been when she entered Amare Creek only moments before. So many words are upon her tongue when she looks back Bexley, beautiful, beautiful Bexley. I miss you fights for dominance, but all that comes out is: “Are you well?” And even then the question is meek.
 
This Terrastellan queen is nothing but a girl, bruised by love and harsh, harsh circumstance.

@Bexley - ai, I am sorry, I could not help myself!

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

---

As Bexley descends, she becomes painfully aware of the tension that is strung between them, weighted like birds on a wire - her, bowing to Florentine - how utterly strange. They are no longer equals, at least not in the way that they were, not in the eyes of the public. It hammers away at her incessantly, that thought. That they are no longer worthy of each other. She swallows and feels ice sparkle in the back of her throat - as silver, in blades. 

Her nose scrapes the gelid grass as Bexley reaches the apex of her bow, breath spiraling in cyclones from her open mouth and flared nostrils. She sees in detail the crystal frost on the ground, the sparkling dew, the shards of ice buried like stakes into the dirt, crushed by their steps - everything magnified and made freakishly clear. Curls spilling over her cheeks and knee bruising in the icy flora, Bexley’s eyes flicker upward as Florentine speaks, ears flickering to catch the words. A deviant smile splashes across her cheeks. Too late, she points out, deadpan, and rises again to four dished hooves with the easy grace of someone too high to be nervous.

Florentine looks away, and Bex watches without shame, morbidly transfixed by the glass delicacy of the twilight queen. How long have they gone without seeing each other? Without hearing the other’s name aloud? Curiosity turns her skin to fire, her blood to boiling. Trembling slightly in place with uncontrolled anxiety, Bexley lashes her tail against her legs, then starts in a voice hoarse with uncertainty - I suppose so.

You heard about Maxence - for a moment the Solterran’s heart squeezes in her chest, is smothered in an oppressive, blackish grief. She blinks to clear her gaze from the swirling dark spots. Solterra grieves. Her jaw grins for a moment, but then she shrugs, ever the casual sufferer, and shakes the snow from her skin with the roll of her narrow shoulders. And you?  

I hope you’re doing badly, says that vindictive, evil voice in the back of her head, unsurprisingly despicable - I hope you miss me too much to function.

She says nothing else.

---

@Florentine <3!  

[Florentine]

florentine

 


Oh that bow was an extravagant and horrible thing. It happened so slowly, even as she begged Bexley to stop: too late, too late.
 
Too late. Bexley puts voice to Florentine’s thought with a smile that splits the sky. It is a terrible thing, that smile. It is a ghost, a mockery of the smile Florentine has seen before. There is nothing genuine in that smile, nothing except a resentment that rubs and abrades.
 
Out Florentine looks, beyond where the two girl’s stand. She looks at this place of lovers and secrets and laughter is upon her tongue, it forces reluctant lips to smile. The laughter does not come, and that fragile smile, so alien upon her lips falls away, broken and beaten by sorrow.
 
Maxence. The king she loved to hate. The boy who made her climb a canyon just to have an audience with him. There is a sadness in her heart, but it is a mere drop in the ocean of Bexley’s. “I did hear…” Flora says softly, her heart aching for this girl. Their every meeting had been tainted by sorrow: her brother, them, Maxence.
 
A breath, emboldening and steeling, floods Florentine’s lungs. “I sent healers and condolences.” But she did not go herself… If she had, would it have made a difference?
 
She sees the smile, the casual shrug and the words race out unbidden. “You don’t have to be strong. There is no weakness in sorrow.” And she thinks of when Rannveig left her, when her heart shattered. She is a girl changed – a girl who sat upon a cliff and comforted a girl in love with the boy who loved her. Oh what a wretched world.
 
And you?
 
The words hang, they are heavy and her thoughts even more so. “I am… well.” It is both lie and truth. He heart is not the full, unblemished thing it was when she first met Bexley. It bore scars and wounds. Upon her head, the Dusk crown was a heavy weight, stooping her shoulders toward the ground.
 
She sighs and opens her eyes, unsure when they had ever closed. But the world floods in, Bexley, gold in a blanket of white. The snow settles along her spine, decorating her pale mane and its many snarls.
 
“I miss you.” The words creep out, soft and wary. This beautiful Solterran girl hides a viperous tongue, and that threat is not enough to keep Florentine from this olive branch.

@Bexley - sorry, this was rushed, forgive me <3 <3