Flora
Jack's words are simple, but they crack something open in Flora anyway. Not loud or dramatic the way her emotions normally tend to present. Just a quiet shatter—like frost blooming across glass, delicate and final. She doesn’t flinch from it; doesn’t blink way the tears that gather hot and shimmering at the corners of her eyes. Instead, she just smiles at him—soft and sad, like the kind of smile you give a memory. The kind you wear when you finally stop fighting the ache.
Her thoughts are tangled now. Still golden in places, but twisted, like ivy reclaiming the edges of something long-abandoned. A secret garden hidden behind glass. The gate is closed and locked, but gods, she still stands at it some days and imagines what it would be like to go inside again.
"I’m sorry too," she says, and her voice is steady, even though it feels like it shouldn’t be. "For hurting you. For putting you in danger and then acting like it wasn’t a big deal." She presses her lips together, then nods, slow and sure. "I never meant for it to come across that way, but...I get it now."
And she does, even if it fixes exactly nothing.
Her fingers curl around the edge of the plate she hadn’t touched. Around the smoothie cup growing warm in her hand. She breathes in the salt and the sugar in the air and wishes, for a moment, that they were somewhere else. That this didn’t feel like walking out of a place she’d wanted to stay in forever, that there wasn't a very real chance this would be their last conversation.
"I miss you," she whispers—not for sympathy or to make things worse, and while she knows he knows even if he can hear it without her saying it, some things deserve to be said anyway.
Her thoughts are tangled now. Still golden in places, but twisted, like ivy reclaiming the edges of something long-abandoned. A secret garden hidden behind glass. The gate is closed and locked, but gods, she still stands at it some days and imagines what it would be like to go inside again.
"I’m sorry too," she says, and her voice is steady, even though it feels like it shouldn’t be. "For hurting you. For putting you in danger and then acting like it wasn’t a big deal." She presses her lips together, then nods, slow and sure. "I never meant for it to come across that way, but...I get it now."
And she does, even if it fixes exactly nothing.
Her fingers curl around the edge of the plate she hadn’t touched. Around the smoothie cup growing warm in her hand. She breathes in the salt and the sugar in the air and wishes, for a moment, that they were somewhere else. That this didn’t feel like walking out of a place she’d wanted to stay in forever, that there wasn't a very real chance this would be their last conversation.
"I miss you," she whispers—not for sympathy or to make things worse, and while she knows he knows even if he can hear it without her saying it, some things deserve to be said anyway.
I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'
why the wound is still bleedin'
Code stolen from Queen Sky
