I like shiny things, but I'd marry you with paper rings
Flora’s breath gathers in her chest in a soft swell, ready with a familiar rebuttal, the playful volley they toss back and forth so easily—it isn’t just your firsts, it’s ours—poised on her tongue. But the instant Kaisel asks if she’s already seen starwhales, the air inside her tilts, shifts and cools. Her smile falters at the edges, the light dimming like petals curling inward when the sun slips behind a cloud. She has seen them, but just once. With Jack.
The memory rises like a shard of glass under skin; something beautiful that hurts when touched. The sky full of drifting constellations, their massive forms gliding through the darkness like living galaxies, and she’d stood on a deck not so different from this one, feeling wonder bloom in her bones. But she’d also felt a strange loneliness that came with being treated like an accessory, a date chosen because the moment benefited the Captain. It was one of the only times he’d taken her out with intention, one of the few pieces of their history that hadn’t immediately tarnished in retrospect, and tonight the shine dulls just enough to leave her hollow in a way the brisk wind cannot explain.
It keeps her cold in a way that doesn't have her seeking out Kaisel's warmth—not his arms or his cocoa-sweetened breath at her ear—but instead has her wanting to fold in on herself, to retreat to somewhere dark and silent because if you're going to be haunted by ghosts, there was no where more fitting. There’s a whisper of shame, thin and sharp that rises in the back of her mind: if boys don’t want to be virgins, girls don’t want to be used up, and while she knows Kaisel didn’t mean it that way—he had only asked a question—her mind twists it cruelly all the same. What if he finds out she’s done too much, lived too much, ruined the shine of discovery before he ever gets there? What if the world with her isn’t new, just borrowed?
The instinct to lie flickers in her chest like a candle caught in a sudden draft, offering her an easy escape from the heaviness blooming under her ribs, but the idea collapses almost immediately under the weight of who he is to her. She forces the brightness of her smile back into place, soft and steady even as it strains at the corners, and with a small shrug that tries to turn the truth light and inconsequential. "Only once," she says, brushing the words out like loose snow from her sleeves. She wants him to see only this moment and not the old one that she is desperately trying to keep from bleeding through the edges of her expression, so she lifts her hot chocolate closer to her chest and lets the warmth of it seep into the bare hand curled around the mug while she turns her face toward the deepening sky.
Flora wants to experience everything again with Kaisel, because with him the world feels new. It feels wide open, bright, possible. It feels like the world she should have had all along, but now doubts gnaw in the shadows between heartbeats: What if this was a mistake? What if he thinks shared joy is somehow lesser? What if her past, instead of making fresh moments richer, only makes them secondhand? Spice, perceptive in the strange, uncanny way dragons seem to be, gives a soft chirp of warning on Kaisel’s shoulder. Not at him, not against him, but for him; the way a dog might alert when someone was about to feint. A tap of her tiny head against his jaw before she hops off and glides toward the bow to give them space.
As Kaisel’s voice drifts toward her, asking about auroras, Flora clings to the question like a rope thrown across fast water. Her gaze lifts toward the sky, where dusk is deepening, colours beginning to gather like breath before a sigh. "I always thought..." she begins, her voice quieter but steady, "...that they were like the snow version of rainbows." She hums under her breath, eyes narrowing thoughtfully as she watches the first faint shimmer of green unfurl far in the corners of the horizon. "Like when light hits rain just right and makes colours, maybe this is just what happens when it goes through snow?" And beneath her attempt at explanation, beneath the playful softness, a quiet hope threads through her chest that the night sky might take over the conversation long enough for the ache inside her to settle, or maybe for him to notice the way her brightness flickered.
The memory rises like a shard of glass under skin; something beautiful that hurts when touched. The sky full of drifting constellations, their massive forms gliding through the darkness like living galaxies, and she’d stood on a deck not so different from this one, feeling wonder bloom in her bones. But she’d also felt a strange loneliness that came with being treated like an accessory, a date chosen because the moment benefited the Captain. It was one of the only times he’d taken her out with intention, one of the few pieces of their history that hadn’t immediately tarnished in retrospect, and tonight the shine dulls just enough to leave her hollow in a way the brisk wind cannot explain.
It keeps her cold in a way that doesn't have her seeking out Kaisel's warmth—not his arms or his cocoa-sweetened breath at her ear—but instead has her wanting to fold in on herself, to retreat to somewhere dark and silent because if you're going to be haunted by ghosts, there was no where more fitting. There’s a whisper of shame, thin and sharp that rises in the back of her mind: if boys don’t want to be virgins, girls don’t want to be used up, and while she knows Kaisel didn’t mean it that way—he had only asked a question—her mind twists it cruelly all the same. What if he finds out she’s done too much, lived too much, ruined the shine of discovery before he ever gets there? What if the world with her isn’t new, just borrowed?
The instinct to lie flickers in her chest like a candle caught in a sudden draft, offering her an easy escape from the heaviness blooming under her ribs, but the idea collapses almost immediately under the weight of who he is to her. She forces the brightness of her smile back into place, soft and steady even as it strains at the corners, and with a small shrug that tries to turn the truth light and inconsequential. "Only once," she says, brushing the words out like loose snow from her sleeves. She wants him to see only this moment and not the old one that she is desperately trying to keep from bleeding through the edges of her expression, so she lifts her hot chocolate closer to her chest and lets the warmth of it seep into the bare hand curled around the mug while she turns her face toward the deepening sky.
Flora wants to experience everything again with Kaisel, because with him the world feels new. It feels wide open, bright, possible. It feels like the world she should have had all along, but now doubts gnaw in the shadows between heartbeats: What if this was a mistake? What if he thinks shared joy is somehow lesser? What if her past, instead of making fresh moments richer, only makes them secondhand? Spice, perceptive in the strange, uncanny way dragons seem to be, gives a soft chirp of warning on Kaisel’s shoulder. Not at him, not against him, but for him; the way a dog might alert when someone was about to feint. A tap of her tiny head against his jaw before she hops off and glides toward the bow to give them space.
As Kaisel’s voice drifts toward her, asking about auroras, Flora clings to the question like a rope thrown across fast water. Her gaze lifts toward the sky, where dusk is deepening, colours beginning to gather like breath before a sigh. "I always thought..." she begins, her voice quieter but steady, "...that they were like the snow version of rainbows." She hums under her breath, eyes narrowing thoughtfully as she watches the first faint shimmer of green unfurl far in the corners of the horizon. "Like when light hits rain just right and makes colours, maybe this is just what happens when it goes through snow?" And beneath her attempt at explanation, beneath the playful softness, a quiet hope threads through her chest that the night sky might take over the conversation long enough for the ache inside her to settle, or maybe for him to notice the way her brightness flickered.
and I hate accidents except when we went from friends to this
