you look like my next mistake
The Sugartide rides the cloudline like she owns it. Wind teases her ivy-wrapped sides, and the stained-glass sails flash like jewels in motion—mauve, seafoam, gold—spilling fractured light across the upper atmosphere as the ship banks slowly toward Stormbreak. The shadow of the floating city is beginning to stretch long across the sky, a monolith of stone and gods and tightly wound laws that Flora has never much cared for.
Beneath it? Now that’s more her style.
She’s barefoot at the helm, her feet braced as the ship dips with casual grace through the updrafts. Her dress is billowy and impractical—soft peach with off-the-shoulder sleeves, slit high along one thigh, gold thread catching the light when the wind plays with the hem. Bangles jingle with each shift of her wrist as she steers, and Spice glides ahead of them in a lazy spiral, pale against the haze of the descending sun.
They’re close enough now to make out the sprawl of tangled roots clawing from the underside of the capital, the Grotto yawning open like the city’s unspoken mouth—earthy, hidden, riddled with treasure and trouble alike.
And behind her? Ace. She knows him only in the way one knows smoke and rumours: sharp around the edges, charming if you’re not careful, and very clearly the kind of man who’s seen the underside of more than one mattress, not that Flora's judging. Tilting her head back over one shoulder, she flashes him a grin. "Soooooo," she drawls, lips curved like honey poured over a knife’s edge, "slept with any more of my friends since the last time I saw you?"
Beneath it? Now that’s more her style.
She’s barefoot at the helm, her feet braced as the ship dips with casual grace through the updrafts. Her dress is billowy and impractical—soft peach with off-the-shoulder sleeves, slit high along one thigh, gold thread catching the light when the wind plays with the hem. Bangles jingle with each shift of her wrist as she steers, and Spice glides ahead of them in a lazy spiral, pale against the haze of the descending sun.
They’re close enough now to make out the sprawl of tangled roots clawing from the underside of the capital, the Grotto yawning open like the city’s unspoken mouth—earthy, hidden, riddled with treasure and trouble alike.
And behind her? Ace. She knows him only in the way one knows smoke and rumours: sharp around the edges, charming if you’re not careful, and very clearly the kind of man who’s seen the underside of more than one mattress, not that Flora's judging. Tilting her head back over one shoulder, she flashes him a grin. "Soooooo," she drawls, lips curved like honey poured over a knife’s edge, "slept with any more of my friends since the last time I saw you?"
