and all that we intend is scrawled in sand
set pre tower-fall
The Wildwood hums around her, alive with birdsong and the soft crackle of shifting paths, its tangled canopy lit gold by the late light of day. It’s golden hour in every sense—too warm, too lovely, too deceptive—as if the forest itself is trying to distract her with beauty, like it always does when things are about to hurt.
Flora sits with her back pressed against an old tree, one wide and knotted enough to hold the weight of memories. Her name and Enzo’s are carved into the bark in familiar loops, softened by time and weather and the brushes of fingers that once belonged to children who thought they’d never grow apart. Her hand lingers over the grooves now, tracing the curve of her twin’s name with a reverence that says everything she doesn’t speak aloud.
She hadn’t dressed up, not really—just a soft cream tank tucked loosely into a pair of cut-off shorts, casual enough to say this wasn’t a clandestine meeting, flattering enough to hope she didn’t look like she was trying. Her gold rings catch the last of the light each time her fingers twitch restlessly, fussing with a loose thread near the hem. Flora's curls fall free around her shoulders, kissed by sunlight and stirred gently by the breeze, and somewhere above her, Spice perches on a low-hanging branch, pale tail wrapped neatly around the bark as the little dragon keeps watch for Koa—and maybe Pip too.
Flora doesn’t look up. She just stares out into the trees, toward where the light slants deeper into the maze of green and flickering wisp-light. The Will-o-Wisps are beginning to flit around now, dancing through the undergrowth like thoughts she can’t quite catch. She’s trying not to fidget, but her heart won’t stop playing its nervous rhythm beneath her ribs, and her chest aches with the weight of everything this place remembers.
The last time she saw him—really saw him—he couldn’t even meet her eyes. And the time after that, she’d told him he could date her best friend with a smile that felt like shattered glass behind her teeth. There’s history here, twisted and overgrown like the Wildwood itself, and lately it’s only gotten more tangled; the memory of Koa stripping off his shirt and Sohalia's tongue dragging up his neck is the sort of thing she both understands and resents in equal measure.
And so...she waits; afraid of what she’ll see when he does come down the path..and more afraid of what she won’t.
