flora
Flora snickers before she can even pretend she’s above it, and maybe it’s reckless to enjoy divine shade as much as she does, but honestly, if the gods are going to have drama, the least they can do is let her laugh about it. Still, when Safrin reaches for her, Flora gives up her hands without hesitation, stepping closer as gold flashes over her fingers and wrists, each ring suddenly feeling very obvious beneath the goddess’s attention. Her mouth tilts, almost sheepish, as Safrin turns her palms upward and studies the collection of pretty little safeguards Flora has gathered around herself like shells against a storm, and though she’s always liked how they look, how they feel, how they give her the illusion of having answers wrapped neatly around her knuckles, it’s harder not to see them for what they are with starlight sliding over every band. Pretty, yes. Useful, absolutely. Enough? Apparently not even close.
Her sigh slips out before she can fully dress it up as anything else, disappointment tugging at the corner of her mouth before she smooths it away with a little roll of one shoulder. "Right, okay, so not a full jewellery box of truth-based emotional surveillance," she murmurs, trying for breezy and mostly landing somewhere in the neighbourhood of tragically inconvenienced, while her mind immediately starts sprinting through alternatives with all the frantic elegance of a hel stealing chips from a tourist’s hand. Then Safrin says but, and every half-formed idea in Flora’s head goes scattering like pearls across polished tile.
She watches the goddess move toward the window, the blue candlelight and starshine playing over the room in impossible layers, and there’s a second where Flora simply follows with her eyes, her hands still half-curled as if Safrin’s touch has left some invisible constellation mapped across her palms. Then Hadama’s name falls into the space between them, and Torchline’s lack of a Safrin demigod comes such that Flora’s mouth drops silently open. For one bright, ridiculous, breathless second, her mind offers two possibilities at once, both of them so enormous they seem to crash into each other before either can settle. Maybe Safrin means to place one of her demigods beside Flora, another star-bright presence at the helm of Torchline, someone to rule with her or over her or around her, and that thought sends something sharp and defensive flickering through her chest before the second possibility rises beneath it, bigger and wilder and glittering with danger.
Her.
The idea turns her stomach over so sharply that she has to swallow, because for a good part of her life Flora has been anti-demigod in the way only someone surrounded by the aftermath of it can be, having watched what power and gods and chosen status did to her parents, how it reshaped love into obligation and devotion into a blade pressed lovingly beneath the ribs. She has seen the cost of being made into something more than mortal, has hated the way it seemed to ask for pieces of people she loved and then still demand a thank-you afterward.
But gods, if it was something she could have?
Her fingers curl against her palms, rings biting lightly into skin, and the question blooms inside her like jasmine opening at midnight, sweet and dizzying and maybe poisonous if she breathes it in too deeply. After a moment, Flora tips her head to the side, playful skepticism arranged carefully across her face like a veil thin enough for Safrin to see through if she cares to, though her eyes are brighter now, her smile caught somewhere between challenge and hope. "Are you saying what I think you’re saying?"
Her sigh slips out before she can fully dress it up as anything else, disappointment tugging at the corner of her mouth before she smooths it away with a little roll of one shoulder. "Right, okay, so not a full jewellery box of truth-based emotional surveillance," she murmurs, trying for breezy and mostly landing somewhere in the neighbourhood of tragically inconvenienced, while her mind immediately starts sprinting through alternatives with all the frantic elegance of a hel stealing chips from a tourist’s hand. Then Safrin says but, and every half-formed idea in Flora’s head goes scattering like pearls across polished tile.
She watches the goddess move toward the window, the blue candlelight and starshine playing over the room in impossible layers, and there’s a second where Flora simply follows with her eyes, her hands still half-curled as if Safrin’s touch has left some invisible constellation mapped across her palms. Then Hadama’s name falls into the space between them, and Torchline’s lack of a Safrin demigod comes such that Flora’s mouth drops silently open. For one bright, ridiculous, breathless second, her mind offers two possibilities at once, both of them so enormous they seem to crash into each other before either can settle. Maybe Safrin means to place one of her demigods beside Flora, another star-bright presence at the helm of Torchline, someone to rule with her or over her or around her, and that thought sends something sharp and defensive flickering through her chest before the second possibility rises beneath it, bigger and wilder and glittering with danger.
Her.
The idea turns her stomach over so sharply that she has to swallow, because for a good part of her life Flora has been anti-demigod in the way only someone surrounded by the aftermath of it can be, having watched what power and gods and chosen status did to her parents, how it reshaped love into obligation and devotion into a blade pressed lovingly beneath the ribs. She has seen the cost of being made into something more than mortal, has hated the way it seemed to ask for pieces of people she loved and then still demand a thank-you afterward.
But gods, if it was something she could have?
Her fingers curl against her palms, rings biting lightly into skin, and the question blooms inside her like jasmine opening at midnight, sweet and dizzying and maybe poisonous if she breathes it in too deeply. After a moment, Flora tips her head to the side, playful skepticism arranged carefully across her face like a veil thin enough for Safrin to see through if she cares to, though her eyes are brighter now, her smile caught somewhere between challenge and hope. "Are you saying what I think you’re saying?"
stay here honey I don't wanna share
