[AW] we drew in revelry;

[Florentine]

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

Oh anxiety weighs heavy, heavy on her heart. Even as water rained down warm upon the gold of her skin, still it could not cleanse her of her fears as it did the dirt of the Denocte roads. Florentine is a bowstring, the tension of her muscles a plaintive note resounding through her body all the day long. It is a beautiful thing and a sorrowful thing and never has she felt older than she does this night.
 
Yet beneath the floor she drenches with her shower-slick body a Dusk festival continues in merry chaos.  There is laughter that drifts through the tiled floor to drown out the sound of her violin-worries. There is the clank and clink of goblets and glass, a liquor-percussion to the sounds of myriad instruments singing and swelling through Terrastella’s halls.
 
She untangles her hair before a mirror and a girl of deepest gold but there is no phoenix girl standing there also. There is only a memory of fire and star-lit nights where that girl, Moira Tonnerre, should stand. The Dusk girl twines her hair as Moira taught her, for within its tight twines she lays dreams and hopes and vowes this year, as the previous, to stand upon the cliff-side and cast her prayers into the sea.
 
Yet, how much has changed!
 
And how much is still so strangely similar…
 
She is not a queen in love with a king as she once was. There is no gypsy boy who breaks her heart this year, but a fallen god instead, gone, in search of vengeance (though she fiercely wishes him well with every step he takes from her).
 
When she steps through the Great Hall doors, her smile tells nothing of the ghosts of tears that still glisten upon her cheeks. Flora is the girl who always leaves, the girl to run off on her adventures, she is unversed in being left. She thinks of her brother’s sad smile and his hurt touch when she told him of her leaving and oh how she never understood his pain - until now.
 
There is glitter in the gold of her eyelashes, snowflakes and dreams, catching the light from rippling fireplaces. She is achy and weary from travel and worry but the traveller girl smiles and laughs and drinks the warm mead passed her way. She dances because she danced when she saw him last and it feels right to dance again. As Flroentine moves, she forgets and as she forgets her smile grows brighter and warmer and her limbs so very much looser.
 
This girl is glitter (upon her lashes, upon her wings, upon the delicate lines of her face) and gold (over every part of her that light can touch) and her petals are a breeze, swirling about her.  But then she stops and drinks some more, moving to the table of art. Her amethyst eyes glitter as she catches sight of another, “May I draw you?” She breathes with an impish smile and liquor warm breath. And she does not speak of her questionable art skills.

Anyone welcome!

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the 
fire in our hearts tonight

She patrols the festival in long, loose strides, prowling like a tiger around the edges of the revelry -- she cannot help but be on edge, with so many people gathered into one place and so much potential for trouble on the wind. Her warpaint gleams like fresh blood beneath the flickering lanterns where it peaks beneath the leather straps of her armor, and the dagger pressed against her leg is a comforting weight when it feels like so many things are spiraling out of her control.

Perhaps this is what Icarus felt, when the wax began to stream across his back, when he realized he had flown too high and gotten too close to the flames. She had forgotten herself, in her foolish, selfish pride -- in her hubris, in her misconception that someone like Marisol could be interested in someone like her, in a simple cadet.

She has no intentions of mingling with the guests -- not when Marisol’s words still ring within her ears, a harsh rebuke that sings duty first whenever she eyes the glasses of wine floating freely around -- but she finds herself surprised by Florentine’s approach when she goes to cut through the crowd, faltering for just a moment before the once-queen.

“I suppose so.”

credits

@Florentine

[Florentine]

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

Florentine might be shocked to know how Marisol turned down the girl stood before her in the name of duty. For this creature, adorned in her gleaming war paint, is in every way a fierce and beautiful girl.
 
Slowly, slowly Flora’s gaze drifts down and down with the spiraling curls of Theodosia’s mane. It snags upon the gleaming gems that dangle upon fine chains from the nest of wild roses atop her crown. Her eyes have not missed either the great antlers that rise toward the sky encrusted with quartz. The girl was the soft of snow, her lavender accents the first press of flowers above the snow’s surface.
 
Ah there is something so utterly divine about this girl that for a moment Florentine simply gazes. How could such worldly beauty ever be truly captured upon a page and by her unskilled hand of all things?
 
Gilded lashes, heavy with sudden anxiety, press low low over her eyes. Her own amethyst gaze tumbles away and she laughs as soft as a brush of wind through woodland trees. Florentine takes another drink because oh it is easier. She is numb beneath its golden touch, she turns from stone to warmth and pliable silk. Her smile is sunset bright and full of the bruising purple of a dying sun.
 
There is phoenix fire in the corner of her gaze and her breath catches as, for a moment she looks away and to her travelling companion. Moira Tonnerre stands with Florentine’s brother and how their anguish is a palpable thing! There is no alcohol that can numb the feeling of a racing heart and Florentine’s has taken flight. It runs into her throat, it thrums its worry into her veins and her chest beats with anxiety. There are birds set to escape her, they press their fragile wings again and again to the shell of her chest. They beat and beat and beat and when Floretnine opens her mouth to speak, she is sure they would come tumbling out.
 
But only words do. “Please, sit.” The flower-girl murmurs as her gaze finally frees itself from the snagging thorns that is Moira and Asterion. And when she looks to Theo, oh there is a similar ghost there. Do Asterion and Theo wear the same sorrow? Does rejection slip like an ache through their veins, tasting like tears and feeling like rending souls? Florentine knows, oh she knows what rejection is, to have your heart unspooled before you beneath the ending hands of the one you love.
 
Florentine is wide, wide eyed. Yet she softens every line of her and smiles warmth and dusk-light upon the girl before her. “Thank you.” The once-queen hums. Pencils and pens, paints and charcoal litter the table and paper is strewn.
 
“How are you, Theodosia?” The girl asks soft as evening bells as she starts to draw in curves and arcs.

@Theodosia 

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the 
fire in our hearts tonight

Against the golden ex-queen with flowers in her hair, she feels suddenly clumsy and graceless, a pale imitation of the Court; she feels so achingly young and naive, even if she is only a year younger than Florentine -- here is a woman who had led their court with a steady hand, who had achieved so much --

And here is a warrior trapped between the weight of duty and her own traitorous heart that even now aches for the touch of the Commander’s gaze, to mend everything that she has shattered between them even as the accusations ring clear as a clarion call in her ears. She is drowning beneath her own inadequacies, unsure of her own ability to live up to the expectations of Israfel and Asterion.

She is starting to think that maybe they chose the wrong person to be their Champion, but she cannot muster the courage to tell them so.

She moves at the flower queen’s request without thinking, making herself comfortable upon one of the offered cushions with her legs tucked beneath her chest. From here, she can peer up at Florentine with pale, dusted-rose eyes, eyes bruised in shades of blue and purple that speak of how little rest she has gotten since everything has gone to hell in a handbasket -- how can she sleep when there is unrest at their borders and not enough bodies to fill in the gaps, how can she sleep when she dreams of a forbidden kiss and the sharp ache of the rejection months in the waiting?

“I’m… okay,” and it is a lie painted by a tired smile and a small shrug of her wing.

“How are you?”

credits

@Florentine

[Florentine]

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

Theodosia descends upon the cushions. She is all swan grace, her nape arched with the curves of a crescent moon. Her antlers are like frost chandeliers rising for the sky in sharp grace. Over their endless arcs Florentine’s gaze wanders and upon the paper she draws them back. Sweeping paint, sweeping emotions and Florentine is in so many places.
 
She feels sorrow, across the room and here close. Her eyes flit through candlelight and shadow, through smiling lips and dancing bodies, to where her brother stands and draws Moira Tonnerre. His lips are a line – was his paper a litany of lines also?
 
Florentine might rise, might move to his side and press her shoulder against his and ask in a voice soft as whispers what his sorrow is… She would have, if she still bore the vestiges of youth. Yet she feels their loss and merely sighs, a breath deep, deep enough to quieten the hum of alcohol in her veins. Ah they make her nerves mute and their electricity is gone, little more than an electric laugh that sizzles in her aching limbs.
 
Her gaze returns to Theo, to the bruise in the warrior’s eyes. What paints might capture it? What steepened curves would capture the hurting shape of that girl’s gaze? Florentine’s eyes close, slow, slow. She does not cease her drawing but continues to make shapes despite the black of her eyes.
 
“I hope you fight better than you lie, Theo. Or else there is no hope for Dusk.” The once-queen says softly, warmly. There is no thread she bears, no reprimand or prying look.  Her lips do not tip into a smile, not here, not now.
 
“I am as well as I can be, I suppose. Lysander has gone to chase a dictator in Day and I am learning what it means to sit back and support him from the fringes…” Her breath is lead within her lungs, it is a sea full of worries and sorrow. It holds her down, it drowns her from the inside. Loss is deep, it is unraveling within her.
 
“Do you ever think… worry, about dying on the battlefield. About those you love who might be left behind?” Florentine’s voice is soft, barely heard above the din of their small corner of the festival. But it’s loud enough, just, for Theodosia.


@Theodosia 

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the 
fire in our hearts tonight

She had never lied well, had never quite been able to keep her emotions from showing through her face. Her heart was plastered a little too visibly on her sleeve, and that is perhaps what has gotten her in this mess to begin with -- that she had bared the soft, tender underside of her emotions and had gotten bitten for the effort, that she had not recognized that her duty as Champion and as Cadet should come before her heart.

“Perhaps all I know how to do is fight,” The words are tinged with sharpness, of a wild heart born for the sword and shield, but there is no escaping the regret that clings to them. If she had been born soft, if she had been born kind, where would she be now? Certainly not with a broken heart, counting her failures with every heavy step, where sitting here like this is the first time she has ceased her constant motion.

Her limbs itch to move, to disappear into the crowd where she will not be questioned. She stays, instead. “Often.” How could she not, when she would leave so many behind? “My dam -- he would be the most heartbroken, I think. He has lost much already -- I do not intend for him to lose me, as well.” She knows only bits and pieces of Anzhelo's past, from what her sire and her siblings had told her (taunted her with) but she knows that life had not been kind to him even before he had gotten involved with her sire -- it was evident in the scars that had crossed over his skin, in the way he had flinched away from touch but had tried so hard not to flinch away from her. And yet -- and yet, somehow, her dam found the strength still to be kind to the world.

credits

@Florentine

[Florentine]

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

There was something wrong within her. It was something more than the heartache that sinks like dread within her and pierces her heart with claws of worry.
 
It is that something that has her lowering the alcohol from her lips and pushing it away. It has her training her amethyst gaze upon Theo and brushing aside the waves of nausea. The damp of her shower still clings to her mane like dew. Shampoo subtle as roses, blends with the lavender and hyacinths that grow and flourish within her mane.
 
Between their gaze a lone petal falls, purple like the bruising ache of their conversation. It rests like a tear drop upon the table between them. Florentine does not see it – when does she ever see her petals fall? They have fallen since birth, a trail behind her, marking her path, always.
 
“We are lucky to have you as a warrior,” Florentine breathes every part the queen she once was. A queen who knew the price her troops paid, day in, day out. “But we are never made for just one thing. Never. Sometimes we don’t know what other things we might be made for but others can tell us that. We never see ourselves as others do.”
 
And she listens, to the telling of a father – a man who has lost so much. Her smile is small, sympathy found in its every curve. In its softness it is a smile of roses, beautiful, a gift given in consolation’s name.  gilded lashes fan across her cheek as her eyes close. That smile does not falter, not even when she sees her own father, crimson against the snow of their home. Oh his image fills her mind, her senses. She remembers what it is to touch him, to smell him, to hear him… But he is not here, she left him long ago and did not return – not when she found his son, her brother. All that she is left with now is the love of a daughter for a father.
 
At once she knows just what is wrong within her. At once that yearning and regret is stronger and her wings press tight about her slim sides - slim she thinks, for now.
 
She asks for water from a passing waiter and smiles at the girl before her, before lowering her gaze to the paper before her. “It is hard, isn’t it? Leaving family behind, especially in the face of danger. Your father is proud of you though Theo – I am not sure how he cannot be…” Florentine pauses, her gaze drifting across the room finding Asterion who was to her so many things and his status still to change: brother, king, uncle. “But you fight under one of the greatest leaders Terrastella has ever had. Marisol loves her troops and she will keep you safe too.”



@Theodosia 

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the 
fire in our hearts tonight

Her eyes focus on the petal that falls between them, grateful for a way to avert her gaze, to hopefully hide some of the emotions that play across her face so freely. Could she be something other than a warrior, a soldier, the sword and shield that strove to defend Terrastella with every fiber of her being? Even with the weight of the world on her shoulders as the Champion of Battle, she couldn’t imagine herself in any other role, couldn’t picture herself as a diplomat or even as a civilian.

She was a soldier, through and through. She had been born to fight in a world full of injustice, and fight she would.

“Mother,” She corrects Florentine with a tone almost forced in its casual nature, the tip of her tail twitching back and forth like a cat; there is something watchful in the way she looks at the former queen, now, waiting for the reaction to this news. “He carried me. My father is an opium-addicted rapist who also happens to be a god, I doubt he gives a shit about my existence.” There is something sharp and savage in the way she tells the story of her actual father, despite the almost monotone depth of her voice, something that hints at a scar that still feels fresh despite being healed over.

Her mother had been both parents for her, but at times, she still longed to have had a father who had been a proper parent, rather than an absolute disappointment.

She is grateful for Florentine’s attention to be on the paper before her, because when Marisol’s name is mentioned she cannot help the flash of emotion that crosses her face, the hurt and the heartache that shadows her eyes before she can fight it away and bottle it up. “I know that Marisol will keep Terrastella safe,” She replies when she can trust her voice to be even. I am not so sure about my heart, however.

credits

@Florentine

[Florentine]

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

Mother.
 
Florentine is corrected, lightly. Her nose crinkles, confusion seeping over her like a cloak.
 
A Father, but actually mother. Yet also father but definitely mother…..
 
Florentine muses over the situation, her brows lifted, her lips slightly parted in an ooh….. Her head tilts, curious and she blinks, slow, slow.
 
Her head tilts her lips parting her surprise slipping out as a light, “huh.” Her gaze lowers from Theo’s down to where the warrior girl’s face gazes up at Florentine in a haphazard sketch. Her brows crinkle, her nose wrinkling too as deep thought crosses across her mind. “So, your father… wonderful man that he sounds to be… conceived and carried you… but… who did he have sex with, himself?” And at the last word her eyes grew wide with surprise at the idea of a man getting himself pregnant.
 
Florentine falls back with shock, resting against the back of her chair as she further considers. “Magic is a very strange beast. I have seen it do many things, but that is quite spectacular. Though I guess, with a god, anything is possible.” And Idly she then begins to wonder if Lysander might have been capable of such a feat before he became mortal. If he was, she was rather pleased he still decided he enjoyed women more…
 
Florentine makes a note to ask him one day… when he returns from his mission hunting a dictator king. Oh please return, her fitful heart begs him. How light she can be one moment, wondering of his power to make a child any such way and then in the next breath brought so low by desperate loss and worry for the man who left with her heart. Was there anything that could be worse than this?
 
Florentine presses her wings tight to her sides, instinctive yet never once thinking why. She does not imagine that soon she will know heartbreak like no other, worse than the day she ended her relationship with Reichenbach and thought she might never be whole again, worse even than the threat of Lysander never returning to her.
 
But Florentine has known the ache of love, she has known how much it stings and felt its yearning deep, deep within her. So she recognizes that quiet pool of turmoil that shadows Theo’s gaze. Gone is the counsel of a once-queen, and instead her words are voiced by a girl whose heart is whole yet full of scars. “Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all,” Florentine murmurs lightly. “I do not regret that I loved Reichenbach as much as I did, no matter how my heart was broken.” The golden girl pauses, her eyes drinking in theodosia, “Marisol has a good heart, she loves us and will look after all of us. Some of us more than others.” Her head tips toward Theo, her smile naming what her lips do not.
 
After a moment Florentine slowly takes a breath, “Ah, I am weary from my travels here. Forgive me if I take my leave, Theo.” The girl rises, stiff and weary and more than a little queasy. Yet it does not show behind a smile that is wide and only a little weary. “You fight for Us.” Florentine murmurs gently. “But don’t forget to fight for those you love too. They may just surprise you. Goodnight, Theo.”
 
And with a final small smile  Florentine places the picture before Theodosia and it is no warrior who looks up from the page, but a girl gilded in silver, bright enough to command the whole earth to love her.


@Theodosia 

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world