Flora
Her name stops her mid-step—soft, uncertain, like something breaking open rather than snapping shut. It wasn’t a trick this time; she hadn’t walked away to bait him into calling her back, hadn’t expected anything more than the ache of parting. So when Jack’s voice reaches for her, quiet and rough around the edges, Flora stills.
Her thoughts flutter open like a startled bird—uncertain wings beating hard against her ribs as she turns, slow and careful, and slips back into the booth across from him. Her expression is as unreadable as her thoughts are jumbled. Not because she’s intentionally trying to veil them from him, but because she doesn’t quite know what to do with this sudden shift. Like she’s stepped out onto ice that might hold, or might crack clean through.
So she does the only thing she can think of to keep the moment from collapsing. She thinks of oceans. Not metaphorical ones—real ones. She thinks of the shimmering green shallows off the coast of Apopo. The way the fog hung over the waves by the Boondocks. The brilliant indigo tide that gleamed beneath the Ark when they'd been moored in the Spillwave. She holds those thoughts like sea glass in her mind, polished and bright.
And then, very softly, she asks, "Do you remember when you took me up past the clouds to see the skywhales?"
Her thoughts flutter open like a startled bird—uncertain wings beating hard against her ribs as she turns, slow and careful, and slips back into the booth across from him. Her expression is as unreadable as her thoughts are jumbled. Not because she’s intentionally trying to veil them from him, but because she doesn’t quite know what to do with this sudden shift. Like she’s stepped out onto ice that might hold, or might crack clean through.
So she does the only thing she can think of to keep the moment from collapsing. She thinks of oceans. Not metaphorical ones—real ones. She thinks of the shimmering green shallows off the coast of Apopo. The way the fog hung over the waves by the Boondocks. The brilliant indigo tide that gleamed beneath the Ark when they'd been moored in the Spillwave. She holds those thoughts like sea glass in her mind, polished and bright.
And then, very softly, she asks, "Do you remember when you took me up past the clouds to see the skywhales?"
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
