you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody
The way Kaisel folds her in without question—without turning it into something loud or noticeable or Flora-sized—lands deeper than she has the words for, settling somewhere quiet and vital beneath the sharp rise of everything else. Usually they meet the world at full volume, all brightness and movement and presence, but here, tucked into the shelter of his raincoat and the angled hush of the umbrella, Flora's allowed to shrink without it being named, without it being noticed, and the relief of that threads through her like something fragile and immediate.
Her fingers stay curled into him, clutching without thinking, the fabric of his coat damp and slick beneath her grip, her cheek pressed to his chest where she can feel the steady rhythm of him beneath the storm and the strange, thinning air of the festival. For a moment she just breathes there, shallow and uneven, letting the noise outside dull into something distant and warped.
His whisper nudges at her, soft and ridiculous all at once, and it pulls a small, broken laugh from her before she can stop it, the sound catching halfway up her throat like it doesn’t know whether it’s allowed to exist here. It shakes loose something else with it, something sharper, and when she tips her face up to look at him, her lashes are damp, her eyes too bright in the dim, flickering light. "I’m the reason Harper was murdered," she whispers, the words slipping out of her like something unlatched, quiet but unmistakably steady in their shape, even as everything else about her isn’t.
Her fingers stay curled into him, clutching without thinking, the fabric of his coat damp and slick beneath her grip, her cheek pressed to his chest where she can feel the steady rhythm of him beneath the storm and the strange, thinning air of the festival. For a moment she just breathes there, shallow and uneven, letting the noise outside dull into something distant and warped.
His whisper nudges at her, soft and ridiculous all at once, and it pulls a small, broken laugh from her before she can stop it, the sound catching halfway up her throat like it doesn’t know whether it’s allowed to exist here. It shakes loose something else with it, something sharper, and when she tips her face up to look at him, her lashes are damp, her eyes too bright in the dim, flickering light. "I’m the reason Harper was murdered," she whispers, the words slipping out of her like something unlatched, quiet but unmistakably steady in their shape, even as everything else about her isn’t.
