flora
Niki brushes past her like a ghost, and despite how amusing that would be in another circumstance, in another room, here, it jars something in Flora as he crosses the threshold. The air in the room seems to flinch with her, unsettled by the trespass. No one is supposed to be in this room.
The ships in bottles, the old desk, the fake waterbed, the swing still in its box—all of it had been assembled like the beginning of a story she’d thought she and the captain would finish together. And when everything had collapsed like driftwood underfoot, this room had been left untouched. Not sacred, not preserved, haunted. And maybe, on paper, Niki fits here. A ghost in all but name, but it’s still wrong. It feels wrong. Flora stands there for a beat too long, stricken, watching him move through, as if this room has always had space for his silhouette.
He reaches for things that aren’t there, hands falling restlessly back to his side when they close on nothing. Outside, the wind screams against the glass like it wants in. A bolt of lightning cleaves across the sky outside and for a heartbeat the entire room flashes white, and that’s when she sees it. The way his shirt has slipped down, the pale gleam of his skin interrupted by a deep, terrible scar that slices from his shoulder across the whole of his chest.
Her breath catches with a tiny, involuntary inhale. The storm, the scar, the ache she hadn’t meant to carry tonight, it all pulls her from herself. She steps forward, quieter now, no longer halted in her own grief. Gently, with the care of someone handling something fragile, she places herself in his path. She doesn’t reach out—she’s heard too many times you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker—but she moves with him instead. Her body becomes a soft barrier, her steps angled to guide his back toward the door, out of this room, this unfinished shrine, this bruise at the corner of her house.
"It’s okay," she whispers, voice barely above the wind’s cry. "Let’s go this way instead."
The ships in bottles, the old desk, the fake waterbed, the swing still in its box—all of it had been assembled like the beginning of a story she’d thought she and the captain would finish together. And when everything had collapsed like driftwood underfoot, this room had been left untouched. Not sacred, not preserved, haunted. And maybe, on paper, Niki fits here. A ghost in all but name, but it’s still wrong. It feels wrong. Flora stands there for a beat too long, stricken, watching him move through, as if this room has always had space for his silhouette.
He reaches for things that aren’t there, hands falling restlessly back to his side when they close on nothing. Outside, the wind screams against the glass like it wants in. A bolt of lightning cleaves across the sky outside and for a heartbeat the entire room flashes white, and that’s when she sees it. The way his shirt has slipped down, the pale gleam of his skin interrupted by a deep, terrible scar that slices from his shoulder across the whole of his chest.
Her breath catches with a tiny, involuntary inhale. The storm, the scar, the ache she hadn’t meant to carry tonight, it all pulls her from herself. She steps forward, quieter now, no longer halted in her own grief. Gently, with the care of someone handling something fragile, she places herself in his path. She doesn’t reach out—she’s heard too many times you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker—but she moves with him instead. Her body becomes a soft barrier, her steps angled to guide his back toward the door, out of this room, this unfinished shrine, this bruise at the corner of her house.
"It’s okay," she whispers, voice barely above the wind’s cry. "Let’s go this way instead."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars
it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
