and all that we intend is scrawled in sand
Flora had reached for Koa's hand with all the quiet grace of a girl trying not to ask too much of a moment—fingers inching forward in the space between words—but he doesn’t see her. Or if he does, he doesn’t take her hand. The distance between them, which she had been so carefully trying to close, remains stubborn and unmoved. So she lets her touch fall away, her fingers curling instead into the clover, threading gently through the little patches of green and purple at her side, as if they might offer her something softer to hold than this sudden silence.
She nods as he speaks, not trusting her voice yet, though his words are like flint against stone, flaring each time with something sharper than disbelief. A telepath, he says, and her lashes lower against the surprise that flickers through her chest—not just from the revelation itself, but from where his mind runs next. Not to her. Not to them. But to Kaisel. Her thoughts often do that too, though she hadn't expected him to come up now. There’s no bitterness in it, not really, but it catches somewhere delicate all the same, a pinprick of quiet hurt that she tucks beneath her tongue and does not let rise.
When she finally speaks, her voice is soft but steady, like the hush of tidewater drawing back from the shore. "Kai wanted a fight." It isn’t an excuse, and she doesn't try to shape it like one. "He came in ready for it. Provoked Jack intentionally with every single word, fully intending to start a fight." Her fingers brush a clover blossom into a gentle spin, grounding herself in the weight of the moment, even as her mind drifts briefly to what Koa won’t remember and what she shouldn’t bother saying. Still, she adds, "If Jack had meant to kill him, Koa, he would have. But he didn’t. He held back. However much it looked like he didn’t, he did."
And then she falls quiet again, gaze still lowered, but not lost. There is more she could say—so much more. She could tell Koa that being a telepath isn't some storybook gift, that Jack’s head has never known quiet, not since he was small. That he grew up with a mother who died too young and a father who broke things just to hear them scream, and that somewhere between the pain and the noise and the endless intrusion of other people’s thoughts, Jack had to carve himself into something cold just to survive, despite living someplace as warm as Torchline. That what looks like cruelty was, for him, a kind of armour. That no one taught him how to be kind. That sometimes she isn’t sure he even knows how.
But she doesn’t say any of it. That history isn’t hers to hand out, no matter how tempting it is to offer it up like a defence. It’s too precious, too personal, and far too easy to twist. So she swallows it down, tucks it away behind her teeth, and lets Koa’s anger sit unchallenged.
She says nothing about who Jack is, or why she stayed. Not because the answers don’t exist, but because they were never the point of this conversation, which...is definitely not going the way she'd thought it would. She had come here to explain the gap that opened up between them, not to excuse someone else’s choices. And though it hurts to feel the shape of what matters most to him now, though it stings in ways she hadn’t quite braced for, she doesn’t recoil from it. Koa wouldn't remember any of this anyway, even if she would.
She nods as he speaks, not trusting her voice yet, though his words are like flint against stone, flaring each time with something sharper than disbelief. A telepath, he says, and her lashes lower against the surprise that flickers through her chest—not just from the revelation itself, but from where his mind runs next. Not to her. Not to them. But to Kaisel. Her thoughts often do that too, though she hadn't expected him to come up now. There’s no bitterness in it, not really, but it catches somewhere delicate all the same, a pinprick of quiet hurt that she tucks beneath her tongue and does not let rise.
When she finally speaks, her voice is soft but steady, like the hush of tidewater drawing back from the shore. "Kai wanted a fight." It isn’t an excuse, and she doesn't try to shape it like one. "He came in ready for it. Provoked Jack intentionally with every single word, fully intending to start a fight." Her fingers brush a clover blossom into a gentle spin, grounding herself in the weight of the moment, even as her mind drifts briefly to what Koa won’t remember and what she shouldn’t bother saying. Still, she adds, "If Jack had meant to kill him, Koa, he would have. But he didn’t. He held back. However much it looked like he didn’t, he did."
And then she falls quiet again, gaze still lowered, but not lost. There is more she could say—so much more. She could tell Koa that being a telepath isn't some storybook gift, that Jack’s head has never known quiet, not since he was small. That he grew up with a mother who died too young and a father who broke things just to hear them scream, and that somewhere between the pain and the noise and the endless intrusion of other people’s thoughts, Jack had to carve himself into something cold just to survive, despite living someplace as warm as Torchline. That what looks like cruelty was, for him, a kind of armour. That no one taught him how to be kind. That sometimes she isn’t sure he even knows how.
But she doesn’t say any of it. That history isn’t hers to hand out, no matter how tempting it is to offer it up like a defence. It’s too precious, too personal, and far too easy to twist. So she swallows it down, tucks it away behind her teeth, and lets Koa’s anger sit unchallenged.
She says nothing about who Jack is, or why she stayed. Not because the answers don’t exist, but because they were never the point of this conversation, which...is definitely not going the way she'd thought it would. She had come here to explain the gap that opened up between them, not to excuse someone else’s choices. And though it hurts to feel the shape of what matters most to him now, though it stings in ways she hadn’t quite braced for, she doesn’t recoil from it. Koa wouldn't remember any of this anyway, even if she would.
