you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody
As Jack steps closer, the air shifts around him, but Flora doesn’t move. Only her face tilts, drawn upward into the warmth of the illusionary sun, skin touched with golden glow that she doesn’t feel anywhere inside. Her thoughts flicker like light against shallow water, caught in the ripple between memory and fear, each one translucent and wavering—like shadows behind gauze. They pulse outward in a slow, weightless tide, and he’ll see them whether she speaks or not: the image of her sprawled on blood-soaked gravel, lungs catching against broken sound, the feeling of her mouth full of blood.
Her breathing hitches as his fingers lift, gentle where the world had not been, brushing her hair aside with a tenderness that contrasts too sharply against the phantom of Dahlia’s claws. Flora exhales, almost inaudibly, and lets her body turn just enough to show him. The silk parts easily, a gossamer veil failing to conceal the horror beneath: deep, curved lines, cruel and jagged, where Dahlia’s talons had found purchase. At her lower back—just above the waist—the wounds deepen into small punctures where the Reaper had held her, bone-deep and deliberate, like a creature to be carved open. The skin is pale around the edges, still raw and swollen in the centre, slick with healing salves that smell too clean for something so violent.
When she finally speaks, the words are barely louder than the ocean breeze murmuring through the enchanted room. Her voice cracks softly, not from tears but from the effort of shaping something so awful into syllables. “I felt her claws hook around my ribs.” The trembling in her hands grows stronger, the water in the glass whispering against the rim with each small shiver. ”I felt it when she started to pull me apart.”
And though she doesn’t cry, something inside her curls tighter, as if the memory still has talons of its own. Her head shakes slowly, once, twice, as if denying the truth of it will make the echo any less sharp. As if pretending will knit her back together in ways that healing magic couldn’t reach.
It doesn’t. She drops the glass, and while it appears as though they’re on sand, it shatters just the same.
Her breathing hitches as his fingers lift, gentle where the world had not been, brushing her hair aside with a tenderness that contrasts too sharply against the phantom of Dahlia’s claws. Flora exhales, almost inaudibly, and lets her body turn just enough to show him. The silk parts easily, a gossamer veil failing to conceal the horror beneath: deep, curved lines, cruel and jagged, where Dahlia’s talons had found purchase. At her lower back—just above the waist—the wounds deepen into small punctures where the Reaper had held her, bone-deep and deliberate, like a creature to be carved open. The skin is pale around the edges, still raw and swollen in the centre, slick with healing salves that smell too clean for something so violent.
When she finally speaks, the words are barely louder than the ocean breeze murmuring through the enchanted room. Her voice cracks softly, not from tears but from the effort of shaping something so awful into syllables. “I felt her claws hook around my ribs.” The trembling in her hands grows stronger, the water in the glass whispering against the rim with each small shiver. ”I felt it when she started to pull me apart.”
And though she doesn’t cry, something inside her curls tighter, as if the memory still has talons of its own. Her head shakes slowly, once, twice, as if denying the truth of it will make the echo any less sharp. As if pretending will knit her back together in ways that healing magic couldn’t reach.
It doesn’t. She drops the glass, and while it appears as though they’re on sand, it shatters just the same.
