[P] YOU.

[Florentine]

FLORENTINE

always one decision away from a totally different life

-- ♕ --


Her eyes close, her cheek pressed tight against his shoulder. Only is warmth, he is solid and yet soft beneath her cheek. His is a scent she knows. His is a scent she has known since childhood. It is comfort and light and a warmth in her chest.
 
Her lashes brush along his scales, the corner of her lips pressed to them and she does not need to feel their silk to know how soft they are.
 
If I were you, I wouldn't let that kind of a weakness show. And he is looking at her wing. Florentine feels his gaze, unusually sharp, yet she thinks nothing of it. Not yet.
 
“Mmm,” The flower girl hums maybe in agreement, maybe not. She lifts the wing, peering at how it hangs, wrong, limp. “Maybe you are right.” She says softly, through lips that no longer bear a smile and eyes that gaze solemnly upon the broken part of her. “But I wont hide it.” And how bold she is, how brave and big and refreshing those words feel upon her lips. Lysander is gone. Off in pursuit of revenge and she is alone here. All too soon Denocte no longer feels like the place she should be. So soon she is wanting to be well, so soon she is wanting to be beside her brother and under the care of Terrastella’s healers.
 
Florentine is made to be brave. She is the flower turning toward the sun, despite the storm that rolls along before it, despite the feet that trample her. She has known the feeling of her death stretching throughout her body, but a broken wing may have brought her to her lowest.
 
Only asks so many questions and she hears them hum out from his chest, vibrating through his skin. The questions are deeper from within, deeper than the air makes them sound. He sounds different from within. Florentine does not rush to answer him, she keeps her gilded cheek close to him: gold on black, sunlight upon a storm, satin skin upon silk scales.
 
“I have been everywhere.” For when is Florentine ever not, everywhere? When has she ever had the desire to simply stay and not explore? “I am no longer queen, I handed it over to Asterion when I had amnesia and could not rule…” The girl pauses, drawing back a little in order to drink in the sight of him from beneath her fan of gold dust lashes. “I might have forgotten you.” She says, the words pouring like wine between a half smile. For she mocks him, yet she can feel the weight of the sorrow for what might have been. “I am glad I didn’t.” She breathes, whispering, pressing the side of her muzzle to his.
 
Yet she laughs as she draws back. “No!” She exclaims for how many worlds away does it seem since that fateful night? “Reichenbach fell in love with my Regent. Then they ran away together with Aislinn, my best friend.” She might have sounded sorrowful, if not for the healing nature of Time and the love of a once-Greek-god.
 
Then Only pulls away and she lets him go, their bodies parting like silks unfurling. The winds rise to push the girl back, back. Her eyes glitter, her lips still smile and she watches her friend and even as he changes, even as his eyes turn hard, still her love for him does not waver. Denocte is whispering. Oh, Denocte is screaming. Florentine is no girl unschooled in danger. She feels the haunting presence and her lashes lower, her eyes turn darker as she watches him.
 
Only shakes and bones chink within his mane, teeth tumble and jangle. Feathers hang too, dark as midnight with blood that taints the air. She steps towards him lips rising to smell the feathers, the bones, the teeth. “Have you met an Ilati?” Flora asks him lightly. Ilati are full of their blood rituals, but this blood is horse blood, she can taste it upon her tongue. “You do know you are supposed to sacrifice animals, not horses?” She whispers, so closer to his skin her breath is a wing across his throat. Florentine is smiling, yet something darker slides beneath the curl of her satin lips.
 
“Your knife?” She breathes still close, still so daringly close. She smells him, she listens to the tone of his voice. Her heart is a staccato in her chest, it throbs with warning, warning. Yet this is Only, a friend a boy she loves so dearly a boy she has never feared, not even when she was a child and he talked to her like this and brought that look of fear across her father’s eyes. Not even then did Only do anything to hurt her.
 
“I believe Winona is still there… Shall we go and find her?” The flower girl whispers, her eyes wide, wide as she watches his gaze, feels the beat of his blood so close, close to her lips.
 
“I met you as a child, didn’t I?” She asks at last, so softly, so gently. She does not ask Only. No. She asks him.




@Only

rallidae