all islands in a common sea

Flora

Flora’s laugh is soft and sharp all at once, curling in her chest before slipping past her lips. "If you used one of Bassian’s boots, he’d probably be even more curious about what exactly the Ark was meant to be signalling than if you just used a random new flag," she says, the words warm with mischief. The thought glitters through her mind, touched with the shimmer his laugh had left there, that golden thread winding through her without permission.

Her gaze tips toward the door, as if she might see all the way down the hall to that cupboard. "That boa wouldn’t last thirty seconds in rain or wind. And those feathers were hand-plucked from a dreambird, thank you very much." The image of it—tangled in rigging, shedding colour into the salt air with Bassian chaotically trying to collect the feathers—drifts through her thoughts, bright and absurd.

When her eyes find him again, they catch on the spray of tattooed flowers curling over his upper arm, the sight pulling a small, thoughtful shrug from her. "Maybe flowers would be fine, actually." Her aqua eyes glint with the suggestion, the corner of her mouth tilting upward. "You could just tell the crew I’d finally let the power go to my head and demanded the Ark fly my flag just to get back at you."

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense
why the wound is still bleedin'

Code stolen from Queen Sky