your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
Flora listens, arms crossed loosely now as if to keep her hands from giving too much away. Her head tips gently, curls falling from their knot in slow rebellion, but when Lysandra speaks of amending stories—of mercy, of honesty and beauty coexisting—she softly shakes her head. "Maybe," she allows, the word light and noncommittal. But her smile is thinner now, polished at the edges. "In my experience, stories are what they are. They stick to you like perfume on old clothes, doesn’t matter how true it is, or how much you wish it was something else." A shrug follows, quick and practiced, before she tosses a brighter grin across the space like a coin flipped between them. "But, I was called the Doubletake before I even earned a crown, so if the stories that precede me don't match onto reality, what of it?" She leaves the question hanging like tinsel, pretty and evasive. Some truths are too jagged to show strangers, no matter how softly they speak.
But when Lysandra speaks again, the queen stills, the quiet weight of those words settling like snow across her shoulders. Her gaze flickers to the orca—still circling, still shining—and she thinks about the ache tucked deep into that confession. To miss something you've never had, to long for a place that never was. It's like poetry, she thinks; the kind that scratches at your ribs when you're not paying attention.
"I do," Flora says, and this time there’s no humour to soften it. Her voice is quieter now, stripped of show. "My twin brother died a few years ago, during the war." She doesn’t look away as she says it, though something in her gaze flickers, light behind sea glass. "And sometimes...it feels like there’s this other version of my life. One I was meant to be living, one where he’s still in it."
Her lips tug faintly, not into a smile exactly, but something close. "I miss it," she says. "Even though I never had it."
But when Lysandra speaks again, the queen stills, the quiet weight of those words settling like snow across her shoulders. Her gaze flickers to the orca—still circling, still shining—and she thinks about the ache tucked deep into that confession. To miss something you've never had, to long for a place that never was. It's like poetry, she thinks; the kind that scratches at your ribs when you're not paying attention.
"I do," Flora says, and this time there’s no humour to soften it. Her voice is quieter now, stripped of show. "My twin brother died a few years ago, during the war." She doesn’t look away as she says it, though something in her gaze flickers, light behind sea glass. "And sometimes...it feels like there’s this other version of my life. One I was meant to be living, one where he’s still in it."
Her lips tug faintly, not into a smile exactly, but something close. "I miss it," she says. "Even though I never had it."
