flora
The house warns her before the handle turns, not with noise but with a subtle rearranging of the air that moves through Wildering House like a breath drawn and held, the unseen spirits skimming along coral stone and stained glass as though brushing fingertips across the ribs of something living. One of them nudges open the greenhouse door and lets it settle again with a soft click, another sends a flicker of colour spilling down from the skylight in a wash of fractured light across the marble floors, and Flora feels the shift the way she might feel a change in tide beneath her feet. It isn’t the sharp, suspicious bristle they reserve for strangers, nor the mischievous tug they use when someone forgets their manners; instead there is a quiet yielding, a hush threaded through the hallways that feels almost reverent, and her pulse catches before her mind quite names why.
Her mother.
She does not pause to gather composure or summon any version of herself that resembles a queen; she moves, descending the staircase in a sweep of silk and bare feet, the marble cool beneath her soles as the spirits part for her, doors easing open just before she reaches them as though the house itself understands that this is not a moment for theatrics. The ocean beyond the balconies flashes blue and white, terracotta roofs glowing under the Longheat sun, but all of it narrows into a single line of motion toward the front entrance as the latch shifts and the door begins to open. She sees the dragon first, coiled and watchful, then the familiar line of shoulders and the fall of golden hair that catches the light in a way that has always seemed unfairly luminous, and beneath the subtle changes—the thinner edges, the wear at the corners—there is the same impossible combination of softness and steel that shaped Flora’s childhood and carved its way into her bones.
She reaches her at the threshold, closing the distance with no hesitation, and when Hotaru’s voice shapes the word petal Flora is already there, arms winding tight around her mother’s waist with a force that presses gold and silk and skin together as though contact alone might secure her in place. Her face buries against the slope of shoulder and neck, breathing in jasmine and salt and something warmer beneath it, something that feels like sun-warmed silk wrapped around a blade, and the scent hits her so suddenly and so completely that the breath she releases trembles on its way out. "Mom," she exhales into golden hair, the word dissolving there as her fingers tangle and clutch.
Her mother.
She does not pause to gather composure or summon any version of herself that resembles a queen; she moves, descending the staircase in a sweep of silk and bare feet, the marble cool beneath her soles as the spirits part for her, doors easing open just before she reaches them as though the house itself understands that this is not a moment for theatrics. The ocean beyond the balconies flashes blue and white, terracotta roofs glowing under the Longheat sun, but all of it narrows into a single line of motion toward the front entrance as the latch shifts and the door begins to open. She sees the dragon first, coiled and watchful, then the familiar line of shoulders and the fall of golden hair that catches the light in a way that has always seemed unfairly luminous, and beneath the subtle changes—the thinner edges, the wear at the corners—there is the same impossible combination of softness and steel that shaped Flora’s childhood and carved its way into her bones.
She reaches her at the threshold, closing the distance with no hesitation, and when Hotaru’s voice shapes the word petal Flora is already there, arms winding tight around her mother’s waist with a force that presses gold and silk and skin together as though contact alone might secure her in place. Her face buries against the slope of shoulder and neck, breathing in jasmine and salt and something warmer beneath it, something that feels like sun-warmed silk wrapped around a blade, and the scent hits her so suddenly and so completely that the breath she releases trembles on its way out. "Mom," she exhales into golden hair, the word dissolving there as her fingers tangle and clutch.
what doesn't kill me makes
me want you more
me want you more
