we show off our different scarlet letters
Flora isn’t looking at the ground—she never is, not when her attention is drawn to gleaming teeth and laughter like cracked thunder. So when Asta’s tail sweeps low, she doesn’t see it until it’s too late. Her heel catches, her balance skews, and the world pitches sideways. "Wh—"
The curse is breathless, cut off entirely as his fist slams squarely into her ribs. "Oooof—" The sound rips out of her like the wind’s been punched from her lungs. Stars dance across her vision, ribs blooming with pain like crushed flower petals beneath velvet.
Rather than flail or aim blind retaliation, Flora drops low, letting gravity take her as her knees buckle. She tucks, rolls—her coat flaring like a spilled glass of wine against the leaf-strewn ground—trying to twist out of his reach before he can follow it up. There’s no elegance in the movement this time, just instinct and desperation, her breath coming short and ragged as she scrambles for distance with grit in her teeth and laughter in her bones.
3/4
The curse is breathless, cut off entirely as his fist slams squarely into her ribs. "Oooof—" The sound rips out of her like the wind’s been punched from her lungs. Stars dance across her vision, ribs blooming with pain like crushed flower petals beneath velvet.
Rather than flail or aim blind retaliation, Flora drops low, letting gravity take her as her knees buckle. She tucks, rolls—her coat flaring like a spilled glass of wine against the leaf-strewn ground—trying to twist out of his reach before he can follow it up. There’s no elegance in the movement this time, just instinct and desperation, her breath coming short and ragged as she scrambles for distance with grit in her teeth and laughter in her bones.
3/4
