funny how true colours shine in darkness and secrecy

Koa

Don't you just wanna wake up dark as a lake
Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?

Flora doesn't so much as turn away, but she retreats all the same, each minute movement of her expressive face another door closed between them. From his lofty position looming above her Koa can only watch, his hands clasped, his emotions shuttered behind the steel blinds of a cool facade. Does Flora still know him well enough to recognize the way his fingers twist, the flickering eyeline that gives away just how angry and hurt and scared he is, how much lurks beneath that soldier's mask?

She did, once. But that was countless battle scars ago.

Her invitation for him to start is met with a raised brow - even if she doesn't care about him anymore, if she's intentionally put the distance of Sohalia between them like a human shield, she has to know what it is that has Koa wound as tightly as a tin soldier on parade. "If you say so," he answers doubtfully, glancing away with a shifting jaw. It's incredibly awkward to have a conversation when one person is seated and one is standing, but Koa makes no move to settle into the grass. It would be too familiar, too informal, and he needs to keep his professionalism intact if he isn't going to split in two.

"As you probably know, a couple days after your party, Kaisel Ashborn - a Stormbreak Dragoon, and my cousin - was attacked and nearly killed in Torchline." His voice is unsettling steady, the same tone he'd use to give report to a superior at the end of shift. There's steel in his spine, but it's brittle and patched, a support strut straining under the weight it's been asked to hold.

"His attacker was Jack Barclay."

There's a moment where he nearly buckles, palms shifting to clench and unclench at his side, anger flashing brief and hot as lightning over his face. "I would like to know if there will be any consequences for this unprovoked act of violence." Or if he will have to seek out justice on his own.

If you're drunk on life, babe, I think it's great
But while in this world I think I'll take my whiskey neat