Flora
there's no time to waste on loving badly
The door gives way beneath her hand and for a moment there is only the soft drag of air over skin, the hush before something unnamed crests, and then Spice slips ahead of her like a flicker of pale flame and the world ruptures into colour and sound and motion all at once, a chorus of voices colliding with her name without saying it, surprise ricocheting off the coral walls and the glass and the water beyond, and Flora startles not backward but forwards, the breath she pulls in catching somewhere between her ribs as if it has nowhere to go fast enough to keep up with what’s unfolding in front of her. It’s too much in the way a wave is too much when it finally breaks, all that held tension collapsing into something bright and overwhelming, her gaze snagging first on the impossible cohesion of it—the sea-glass wash of aqua threaded through every body, every fabric, every ridiculous, perfect detail—and then fracturing into pieces as she tries and fails to take it all in at once, catching glimpses instead: Sohalia ’s gleam of silver and soft blue, Mateo ’s absurd feathered silhouette, Nikandr ’s quiet steadiness, Dantalion already mid-chaos behind the bar with Astaroth looming like some indulgent storm at his shoulder, Melita blinking into being like mischief made flesh with Iskra ’s familiar shape angled near her, Colt 's perhaps surprise presence by the the water, Sunjata too tall to miss—and all of it blurring at the edges because her eyes have already betrayed her, already gone searching, already found him.Kaisel is there like the centre of gravity she didn’t know she’d been orbiting until this exact second, and the sight of him—of the pendant at his chest, of the colour threaded through his clothes like a mirror of her own—hits somewhere low and deep enough that her stomach flips over itself in a way that feels suspiciously like falling and flying at the same time, her heart slamming hard enough against her ribs that it almost hurts, almost, but not quite, because this is what it feels like to be seen so completely it borders on indecent. The dress she wears clings to her ever curve, sequins catching the light and fracturing it into something sharp and glittering as she shifts her weight, the slit teasing movement along her leg, the plunge of the neckline daring the room to look and her not caring in the slightest if they do, because the only thing she’s aware of is the heat of it all—the attention, the effort, the impossible fact that this exists at all—and the weight at her finger where her ring catches the same light, winking once as if it knows exactly what it means to stand here in the middle of something that feels dangerously like being loved out loud.
Her smile doesn’t arrive so much as it breaks across her mouth, wide and bright and just this side of disbelieving, her eyes still fixed on him even as her awareness spills outward again, catching the edges of everyone else, and she lets herself linger in that fullness for a heartbeat longer than she probably should, like pressing a bruise just to feel it, before she lifts her hands slightly, a gesture that’s half theatrical, half entirely sincere, her voice spilling out warm and laughing and just a touch breathless as she says, "All of this, for little old me?" The words don’t quite hold the scale of it but they’re all she has, dissolving into a soft, incredulous laugh as she shakes her head, curls shifting, gold catching light, before she draws in another breath that steadies nothing at all and adds, brighter now, fuller, "Thank you all so much for coming," her gaze sweeping the room in a way that tries to touch everyone at once without getting lost in any one person, a quick grin here, a wink there, something personal threaded through the general warmth without letting herself stall, because if she does she might actually feel it too sharply, too deeply, and so she lifts her chin just a fraction, playful again, insistent in that way that pretends it isn’t, and says, "Don’t any of you leave before I’ve had the chance to properly thank you," like it’s a promise and a warning all at once, like she fully intends to hold them all here under the weight of her gratitude until it’s been paid back in kind.
Code stolen from Queen Sky
