She climbs up and up. With each step taken, the oxygen in her lungs is stripped thinner and thinner. Winds swirl the paltry air around sharp rock and rubble, then up, over the snow capped crown of the great mountain. The mountainous winds get rougher and wilder as they circle the girl of dusk and earth. There is nothing unique about the honey-coloured girl, but the flowers she brings, offerings for the gods, are like none they have ever seen up here upon the mountainside. Their touch is rough as they tug at petals, pulling them free to toss, to play, to throw across the mountainside.
The dusk girl ignores the wild, curious winds and the petals they steal. Her attention, her eyes, are on other things for there, before her, lies a cathedral of stone and flowers. Florentine stands at its mouth, a creature of golden sunlight and wild lavender. She brings earth and light to this dark and grand temple.
She enters, bolder and braver than she had any right to be. Petals scatter hither and thither into a cathedral train that ripples behind her. Her grazed limbs and tangled mane are the wild clothes she wears with bold, bold pride. It is no god she comes to marry, no illicit romance to find in the shadowed corners of this hallowed place. No, she comes to sate her curiosity – this girl who cannot believe.
Beneath towering arches she walks, fingertip wings trailing along the smooth, cold stone. Her breath is a weak wind in her lungs, her heart a fluttering of feathers against her ribcage.
Believe, it beats, it begs.
This girl of fine bone and slender torso stands, so diminutive, at the center of Novus’ sacred, beating heart. She is so small here, but oh, Florentine is the bird that will not be caged, the weed that will not stop growing, the sun that will not stop shining; but ultimately, she is the girl that cannot start believing.
She drinks in the inscribed names of each god, plays them across her tongue and tries to find a place for them in her too-full heart. Beneath each name she lays her apologies in flowers and petals for her heart aches only for Time itself. That too-full heart twinges and her wings quiver. Those gods press in, their names reaching for her…
But Flora is the bird that will not be caged and in a flurry of tangled hair and wild-flower incense, she spins to run, to fly, to flee.
But the night is there, cloaked in Calligo’s dark. It is guilt that has her lashes lowering to hide her amethyst eyes as she passes the night court sovereign in a rough caress of feathers and lavender scent like incense. Her wings flare to fly, to run and to escape these trapping gods. But suddenly she pauses as she passes him, a breathless question playing upon her lips as she smiles wryly, “You won’t tell anyone there was a non-believer here, will you?”
He had made the trip to the temple many times before now, twice since he'd been Sovereign, but this time he brought no tribute - only seeking council from Calligo. The muscles underneath his mahogany skin worked fluidly as he stepped ever upward, a gleaming, heavyset figure in perpetual motion, moving like shadow over the rocky mountain path.
Ever since returning from Terrastella he had been seeing amethyst flowers, flowers and caramel skin - and lavender. The scent had clung to his nostrils and stayed there, masking his own scent of woodsmoke and night jasmine, and he had dreamt, every time his argent eyes had closed, of long limbs and soft feathered wings. The mountain air was clearing his head, though he grasped at the memories with greedy, calloused hands, not quite ready to release them.
Reich was nearing the temple when he paused, his thick lashes brushing the razor line of his cheekbone as he stared at the delicate purple flower upon the ground. The wind was picking at it, sending it tumbling over the rocky ground, washing it up against his hard hooves like fate. He dropped his rough-hewn head, attuned to the soft jangle of his coins as his ebony curls slid along skin silently - he sniffed the flower, and though it was not lavender itself, the scent clung to it's petals. The Night King considered the delicate thing through star-spun eyes , picking it up and stepping toward the silent cathedral of shadow and stars where Calligo sometimes chose to roam.
There she was - breathless and fleeing, brushing past him in a flurry of soft feathers. Reichenbach almost threw out a hand to stop her, but she paused herself, looking upward at him through long lashes. The Night King's fierce heart stumbled.
"Never."
Was his response, warm and rumbling, a sound to stroke the spine of the wildling before him. His own voice faded before he presented her flower, watching her closely within the embrace of Calligo's shadow.
"You left quite a trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow"
The Night King stops her, with a flower, with a look that pierces her evening heart with starlight. She stands, wings arched, fleet-footed, the twilight breeze slipping through her feathers. Come, come, she fancies it beckons. Back out to race the night.
From Calligo’s darkness he had come, the night arriving to chase out the dusk. Florentine looks to the skies, to the growing stars he commands and his promise is their song:
Never.
His answer curls her lips into a smile, sharp with devilry and warm with gratitude. He adorns that one word with a voice, a sound, that lowers itself to caress along her spine. She trembles for the siren call of the night. Her eyes lift to his and what a mistake it is!
Amethyst clashes with his silver starlight, shattering until she is falling like glittering light upon a lake. Flora knows this lake, memories of the serpent boy, Lothaire, skitter their way from the depths of her mind. She longs to claw her way back as she wonders how deep these night boys’ eyes will sink her.
A breeze comes to save her, to tug at curls of dusky gold and ebony black, stirring the flowers that twine about the stone pillars. It steals her thank you from her lips and like fairy voices set it out to ring across the blossom-strewn temple.
Her eyes fall to the flower he presents her with then to the tangle of his mane cascading like shadow down his neck. “Keep it,” She breathes. “You lost the last one I told you to keep.” Her playful reprimand slips from lips painted with a nymph’s smile.
The Night King shifts, his gypsy coins tinkling, and as she looks to the skies she wonders if it is the call of the stars. She daydreams, when her eyes close shut, of wood fires and wild dancing beneath flickering flame and swirling smoke.
The dusk girl stands upon the temple threshold, the gods so sinfully forgotten; it is so easy for a girl to forget when her heart is too full. Restlessness turns her to water beside him, restless, shifting, stirring. Florentine is little more than the flowers on the pillars that will not be still, too stirred by wild, wild magic.
At his words her eyes fall to the dusting of petals she leaves across the temple floor. A trail for him to follow…
“You will always find night following dusk,” Flora sighs so softly that not even the temple can hear the reply she gives him.
Then she pauses, her eyes falling to behold the petals that stir about them. “Ah, they would make me a terrible spy.” She says with a laugh of bells that sets the dusk light dancing.
Such laughter sets her limbs free and she dances then. Those wings of curtseys and flight, draw patterns through petals as she circles the Night King. Her amethyst eyes draw across him. Wing tips chase her gaze, feather-soft touches trailing over his shoulder, his spine until they fall away like water. Her touch is gone so swiftly, only a phantom sensation tingles its memory upon their skin.
Florentine is so still, so close to him she drowns in jasmine and smoke when she asks, with a voice so raw, “Tell me how to be free of your kingdom’s thrall.” Her bright eyes blaze, “or am I always supposed to love the chasing night?” Flora’s wild heart asks, before it aches for her love of the dusk-lit sky and the promise she made to her Dusk Court Queen.
His great heart stirs at the words, clammy at how prophetic that sentence sounded - would he always be lost to her whims, following her across the vast world? His silver gaze dropped to that ancient knife that hung silently about her delicate neck, proof that she was not all petals and gentle hands. Her laugh had his gaze shifting quickly to her lips and then to her vivid eyes, so bright and alive that he could feel his own lips curling upward in a hearty grin, something a little more off-kilter and wild than usual.
The Night King gets lost in her dance, never certain where to lay his gaze but knowing wholeheartedly that he didn't want to leave an inch of skin untouched - the graze of her feathered wings was close to torturous, a gentle sting that left invisible welts across his mahogany skin. He'd forgotten to breathe, still couldn't think to do so when she was so close. Her breath brushed his lips and he licked them, staring at her all the while. He was lost completely, burning up at her proximity, the smell of her.
Each word that fell from her clandestine lips was a sonnet, tangling in his wild hair and whispering in his ear. In the tumultuous storm within him it was hard to understand what each word meant until:
“Tell me how to be free of your kingdom’s thrall... or am I always supposed to love the chasing night?"
The dream half shattered, though with each strong pump of blood around his body he felt the need to get on his knees and beg her not to fight Calligo's call, not to fight this. Alas, he could not ask her to come with him, couldn't beg her or chain her to him, to force her to join his court... It would end in heartbreak and bad blood. Of all things, he could not live if she looked at him through cold eyes, resentful eyes.
He breathed her in, answering just as quietly;
"The night will always chase the dusk... You know that as well as I."
Reichenbach shifted, breaking her stare with heartbreaking slowness as he looked to Calligo's shrine. Had he been just a warrior, like before, there would have been no question. He would have asked her to join him on the road - leave the Courts, leave the distinction between them like dust on the road. Leave, now, together. For the first time Reichenbach felt his position as a shackle, tying him to Denocte and his people, his responsibilities.
"I cannot change the world, Flora -" he pressed even closer, their bodies touching intimately "but.. if you ask me to stop.."
He left the sentence hanging, flushing with warmth and sweetness despite the chill touch of his proposal. Would it be better? If they avoided one another? If his sweet Dusk girl found someone else to set her heart afire?
ON GRAFTON STREET IN NOVEMBER
WE TRIPPED LIGHTLY ALONG THE LEDGE
OF A DEEP RAVINE WHERE CAN BE SEEN
THE WORTH OF PASSIONS PLEDGED
@Florentine !! ahhh he just flows so well with Flo!
His gaze upon her skin, heavy with black and soft like starlight, is like nothing she has ever known.
If his skin blisters with her touch, it is nothing to the fire he sets upon her body with his roving gaze. She will surely burn to ash before these gods.
The Night King’s gypsy coins sing on, their jingling pulling the stars from the sky. His presence commands her body to stillness and, as she stands before him with breath so heavy and so wild, her eyes blaze purple starfire, brilliant and wild as they fight the growing dark.
The boy moves closer and the touch of their bodies commands her eyes to close. There, in black of her being, where she expects only silence, she hears the raking of her breath and the wild beating of her heart. This creature of starlight has turned her heart into a frantic bird; wings thrumming worriedly against its cage of bone.
Her nerves ignite with his touch, golden skin burning with the friction of night pressing closer, closer. She wonders what twilight bruise might glow from her golden skin with this new press of night or would she, like starlight, shatter here and fall to nothing.
Twilight eyes open at last and see only his dark skin. Florentine’s breath is the only thing that stirs between them for he is a statue beside her, as still as stone. “Breathe.” She whispers when at last she realizes that he has not. It is an irony that it is the girl so new to love, who reminds the boy to breathe.
The night will always chase the dusk… you know that as well as I.
Those words stop her heart for they are dangerous, even when whispered intimately in the quiet of the temple...
Would he dare to chase her? Bruise his knees upon the temple floor and beg her to go with him to Night?
But above all - would she go with him?
The lure of night has never been so strong, she has never heard the stars keen like this, nor felt the satin touch of such darkness upon her skin. He is temptation; a siren call of beautiful gestures and prophetic declarations.
He goes on, breathing his words across her skin; promises across gold. If you ask me to stop…. Florentine knows what he asks of her and what she should say. But the allure of night has her tongue tied tight.
From its grip she slips, just enough to ask, “What if I don’t?” The words are curious butterflies across his skin. What would the Night King really do? And yet, what if she told him to stop?
She thinks of the words coming from her lips and her teeth grit with worry, with pain. Her soul splits open for the pain of not being free, for the pain of being tied to one place: Dusk. “I don’t want to.” She bleats, aching, little more than a bird with wings clipped beneath this draw of the night.
For a moment, for a second of wild abandon, before either of them can say more, her lips press to the groove of his throat, to the corner of his jaw. Her lips linger, breath hot over his pulse. It is here, touching darkness, succumbing to night, that her most damned revelation descends like a death knell.
Her gasp is ragged, every part of her filled with the scent of jasmine and him, as she whispers, “We can’t stop it.” For Reichenbach was right. He could not change the worlds. Where was the point where dusk ended and night began? They are fluid, seamless, for a moment, for a brief time they are one – neither just night nor just dusk.
“I can never be without this pull. I cannot make it stop.” The stars begin to weep for the dusk is all but gone. The night has arrived and it is satin: deep and dark and lovely.
@Reichenbach - I am so utterly out of control in this thread lol!
this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
08-21-2017, 11:10 AM - This post was last modified: 08-22-2017, 04:16 PM by Florentine
It was all he needed, all he wanted to hear. Reichenbach felt his great heart beat faster, faster, the pit of his stomach dropping - never to be found again. His breathing was slightly heavy, anticipating, the thought of his lips pressed to hers seared into his brain until he couldn't see anything else, couldn't feel anything but fiercely alive. Then:
"I don't want to"
But he heard the defeat within her like a lance through his heart, she didn't want to: but she had to. She couldn't leave Dusk - and he could never ask that of her. There was a silent roaring within him that slowly erased whatever dreams he'd had of taking her into his Kingdom hand in hand, of seeing her dance to that wild Denoctian music, watching her and only her as he laughed and sang along. She would be his, and he hers. The Night King has become stranded by his desolation, staring through pained silver eyes as suddenly she danced forward.
His breath was rough in his throat as he gasped at the contact, breathless at the touch of her soft lips, closing his long lashed eyes for a brief moment as he became lost in that touch. A subtle, rumbling groan slipped from between his lips as she lingered, utterly lost in the sensation, trying desperately to memorise it. Because he couldn't make her stay with him, couldn't let her.
Florentine was young, so young. She didn't know what she wanted, had she ever loved before? To love Reichenbach was like loving a hurricane, all at once beautiful and destructive. He couldn't destroy her, couldn't take her youth and claim it as his. Night sent her soothing fingers through his mane, encircling him with shadows as if Calligo were trying to comfort him, to tell him he was right not to steal this young girls life. No matter how much he wanted her to be his.
Dusk had left the sky, and it was time for her to go.
Reich slowly, so slowly, pulled back from his girl of flowers, solemn and feeling suddenly cold without her against him.
"I can't - I.."
It was the first time he'd been lost for words.
"Rannveig would kill me if I stole you away"
He spoke so softly, they both knew it was a pathetic excuse, a weak one, covering up how afraid they both were. Because Reichenbach was falling hard and fast, and he was terrified.
ON GRAFTON STREET IN NOVEMBER
WE TRIPPED LIGHTLY ALONG THE LEDGE
OF A DEEP RAVINE WHERE CAN BE SEEN
THE WORTH OF PASSIONS PLEDGED
@Florentine !! Reich can't leave first bc he can't make himself leave her haha
The Night King moves from her, slowly, so slowly. Each step he takes away pulls back a dark, dark veil that covered her.
Soon, too soon, the veil and the boy are gone. She looks to him still close, still near enough to touch, yet she feels a world between them a chasm that she longs to breach.
Just as her heart frets, as her wings threaten to burst, to open and carry her back to him, the world slips back to her from where the veil had been. The temple returns, silvery and beautiful, bathed in moonlight. Silver-washed flowers watch them from their places, twined up and up each marble pillar.
The sky commands her, but it is effort to pull her eyes from the night, to lift them from his inky black skin. When at last she does, the stars begin to pull her. Up and up and up they tug her soul, through their multitudes that shine. On and on they go and she blinks as she watches them. The sky shimmers and moves each star twinkling, each star calling, humming its own song through the vast, vast worlds.
Her breath returns, strong and vibrant, and easy at last. It is a breath still so full of jasmine, still so full of stardust and Denoctean magic. Her gaze falls down, and his silver eyes snag her there, with their siren call. The Dusk girl realizes then, her soul was still among the stars. Maybe Reichenbach would find it one day, dusted in stars, hidden by moons.
Her body draws her back from the darkness he pulls her into, with nerves that still tremble, alive and desiring of his touch.
Rannveig would kill me if I stole you away.
Flora’s eyes close for the pain the Night boy holds within his words. But it is nothing to the agony they inflict upon her. For a moment, she is not sure she can survive this night for all its pain, for all its blissful highs. As her eyes open, she wants to resent him, she wants to hate the Night King with his wild, wild magic and feral allure. For he is the sun and she is Icarus and he just keeps pulling her in.
If that is where you end, may Vespera watch you. Rannveig’s words haunt like ghosts.
“She won’t but… I cannot,” twilight whispers, weak against the force of night. The confession pours like blood from her lips, cut by the ultimate two words. Rannveig had become no more a queen to the twilight girl than a sister. Could this girl of flowers and gold truly turn on the love of a sister? Had Reichenbach still been closer, had her lips still been pressed to his skin and the veil of Night upon her, she might have done.
But he is not closer, her lips tingle only with the memory of his skin and the veil of night has returned to him alone. Stood here, the air is cool and her longing less, just slightly less.
Florentine has never felt so exposed, so alone, even with that longing in the Night King’s eyes.
Slowly, the girl steps back, away from him, away from the tide of night that pushes her to him, relentless and bold. Amethyst eyes watch as it eases its black, black way through his tangled mane. She watches it go, wondering how his mane felt there, how darkness felt upon his skin…
She could not touch him again, not now. No matter how they both stand, unable to leave, unable to give in.
Another step back and her wings begin to flare, caramel light pooling beneath the silver moon. “Keep the flower Reichenbach, it won’t die.”
Don’t forget me.
Her leg lifts to step to him, to step away from him, she doesn’t know which, not until she is a step closer and only then does she flee before he could stop her again. Scattering petals roll along the ground, spreading this way and that, bumping across his feet morosely.
But it is not just petals and a small, undying flower she left in the charge of the Night King, but a piece of her, something unseen, something that would ache, when she comes to realize it is missing.
