flora
The words slide past her, and later they’ll echo in the quiet places of her mind when she’s trying to sleep, when the house is too still and the sea too loud, but in this moment they don’t find purchase; there’s too much else pressing in to wonder in what ways she'd ever actually rubbed off on Jack. She folds her arms across her chest without pretending it’s anything but defensive, shoulders tightening beneath the thin straps of her sundress as his laughter breaks and then stifles, as he invites her to continue like she’s offering him a parlour trick instead of terms.
She holds his gaze while he restates her proposal, lets him dress it up in his own cadence, bides the chastisement about memory and choice and who rubbed off on whom with an even stare that doesn’t waver. But when he lays out his own condition, when he speaks of her becoming nothing—no Kaisel, no friends, no family, no companion, no gods—when he says only he would remember, something shifts. The colour drains from her face so abruptly it feels like the tide pulling hard from shore, leaving only the clear, bright shock of her aqua eyes and two sharp points of heat high on her cheeks. For a fraction of a second she says nothing, the threat hanging between them like a blade held delicately by the tip.
"Well," she says at last, voice steadier than she feels, chin lifting a notch higher as though the motion alone could anchor her, "if it’s going to be like that, then sure." Her arms remain folded, but her weight shifts subtly onto one hip, a gesture almost idle if not for the tension threading through it. "But only if you agree that if you break your side of the agreement, you lose either your revivify feather or your mageglass." She gives a small, almost absent shrug, something that might pass for sweetness to anyone watching this exchange on mute. "I’ll let you pick which."
She holds his gaze while he restates her proposal, lets him dress it up in his own cadence, bides the chastisement about memory and choice and who rubbed off on whom with an even stare that doesn’t waver. But when he lays out his own condition, when he speaks of her becoming nothing—no Kaisel, no friends, no family, no companion, no gods—when he says only he would remember, something shifts. The colour drains from her face so abruptly it feels like the tide pulling hard from shore, leaving only the clear, bright shock of her aqua eyes and two sharp points of heat high on her cheeks. For a fraction of a second she says nothing, the threat hanging between them like a blade held delicately by the tip.
"Well," she says at last, voice steadier than she feels, chin lifting a notch higher as though the motion alone could anchor her, "if it’s going to be like that, then sure." Her arms remain folded, but her weight shifts subtly onto one hip, a gesture almost idle if not for the tension threading through it. "But only if you agree that if you break your side of the agreement, you lose either your revivify feather or your mageglass." She gives a small, almost absent shrug, something that might pass for sweetness to anyone watching this exchange on mute. "I’ll let you pick which."
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
