blood on my shirt, a rose in my hand

your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand

Though she laughs, Flora bites back the urge to say that Remi and Ronin probably would have liked Asta more than Jack; it felt like the sort of thing that made too much of what she and the butcher had once been, and gods knew how easy it was for Flora to blow things out of proportion. "UHM, I mean...yes and no, I guess?" Crinkling her nose, the queen glances up at Asta before letting her smile slowly fall away. "If they weren't such assholes about it, there are some things I guess I can see them being worried about." She admits, nibbling on the inside corner of her cheek. "He is a bit older than I am, and there's some stuff in his past that...I mean.."

For a moment Flora doesn't even know what it is she means to say. She doubted if Jack regretted anything in his past, doubted if he'd have done it any differently. Saying that it was just how Torchline was made it sound like his behaviour needed some sort of justification when, in Flora's mind, it didn't. Tightening her fingers against Asta's upper arm, the Doubletake's smile slowly reappears. "I think maybe he's a little bit like you in that way. He has a past," for better or worse, "-but that doesn't make him unlovable, or undeserving of being happy, you know?"

As they round a bend in the pathway, no rare animals, womp womp, Flora picks the direction that opens onto the grouping of marble statues amidst a decadent water feature. Parting from Asta's side, Flora reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small glass vial filled with sand and water from Torchline's shores, as well as a few pearls. "It's an Accepted thing." She explains over one shoulder before leaving them on the shrine dedicated to Safrin.