you look like my next mistake
Flora leaps down from the Sugar Tide the second the anchor settles. The wind has whipped her curls into a salt-sweet tangle, and her blood is still singing with the thrill of the flight, the adrenaline of not dying. But as Thalassa shifts back—grinning, powerful, utterly in her element—Flora’s breath catches for a very different reason.
Gods.
For a second, she forgets how to move.
The telltale signs are unmistakable now that she knows what to look for. A wrongness in the angles of Thal’s face. Too many eyes. The way her smile seems to melt at the corners, dripping violet like candlewax. Her skin slick with some shimmering, sticky sheen that catches the starlight all wrong. It’s like looking at her through warped glass—recognisable, beautiful even, but broken.
Her heart skids in her chest. The instinct to back away is immediate and awful, but she clamps down hard on it, letting a bright, breathless laugh tumble from her lips instead—too high, too sharp. "Okay, that was honestly amazing," she says, waving a hand as if brushing off the burn in her stomach. "I seriously appreciate you showing me the ropes. Pretty sure I’d be a smear on the ocean without you."
She’s retreating already, her body angled toward the ship, words spilling too quickly now. "I’m, uh, totally wiped though. Gonna crawl into bed and not move for like... ever." She flashes a grin that doesn’t quite reach her eyes and starts backing up toward the Sugar Tide’s ladder. "Let’s do this again sometime, yeah? When I've had more practice?"
Gods.
For a second, she forgets how to move.
The telltale signs are unmistakable now that she knows what to look for. A wrongness in the angles of Thal’s face. Too many eyes. The way her smile seems to melt at the corners, dripping violet like candlewax. Her skin slick with some shimmering, sticky sheen that catches the starlight all wrong. It’s like looking at her through warped glass—recognisable, beautiful even, but broken.
Her heart skids in her chest. The instinct to back away is immediate and awful, but she clamps down hard on it, letting a bright, breathless laugh tumble from her lips instead—too high, too sharp. "Okay, that was honestly amazing," she says, waving a hand as if brushing off the burn in her stomach. "I seriously appreciate you showing me the ropes. Pretty sure I’d be a smear on the ocean without you."
She’s retreating already, her body angled toward the ship, words spilling too quickly now. "I’m, uh, totally wiped though. Gonna crawl into bed and not move for like... ever." She flashes a grin that doesn’t quite reach her eyes and starts backing up toward the Sugar Tide’s ladder. "Let’s do this again sometime, yeah? When I've had more practice?"
