Flora
The forest has always held her gently—like a breath cupped in green palms, like a hush pressed against her skin. Flora walks it like a daughter returning home, fingertips trailing the bark with soft-spoken intent, trusting in the way it welcomes her back each time. She’s even smiling, faintly, as she brushes a petal from the curve of her shoulder, the hem of her dress light against her thighs, invisible to all the world.
Until she isn’t.
The voice slithers out of the trees like a serpent, slow and sharp, and before her mind can finish putting a name to it—Dahlia—the world rips open. A sickening sound tears through the air, something between a snarl and a wet crack as claws punch through the glamour of her invisibility, through silk and skin and deeper still. The sundress splits like paper. Blood follows.
Pain blossoms. Not like fire, but like light—white and blinding and everywhere at once. It’s so pure, so immediate, that for half a second she doesn’t even register it as pain. Just a wash of heat, of searing weightlessness, as if she’s been unstitched from her body entirely. Her knees give before her mind catches up, her vision fracturing at the edges like glass beginning to splinter.
No. No, no, no.
The panic barrels through her next, uncoiling in a tidal rush that chokes everything else. Dahlia. Dahlia. She wasn’t supposed to find her. Flora had been careful. Hadn’t she? She’s not even visible—how could she be seen—?
But the Family doesn’t need eyes. Not when monsters wear masks that can smell blood in the wind and cruelty in the soil.
The compass is heavy in her pocket, but her hand moves on instinct. Not grace—there’s no grace in this. Just desperation and the kind of ragged training that came from knowing this moment would come. Her thumb slams down on the button even as her other arm collapses beneath her, even as her blood paints the roots of the tree she’d just whispered to. The bark doesn’t answer her now. The trees have gone silent.
And then—just before the darkness creeps far enough in to claim her—she vanishes.
Flora uses her compass!
Type: Light | Style: Other | Level: Basic
Capitol Compass | Can travel to the political hubs in all settled lands.
~FIN
Until she isn’t.
The voice slithers out of the trees like a serpent, slow and sharp, and before her mind can finish putting a name to it—Dahlia—the world rips open. A sickening sound tears through the air, something between a snarl and a wet crack as claws punch through the glamour of her invisibility, through silk and skin and deeper still. The sundress splits like paper. Blood follows.
Pain blossoms. Not like fire, but like light—white and blinding and everywhere at once. It’s so pure, so immediate, that for half a second she doesn’t even register it as pain. Just a wash of heat, of searing weightlessness, as if she’s been unstitched from her body entirely. Her knees give before her mind catches up, her vision fracturing at the edges like glass beginning to splinter.
No. No, no, no.
The panic barrels through her next, uncoiling in a tidal rush that chokes everything else. Dahlia. Dahlia. She wasn’t supposed to find her. Flora had been careful. Hadn’t she? She’s not even visible—how could she be seen—?
But the Family doesn’t need eyes. Not when monsters wear masks that can smell blood in the wind and cruelty in the soil.
The compass is heavy in her pocket, but her hand moves on instinct. Not grace—there’s no grace in this. Just desperation and the kind of ragged training that came from knowing this moment would come. Her thumb slams down on the button even as her other arm collapses beneath her, even as her blood paints the roots of the tree she’d just whispered to. The bark doesn’t answer her now. The trees have gone silent.
And then—just before the darkness creeps far enough in to claim her—she vanishes.
Flora uses her compass!
Type: Light | Style: Other | Level: Basic
Capitol Compass | Can travel to the political hubs in all settled lands.
~FIN
Fatefully, I tried to pick my battles 'til the battle picked me
Misery, Like the war of words I shouted in my sleep
Misery, Like the war of words I shouted in my sleep
Code stolen from Queen Sky
