[SE] She could ruin my life all the same

Raining on me so damn long, but that's relief to a man who calls a desert home

It does not take her long to retrace the path to this particular bar. Even if the shape of it is different, renamed and rebuilt, the things around it remain the same. It sits like a snag in the fabric of time, caught and twisted until the folds in some areas are patterned with the past, others rolled with speckles of the present, and in between it all, the threading of the future shimmers with the inevitable promise of ruin and change.

Standing before the closed doors, Colt takes a moment to soak in the new face. Her head tilts back, golden wig-hair shifting along the cloth poncho draped cozily against her shoulders. A breeze strums the pale feather stuck in her hat, the faintest whistle given off the edge, a nose-driven exhale joining it. It'd be wrong to call her anxious, but there's nothing easy about this either, and Colt uses what little time she's got left to button down the full span of her composure.

Lifting up the bottle of champagne, she uses the wide base of it to knock at the door, careful to do just enough to encourage the sound of her arrival. Her other hand pulls the cigarette from her lips, smoke shooting out the side of her mouth as she tilts her lips to one corner, thumb and forefinger squeezing the red light out.

---

Colt

Still gripping the shovel that got me here, fear if I let go I might disappear

flora

The knock sounds through the empty bar cleanly enough to carry, and from somewhere beyond the back room there is the brief scrape of movement before Flora appears, not hurried exactly, but certainly not leaving Colt standing long enough to decide she has been made to wait on purpose. The door has been unlocked; this is not an ambush, nor a test, nor any of the other things Flora has spent the last handful of days trying very hard not to turn it into inside her own head.

Spice is draped around her shoulders in a loose white curl, her small body cool against Flora’s collarbone, and as Flora steps fully into view the little dragon’s pale eyes flick toward the door with immediate, chilly interest. Flora’s own gaze lands first on Colt, then on the cigarette, then on the bottle of champagne, her expression smoothing into something bright-edged and careful as she slips behind the bar rather than going to meet her in the open space between them.

"Oh," she says, eyeing the bottle before one brow lifts with polished precision. "Are we celebrating something?" Her voice is chilly rather than sharp, the kind of cold that has been deliberately poured into a pretty glass instead of thrown, and with her brows still raised she reaches beneath the bar for a champagne flute, setting it down in front of where Colt can take it if she wants. For herself, Flora chooses a highball glass, because apparently whatever this is going to be, she has already decided she would prefer not to drink it delicately.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Raining on me so damn long, but that's relief to a man who calls a desert home

She doesn't hear a lock slide, but the door shivers open to reveal the shape of Flora and her living scarf. It's the first indication to her that maybe there's more potential here than she dared hope for when she wrote the letter. It's simple, but an unopened bar, even when set as a meeting place, has every right to be kept under lock and key. That this wasn't feels more like an invitation than the now open doorway before her.

"Course we are," Colt asserts with the easy confidence of someone who doesn't let hardship diminish well-earned accomplishments. Life's too short not to enjoy the wins. Stepping inside, she turns the door closed with her elbow, her hand busy slipping her half-used cigarette into her pocket and wiping ashy fingertips into dark streaks across her jean pocket. "First, the bar," she explains, one of her hands sweeping out towards the scenery of Flora's efforts. Her gaze follows, skating over tables waiting to earn water rings and seats that manage to appear new and yet well broken-in already. "It's no easy feat rebuilding something from the ashes." She'd know, because she just gave up on the attempt, decided sand served as a better medium.

"Second." Colt's attention swings back to Flora and the glasses she's arranging, sliding up to the other side of the bar and leaning into it with a comfort born of familiarity. "I hear you go by the Hot Take now." Her brows lift with the unspoken point behind that new moniker as she works the cork free with a controlled pop. "So...congratulations, Flora." Tipping the glasses into the slow and careful pour, amber liquid fizzes and streams bubbles up the side of each. Colt's focus lifts partway through one, meeting Flora's gaze for a moment and offering a subtle smile before the task at hand calls her attention back, not about to commit the sin of spilling.

"I'm afraid the bottle lost most of its chill on the way over," Colt laments with a soft frown and a wrinkle to her brow. "So we might need some ice to properly enjoy this." A touch redneck, but, well, it always worked for her before.

Colt

Still gripping the shovel that got me here, fear if I let go I might disappear

flora

Flora is not, as a rule, accustomed to people being the bigger person. Or maybe that isn't quite fair. People are capable of kindness, obviously, and sometimes even grace, and Flora has been on the receiving end of both often enough to know what they look like when they arrive without teeth hidden behind them. Still, coming from Colt, standing here with champagne and compliments and a tone that doesn't immediately try to wedge itself beneath Flora's ribs, the whole thing lands somewhere awkwardly between unexpected and inconveniently nice.

"Mmm," Flora hums, her aqua gaze sliding briefly around the bar as if the place itself might help her decide what to do with the compliment. "Well, it took a bit." At the mention of the Hot Take, though, her lips betray her, quirking into a slight, almost helpless smile before she can quite stop them. It doesn't bloom into anything bright, not fully, but it is there, small and real at the corner of her mouth as her fingers settle around the highball glass. "Thanks," she murmurs, softer than the rest of her has been.

She watches Colt pour, eyes tracking the fizzing amber as it climbs inside the glasses, and for just a moment the whole thing threatens to feel normal. Two women at a bar, champagne between them, a rebuilt room waiting for noise and music and the sticky-gloss aftermath of other people’s terrible decisions. As Colt mentions ice, Flora lets one shoulder lift to nudge the pale dragon curled around her throat. "Well," she says, glancing sideways at Spice, "you heard her."

Spice lifts her head at once, all pearly scales and bright, chilly attention, before fluttering down from Flora’s shoulders to the bartop. Her claws click lightly against the polished surface as she steps between the glasses, inspecting them with the solemn importance of someone who has been asked to perform an extremely sacred duty and absolutely not merely chill a drink. Then she opens her mouth and exhales. The icy blast rolls over both glasses in a glittering breath, frost blooming up their sides in delicate white lace before catching along the rims. A few stray crystals scatter across the bar, sharp and pretty as powdered diamonds.

Flora’s mouth twitches again despite herself, but when she looks back to Colt, the smile is already cooling. Because the champagne is thoughtful, and the congratulations are kind, and the fact that Colt can stand here and offer both without immediately defending herself is something Flora has enough sense to recognize, but it doesn’t mean she has to trust it all at once. She curls her fingers around her glass but doesn’t drink yet. Instead, she lifts a brow, the shape of it arch and deliberate, her expression settling back into something bright enough to be pretty and guarded enough to be dangerous.

"Really," Flora says, almost conversationally, "I might have you to thank for my first ability from Safrin." Her aqua eyes raise fully to Colt’s then, holding there with the same polished chill as before, only now there’s something sharper beneath it. Not anger exactly, or not only anger. Hurt, yes. Vindication, definitely. The desire not to be made to feel insane for reacting exactly how she had. "It lets me replay memories of what happened in the past."

With a small wave of her hand, light spills into the air beside them, gathering itself into shape and colour until the empty space of the bar is suddenly overlaid with another scene entirely. The spa appears in soft, warm fragments: the ease of lounging bodies, wine glasses, familiar closeness, Sohalia and Flora tucked comfortably together in the sort of peace that comes only after difficult honesty has finally softened into something survivable. There is no accusation in the beginning of it, no grand setup, no careful trap laid at Colt’s feet. Just Flora and Soh, relaxed enough that the silence between them has become friendly again.

Then Sohalia’s voice, hesitant but clear, carries through the illusion.

“So... about Hak Etme. You should probably know that Colt's trying to poach me from Torchline.”

Flora watches the memory rather than Colt at first, her jaw tightening faintly as the scene continues. Her remembered self laughs at first, bright and immediate, because of course Sohalia isn’t moving to the desert. Of course Colt wouldn’t have done something like that without saying anything to Flora first. The memory shows the disbelief plainly enough, the ease of it, the assumption that they were all friends now and therefore certain things were obvious.

The memory fades before it can become anything more than it needs to be, the spa dissolving back into the empty bar, leaving only frost, champagne, and the newly rebuilt Last Word between them. Flora finally looks back to Colt, brows lifted. "I can even do it for memories I wasn’t there for," she adds, her tone light in the way that means it isn’t light at all. One shoulder rises in a small shrug as her fingers tap once against the side of her chilled glass. "So...y’know. Pretty handy."

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Raining on me so damn long, but that's relief to a man who calls a desert home

The champagne serves as a lovely point of focus, allowing Colt somewhere to look that is more than Flora and less obviously not-Flora than the surroundings. Alcohol has always been a dear friend in that way, and many others. Although it doesn't require effort to speak these words to Flora, the lauding of her accomplishments deserved and therefore simple to provide, it is difficult to face what comes after, this visit unfortunately not purely celebratory, and she won't make Flora struggle through the acceptance of the compliments with her stare in weighted pursuit.

Colt merely nods at the gratitude, not having offered what she did in order to garner anything in return, so she's no interest in holding onto it for longer than necessary. She appreciates it though, quietly. She hadn't quite known how much of Flora's bite she'd be navigating from the start, and it's a relief to find little of it steeled even when the queen smiles. Suspicious even, almost, given how neatly the same look had cut her last time. But then, Colt had been armed too, whereas now she's left everything holstered for the sake of drawing no further blood. It'd be an undue gift to spill any in the bar that didn't even open.

Her attention shifts from the too-warm glass of bubbles to the pale dragon that unwinds herself from the mantle of Flora's shoulders, the image of grace and might in one. Spice's experience in this matter is clear as she cleanly coats both their glasses and little else, only a few stray strands of chill tumbling over the counter. Colt's lips spread faintly, helplessly delighted for the time being at such a simply helpful display of mastery. "Much obliged, Spice," Colt murmurs with a nod of her head, hand reaching out to claim her chilly flute. Her fingers skim over the frosty surface, curling against the cold with appreciation, because ice makes alcohol nice. She lifts the edge of the glass to her lips to take the first crisp sip, the experience much improved thanks to the crystallized cold.

With her savior in hand, there's little else for Colt to focus on now except the sweeping draw of Flora's gaze as both women settle it upon one another, guarded in ways that the effervescence in their glass cannot slip past alone. "Oh?" Colt wonders, the word rolling just over the surface of her flute as she keeps it near her lips, resisting the urge to down it all in one gulp. Her curiosity is clear, this offer of inspiration is an unexpected one, but Flora soon enough connects the dots for her.

Fresh surprise reaches her brows at the clarity that's delivered. "An apt new name then," she comments, cautious in a new way, her tone edging to neutral as she wrestles with this new knowledge. Little is left to wonder when a memory surfaces beside them, Colt's attention snapping to it with a betrayal of interest when it's Flora and Soh that appear.

The scene plays out with some vague sense of knowing it, despite never seeing it before, never having been there. It's just as Soh had told her, in so few details, but there's little reassurance in knowing Soh hadn't lied to her when the truth still remains so sharp. Even expecting it, it's no easy thing to hear the way Soh's voice delivers the statement, the sound oddly cutting for a woman who balks at a knife. Colt's grip tightens unintentionally around the glass stem, fingers smearing away the external coating of ice with faint streaks where the pressure forces movement. A tight corner wrinkles both sides of Colt's lips where they press down in force over one another, broken only when she juts the edge of the glass between them to take a sobering sip.

Although this thing looks pretty and innocent on the surface, there's a nasty quality to this theater that doesn't sit well with Colt. What is a person, if not their memories? It's why even when it hurt to carry them, Colt long ago decided that'd be better than forgoing them, tempting as the absence of pain might be. She'd rather scrape herself against them time and time again than stare at a void where they once were. They're personal in such a way that witnessing the ease with which Flora pulls one forth in perfect clarity is alarming, this private moment put on such eager display that Colt immediately feels exposed in a way she has only had to worry about with the gods. Subtly, she shifts her weight away from Flora, the motion almost imperceptible, and hardly enough to provide any sense of safety, just the instinct to preserve some semblance of comfort when it feels like she's been stripped naked without permission.

The desire to rapidly erect every guard she can manage flares inside her, suddenly conscious that they aren't really alone here anymore. Perhaps nothing to be worried by if you've nothing to hide, but how you say something varies for the audience, the same truth sometimes settling differently depending on who's hearing it, and how. She's acutely aware now of every movement and word she selects, the bar having become a stage.

"That's," Colt's throat works over the meaning, pressing on a smile as she lowers the champagne back to the bartop. Something dies off, and she angles for a brighter, shinier answer. "Impressive." That's true too, because it's not many who can so cleanly flay a person apart into the core of their being, where the net of a person is nothing more than a tangle of every experience, even the ones that have begun to fade.

Yet, there's no denying the usefulness of this, and were Colt the one in possession of it instead of just tapdancing to the tune of it, she'd certainly be just as ruthless with the aim as she expects Flora will be. "Then," she starts, exhaling a bit too loudly through her nose as she works over the rising terror in her gut at offering Flora, or anyone, any more of her than they deserve, and equally wanting to bed this issue once and for all. A chance to prove what she already said, in words Flora might finally hear. "Maybe you should see the memory of my offer to Soh, and judge for yourself if it's poaching or not." Colt offers tightly, extending an upturned hand over the bar, expecting touch or something is needed to draw the wellspring of her mind and being forth. Her fingers tremble in betrayal of the risk she feels at offering this, unsure if Flora can fully rifle through all of her or not, but she could do this and then finally be done, and from then on be very careful around the Hot Take and her compatriots.

Colt

Still gripping the shovel that got me here, fear if I let go I might disappear

flora

For all Flora knows, the way Colt shifts away is only guilt trying to find a better place to stand. She sees the tightening around the other woman’s mouth, the too-careful brightness, the trembling fingers offered over the bar, and because she is already hurt, already certain, already standing with the neat little pile of evidence Sohalia had placed in her lap, Flora reads every last piece of it as someone realizing she’s been caught in more than black and white. The comment about the ability being impressive has her nodding with swift, fervent agreement, because yes, obviously, it is.

Still, when Colt offers her hand, Flora’s head tilts slightly, the movement elegant and skeptical as her aqua eyes drop to the upturned palm between them. She hadn’t expected there to be anything more. She’d expected defence, maybe another sharp twist of words, maybe Colt trying to turn sincerity into a technicality with enough grit and charm to make it sound reasonable. So for a moment Flora only considers her, lips pressed softly together, one hand still resting near her highball glass while Spice’s frosted handiwork keeps the champagne cold and bright between them. Then, with a small shrug that pretends at carelessness far better than she feels it, Flora reaches forward and places her hand in Colt’s.

The bar falls away beneath a wash of grey sky and damp leaves, the scent of the Last Word briefly overwritten by mud and bark and the clean, old weight of the Greatwood. The Mathair rises in the memory like something too large to be merely seen, its roots sprawled through the wet ground while Colt and Sohalia stand nearby with offerings and soft conversation between them. Flora watches hard, waiting for the turn. Waiting for the hook, the pressure, the part where a friendly invitation becomes a lure disguised as loyalty, because surely it must come. Surely Sohalia had not looked at her across that spa and said poach because of this.

Only the scene doesn’t sharpen the way Flora expects it to. Colt speaks about Hak Etme with that lit-up certainty Flora remembers wanting to smack off her face at the party, but the words themselves are plain enough: Soh knows the land, Soh understands safety and resources, Soh has led before, and Colt could use someone like that if she’s going to build anything people might actually want to come to. The offer of a council position follows sincerely, maybe ambitiously, maybe with too much confidence, but not with claws in it, and Flora feels her own hand begin to cool inside Colt’s grip.

The memory continues, and Flora’s fingers grow colder still, not from Spice or the frosted glass or anything simple enough to blame. Colt doesn’t press when Soh says she needs to think about the council. She doesn’t demand an answer, doesn’t frame Torchline like something Soh needs rescuing from, doesn’t make Flora into an obstacle to be managed or stepped around. She looks pleased, sure, maybe even too pleased, but when Soh agrees to come at least for a while, the whole thing settles as easily as a deal made between friends. Bring your maps. Bring camping gear. Stay honest. Bring tequila.

Flora’s fingers fall away from Colt’s hand entirely. The memory goes on for another breath, long enough for the women inside it to shift toward something else, long enough for the absence of anything nefarious to become louder than anything spoken. Flora stares at the scene as if another version of it might still arrive if she just holds her expression steady enough, if she refuses to blink, if she waits one second more for the betrayal to step forward and announce itself properly. But it doesn’t. There is no hidden blade. No luring. No poaching. Just an offer, one Sohalia could have refused, and the illusion fades back into the polished bar and the champagne and the pale dragon watching with curious, crystalline stillness.

For once, Flora doesn’t have a clever shape ready for her mouth and so it remains slightly slack as she blinks, slowly, the hard line of her posture loosening not into softness but into confusion. When her aqua eyes turn back to Colt, they are not cold anymore, just open in a way she clearly hadn’t meant to let happen, her brows drawn together as if the whole room has subtly rearranged itself while she wasn’t looking. "But..." Flora gives her head a small shake, almost too slight to count, her voice quieter now and stripped of all its polished frost. "Is that it?"

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Raining on me so damn long, but that's relief to a man who calls a desert home

It's a bit different, seeing her own memory jump to life beside her, to watch herself. Does her hair really look like that in the back? She resists the urge to reach up and touch it now, despite the flicker of impulse, the much greater one of holding still just long enough to endure this drowning out everything else.

The Mathair expands around them, and Colt watches with a sickening sense a past version that's too bright, too cheerful, too unguarded. She wishes she could whisper to that old her more sense of caution, but she knows there's no point to it now. What's done is done, this among them. As it concludes, Colt draws her hand back, curling it close to herself as if she means to nurse a wound. She presses the cold, crisp champagne back to her tongue, needing the chilled bite to refocus her on the present and to offer something pleasant again when so much has just been otherwise.

For a brief time, she expects that Flora will turn to her and ask what was the point of showing her exactly what Soh had told her. It's a thought she's had all this while after reviewing all the exchanges over and over again, trying to determine where she had so thoroughly fucked up, that answer surely cleaner than the idea that Soh had just chosen to lie or sabotage her for no apparent reason. She has come up with very little in the end, truthfully, leading her to believe that offering any invitation at all had been the mistake, at least where Torchline is concerned.

Instead, Flora surprises her by seeming to draw a similar conclusion as she had whenever she reviewed the memory. Although her question brings about a new worry—will the Hot Take not be satisfied until she has combed through every moment Colt's walked through, only able to see what she is given after all, and therefore suspicious of what she hasn't been able to see? She takes another sip as she regards the queen over the glass, the motion slow with careful thought.

The iced drink smooths out the ripple in her nerves, it's chill losing out to its heat as it sits in her gut, softening the edges of things enough to make brushing against them easier. "After that, the only time I saw her again was in Hak Etme to build our Skyport, then at your party." Colt's answer returns even and sure, her glass tinking as she sets it on the counter. She had purposefully come here with the notion not to make Sohalia look bad, uninterested in making any further cuts in this mess, and figuring there'd be little service in trying to tell Flora her best friend is anything but the bright light her title suggests. Therefore, Colt doesn't focus on Soh, but on what sits between the two of them.

"It's why what you said at the party took me by such surprise," she starts, tone tight although she keeps it steady, not letting the shock or the hurt show through much, and it's faded plenty by now anyhow. "Although I admit I shouldn't have reacted as I did, least of all at your birthday, so I am sorry for that." Her head tilts faintly, fingers drumming on the counter beside her glass where she's set it down. "I can lose my head sometimes when things get, emotional."

Colt

Still gripping the shovel that got me here, fear if I let go I might disappear

flora

The confusion doesn't settle so much as spread, seeping into all the places Flora had packed full of certainty until there isn't enough room left for her anger to stand properly. She stares at the space where the memory had been, at the absence of it, as if the Mathair and Sohalia and Colt might still flicker back into place and offer up the missing piece if Flora just looks hard enough. When nothing happens, she slumps forward against the bar, one elbow finding the polished surface while her other hand rakes back through her curls, tugging them away from her face as if she can clear her thoughts by sheer force.

Because what the fuck?

Her gaze darts back toward Colt when the rancher mentions her birthday, and Flora pulls in a breath that seems to catch halfway down. She lets it out in a puff of her cheeks, the sound small and frustrated, before shaking her head at the apology as if she can’t quite accept it cleanly when the entire shape of the thing has just changed beneath her feet. "No, no, I mean..." She presses her lips together for a second, aqua eyes dropping briefly to the frost-laced highball glass before lifting again. "I know I came at you hard, but I thought you knew what you did."

The words land worse out loud than they had in her head. Flora swallows, the motion tight, and when she looks up properly, her eyes find Colt’s with none of the earlier polish left to hide behind. Not because she has suddenly forgiven everything or figured out where to put the hurt, but because pretending this is still simple would be more embarrassing than being wrong in the first place. "I think I’m the one who owes you an apology," she says, and her head shakes again, curls slipping forward despite the path her fingers had just carved through them. "I just—" The words fray, and she exhales through her nose, trying to find the right ones when everything feels so much more complicated and fucked up than it had five minutes ago.

"It’s like I said at the party, or what I tried to say anyway, that obviously anyone can go with you to the desert, and it isn’t like you’re not free to ask them to go." Her shoulders lift helplessly, one hand opening in a small, vague gesture because that had never really been the point, or at least Flora hadn’t thought it was. "I just thought..." She gives a little laugh then, brittle and disbelieving, not because any of this is funny but because the alternative is letting the shock turn sharp again before she understands what she’s even cutting. [asy]"Well, the way it came across was that you were trying to steal Sohalia away, not just offering her an opportunity, so it felt hella shitty because I thought we were all friends."

Her mouth closes around the next thought before she can say it too quickly. I thought Sohalia was being honest. I thought you were the one twisting things. I thought I was defending her and us and me. None of it fits neatly over the memory Colt had just offered, and that makes Flora’s stomach twist with a new, colder discomfort. "I didn’t..." She trails off, glancing toward the empty space where the scene had played out, then gestures vaguely toward it with her fingers. "I didn’t realize that wasn’t what had actually happened."

If Colt hadn’t been standing right there, Flora might have called the next memory forward on instinct, might have dragged the aftermath of the birthday party into the air as if one ugly truth demanded another. Sohalia’s tears, the confusion over why Colt would call her a liar, Flora’s own certainty, fierce and immediate, wrapping around the Luminary without once stopping to wonder where the story had bent. Now, with Colt across from her and the champagne still fizzing like this is a celebration instead of an autopsy, the lack of honesty is suddenly impossible not to see, and Flora has no idea what to do with that except press her fingers against the side of her glass and stare at the frost until it starts to melt beneath her touch.

"I'm sorry, Colt."

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Raining on me so damn long, but that's relief to a man who calls a desert home

There's a sense of defeat to Flora that catches Colt off guard. Or perhaps better said, a deflation, since there is no victor between them. How can there be, when all they've earned is a sense of hurt and betrayal, their only prize the complication of words exchanged like ammunition. She expected the staunch certainty she saw before, never having seen Flora as anything other than fiercely confident, even when she's wrong. It seems the difference lies in knowing you're wrong, or at least, confused about what's right anymore.

Colt's gaze drops to the small streams of bubbles still moving along the side of her glass as Flora's voice rises, the cadence of it broken apart now by thoughts that've been scattered. It's familiar, and Colt won't be so cruel as to watch as someone's certainty unravels. Although she can't avoid the sound of it, or the relief it grants, guilt mixed in with finally feeling understood and sane when everything until now had felt the opposite, wishing it had come in a way less muddy and torn than this. Truth does not bother to dress pretty very often though, and Flora's ability could prove as dangerous for herself as anyone else.

Her attention slides back up to hold Flora in full when the queen admits she's the one who owes an apology. Colt attempts to rouse a reassurance, to say she doesn't need it, to nod with knowing eyes like they need not drag the thing to the surface just to understand it lurks beneath. Yet, her breath remains suspended in her chest, held as much for herself as the anticipation of what Flora stumbles through.

"I understand." Better than any thank you Colt could give, the words leave her with a subtle sigh. "I'd defend my friends just as thoroughly, if I felt the threat." A weak smile offers itself up on one side of her face, and Colt's body grants the breathing room that their fresh awareness doesn't. She claims her frosted glass, fingers curling around a new portion of the base where the ice still clings, undisturbed until now as she tilts the rest of it back. "So truly, anyone who knows you so well is rather lucky, I think, to have you to stand up for them." She reaches for the bottle of champagne and refills her glass efficiently, topping off Flora's without comment. She waits pointedly for a fresh chill, glancing towards the dragon. "Spice, would you be so kind?"

Sinking away from the bar edge into one of the high stools, she settles comfortably into it, effectively removing the tension of someone standing and ready to depart as one leg crosses over the other. "For what it's worth, I've spoken to Sohalia since." Her intention here is not to drag the woman, but maybe offer a touch more clarity to Flora, who's looking like she's seen a ghost at this point. A too familiar feeling, and Colt hates the idea of watching the Hot Take dangle over nothing for long. "You still might want to ask her yourself, she'll probably give you a better explanation than me, but she told me she didn't mean it to come across that way." The way Colt's lips twist back into a frown speaks volumes about how much she agrees with that statement, but she tilts her lips behind her glass until they straighten back into something more resolved to kindness.

"My best guess is she decided the desert wasn't to her liking and was just trying to talk a little shit about it all with you. Make herself feel better about the choice she'd make, all while being proud she'd been invited." There's no accusation in her tone, just the analysis of something she can understand, and she says as much. "I get it," she shrugs, "It's not for everyone." That had always been her stance, although she would have appreciated being told a smoother way than had happened, but life frankly doesn't give a damn what she wants, as it's blatantly shown her time and time again.

Colt

Still gripping the shovel that got me here, fear if I let go I might disappear

flora

Flora’s smile pulls crookedly across her lips when Colt says she’d defend her friends just as thoroughly, and for all that the expression is small, there’s nothing false about it. She believes that; it's one of the things she had liked about Colt almost immediately, the shape of that loyalty, the hard-edged certainty of it, the sense that if you stood in the right place beside her, she would become very difficult to move. Which had made the supposed betrayal sting all the more, of course, because Flora had been so sure Colt wasn’t that kind of person until she had been just as sure that she was. Turns out, annoyingly, horribly, she had been right the first time and wrong the second.

Spice, obliging under the weight of Colt’s politeness and perhaps more importantly the renewed attention of a task, leans forward to breathe another precise gust of frost over the fresh pours. The cold blooms up the glass again, making lacework of the champagne flutes and Flora’s highball, and Flora watches it happen without argument, as if the tiny ritual gives her something safer to do with her eyes. When she takes a healthy sip, the bubbles burst brightly over her tongue, cold and sharp and expensive enough to feel like it should mean something better than this. It doesn't taste like celebration, but she swallows anyway.

Exhaling softly, Flora nods, her fingers turning the glass once against the bar. "No, I’m sure she didn’t," she says, and despite everything newly rearranged between them, there is no immediate leap in her toward imagining Sohalia had set the whole thing up maliciously. Flora has been wrong, yes, and Soh had clearly made the situation sound like something it wasn’t, but that doesn’t suddenly make her best friend a villain tucked prettily behind soft eyes and a crown of sunlight. It does, however, make the whole thing more complicated than Flora wants it to be, and the little crease between her brows says as much.

When Colt continues, Flora gives her head a slight shake before huffing out a little laugh, the sound dry around the edges but not cruel. "Well, she’s pregnant, so in the long run I doubt she’d have stayed even if she did originally want to go." Her shoulders lift in a small shrug, though the thought catches somewhere uncomfortable beneath it. Maybe that explains some of it, the strange choice of words, the need to make the decision feel easier by making the offer feel worse. Maybe it explains nothing at all and Flora is just trying to find a path through the wreckage that doesn’t immediately require her to be upset and confused at someone else she loves.

For a moment she isn’t sure whether she owes Colt another apology, cleaner this time and less tangled up in the shock of realizing she’d been wrong, or whether what they both need is space enough for the first one to actually settle. The champagne bottle is still more than half full, though, and Colt has chosen a stool instead of the door, so she lets one finger trail through a melting patch of frost on her glass, casual in the way all calculated things try to look casual, and raises her aqua eyes back toward Colt with a careful tilt of her head. "Sooo," she says, testing the new ground beneath them with the cautious elegance of someone stepping onto a dock she isn’t entirely sure has been nailed down properly, "how are things going up there?" Her brows lift, the corner of her mouth threatening something almost like her usual brightness, though it remains gentler for the moment. "Easier in Deepfrost, I imagine."

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Raining on me so damn long, but that's relief to a man who calls a desert home

Though Flora's teeth had left the deepest mark, Colt begrudges them the least. Not that the bite hadn't hurt, not that the trust is so easily won back as she'd her hand so casually again, but it's a showing of protection she at least recognizes. Sohalia's bruise is a different matter entirely. It's changed color a time or two now, appearing without her even noticing where it came from, pretending to hurt less than it does every time she ends up running into it again. Maybe Flora is used to wearing them, or maybe Colt's just more inclined to avoid bruises, but either way, where forgiveness is quick on Flora's behalf, it stretches out much more uncertainly from Colt for the Luminary's sake.

It's half of why she settled, expecting she might need the strength of a cushion to carefully describe the bright woman who's gone around casting shadows. She mistook Flora's immediate shock though for something more aligned with her own inclination to give distance, and she supposes that's no surprise at all given Melita's advice about all the two women had gone through together. There's maybe a touch of approval even that Flora remains steadfast in her belief of her friend. Not the surface matter, distorted now, but the depth beneath it.

"Pregnant?" Colt repeats, surprise swiftly overtaking any of her well-manufactured ease and twisting it up on her features. "No, definitely not a wise choice to be in Hak Etme then. It's a challenge enough for the fittest of us," she murmurs, fingers idly swiping away the ice decorating her glass in small patterns of thought. "She wasn't showing at all when I saw her, but maybe it'd already been present." Colt hums over her glass, considering something in a fresh light for the first time after staring at it too long under the same one. "Always an unpleasant surprise to discover your own body has betrayed your good sense, and yet every season I'm reminded that I'm little better than driven by basic nature sometimes." She sighs with the abundant annoyance of being a woman. "I'm guessing strange cravings have been the least of her worries. I can't imagine that's easy to deal with, even somewhere as nice as here." Colt has never had the experience, and with few friends who are women, hasn't even been very close to it. Not besides the stock she bred, but she's not about to liken Sohalia to a cow or a pregnant horse.

It doesn't clean everything up, and it's only an assumption, but it offers something besides carelessness for Colt to sit with when she thinks of Sohalia. Very happy not to be the pregnant one, Colt partakes of the chilled champagne with a gusto that suggests she's pouring one out for a dearly departed friend.

Her eyes flick to the door as she pulls her glass away, recognizing that she's accomplished more here than she first hoped in such a short while. Nothing is undone, but plenty is straighter than it had been, and she feels lighter than when she stood outside that door with a full bottle in hand, although that could be the direct result of said bottle. Still, she feels like there's something to clear here, her own apology too fragile amid everything. They each might have been given the poor end of someone else's choice, but they'd each still acted upon it. "You don't have to do that," she says gently, spinning the glass between her fingers, watching it for a moment before her gaze lifts. "You don't have to pretend things are fine between us." Her other hand joins the first, thumbs tapping along the icy glass, hair shifting with the motion.

"They aren't, and that's alright. I just owed you something more than silence." Maybe they could be again, some day, after all of this has healed properly. Colt would remain cautious though, because she's already been turned on once now. "You offered assistance and I should have done more than hold out my hand to people you care about." It's taken her time to agree with this point, because poaching or not aside, she had still made offers as if it wouldn't remove people from Flora's side, a difference than if those people had asked her first. "Of course it's their choice, and I'm not aiming to steal anyone, but I could have done better." A quick study in politics and friendship alike, a steep learning curve for someone who's prone to doing whatever the fuck she pleases usually. "That's all I really wanted to talk about," she murmurs, finishing her glass and sliding it over the counter.

Colt

Still gripping the shovel that got me here, fear if I let go I might disappear

flora

Flora only nods at that, because whether Sohalia had known by then or not feels like one of those details that belongs to Sohalia to explain, if she ever decides to. It isn't Flora’s laundry to shake out across the bar just because everything else has apparently been flung open and examined under magical lighting, and honestly, there has been quite enough of other people’s private moments on display for one afternoon. At Colt’s sigh about being driven by basic nature, though, Flora snickers despite herself, one hand lifting from her glass as her eyebrows rise in immediate and very real solidarity. "Oh gods, hard same," she says, because demigod or queen or whatever else, she is still unfortunately housed inside a body with opinions, cravings, and a truly embarrassing history of being hangry.

When Colt’s eyes flick toward the door, Flora feels the shape of the conversation shift a fraction too late. It is subtle, but then so is a tide turning until suddenly all the water is going the other way, and for all the ways she and Colt have seemed alike, Flora wonders if maybe this is one of the places they are not. Maybe Flora, having seen the memory and found the missing truth, is ready to sprint several emotional steps ahead because she wants the whole awful tangle to be over, while Colt is still standing among the sharper pieces, deciding which ones are safe enough to pick up. Or maybe Flora has simply misread the room again, which, given the theme of the afternoon, is not a thought she loves.

As Colt gently declines the offered ease of normal conversation, Flora rocks back onto one heel, the movement small but enough to pull her out of that casual lean against the bar. She nods along, lips parting once as if to say that the apology isn’t necessary, that Colt doesn’t need to keep making room for Flora’s feelings now that the truth has been dragged into the light. But then Colt is still speaking, and the words settle differently than Flora expects, more careful and self-aware than the argument at the party had left room for, and so she closes her mouth again. The glass sliding across the counter is a language Flora knows well enough by now, and the message of it comes through loud and clear.

Her disappointment is stupidly quick, a little flash of it beneath her ribs that she swallows down before it can show too plainly. She lets herself breathe in, then out, and offers Colt a smile that is smaller than her usual ones but no less deliberate for that. "Okay," Flora says, and if the word is careful, it is at least honest. "Well...I guess from my side, it’s all good." She lifts one shoulder slightly, her fingers curling around her highball glass without bringing it to her lips. "You didn’t do what I thought you did, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re fine."

Except now she can see that they aren’t, not for Colt, and the realization leaves Flora feeling abruptly less sure of where to put her hands, her eyes, the apology she has already given and the one she might still owe if only she knew the proper shape of it. Colt is allowed to still be upset at her of course, Flora had come at her in the middle of a party, sharp and certain and public enough to make the wound messy, and while she can explain why she had done it, the explanation doesn’t turn into an eraser just because the memory did.

So she draws in another breath, steadier this time, and lets the rest of what she wants to say come without trying to make it charming. "Thanks for coming to clear the air today," she adds, aqua eyes lifting back to Colt’s. "I don’t know that the truth would’ve ever come out if you hadn’t."

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Raining on me so damn long, but that's relief to a man who calls a desert home

Colt's expression gentles further at Flora's blunt admission, but anything remotely close to me too would be a lie. She might be glad to have shared the conversation they did, might not shy away from Torchline's port or shore any more, but no, she isn't really to just shrug it all away and talk about how miserable the heat and the work has been, how vicious the creatures have been, how deliriously exhausting and yet deeply rewarding each day that's survived has felt. Flora is still so many things and yet lacks the very one Colt needs to manage anything resembling casual banter.

"I'm glad to hear it," she smiles, the motion not propped up on her face but genuinely finding its way there. "I didn't want us left as we were." She can't accurately repeat the sentiment back to Flora, of being fine. She might be tomorrow, or the next day. For now though, she's just someone who's spent too much time retracing the path that led her here in the first place to wander off the familiar route so easily now. It'd take more time than this to let some of the trail grow wild again. That has always been Colt's worst traits, getting stuck in thickets and brush and stubbornly staying there, as if every scratch is proof she'll just earn another one, so why bother when she at least knows where these ones will snag her.

She nods at the thanks, getting to her feet with a fluid movement. "Mm, the truth always has a way of coming out." Colt shifts, pulling her cigarette back out of her pocket and putting the wrinkled shape of it to her lips. "Just sometimes takes longer than this." She talks around the edge of it, fingers slipping back in her pockets for her matchbook, striking one to heat and light as she heads towards the door.

"Good luck with everything, Flora," Colt says as a matter of farewell, cigarette beginning to smoke, the match shaken out as she pulls on the handle of the door. "You've got a lot to carry now compared to last time I saw you." It's not meant to land as anything more than observation, though Colt's eyes linger a touch longer on Flora than feels right for the departing glance. Almost as if she's trying to remember the way she looks in this moment, when there's still something bright and new to celebrate and not just the weight of its responsibility. Colt might not have nearly the hefty crown of the Torchline queen, in fact hers is only the shadow of one descending, but already that's proven weighty. Demigod, bar owner, friend, memory-keeper. All manner of straw piling up on Flora, seeming light, until it builds. "Good thing you're strong." She offers a wink before slipping outside, sealing The Last Word behind her.

[FIN]

Colt

Still gripping the shovel that got me here, fear if I let go I might disappear