flora
Flora nods, the motion small but certain, because if there is one thing grief has taught her it is that everyone else’s timeline for how long pain is allowed to remain visible is almost always insultingly short. "You’ve got that right," she says, shooting Melita a crooked grin that doesn’t try to make light of the whole thing so much as step around it with care. Expectations are fucking wack, and while Flora has no desire to linger there until the heat of Safrin’s Mirror can’t reach them anymore, the look she gives Melita holds the appreciation plainly enough: for the honesty, for understanding that some wounds are less like bruises and more like permanent alterations to the shape of a person.
Luckily, Jack Barclay fucking his ship is exactly the sort of horrifying gossip capable of dragging them both out of emotional sincerity by the ankles, and Flora is more than happy to be hauled. [asy]"Honestly, same when I first heard about it," she says, her nose wrinkling as disbelief and judgment settle back over her features like a much more comfortable robe. "I dunno. I mean, I know he does still have the ship, because the Ark was moored in the Port not too long ago, and I heard from my soldiers about Jack and The Ark going to meet with the Blackfox and then just...being in Torchline again." Which is not, admittedly, the sort of sentence Flora ever thought she would need to say with a straight face, but here they are, apparently living in a world where ships can spill drinks on her and still somehow also be ships.
With a restless little splash at the water, Flora lets the starlit surface break around her fingers, her mouth pulling into a shape that is part sneer, part grimace, and part something she refuses to inspect too closely. "I can’t decide if I’m offended or flattered that I was replaced by basically a puppet." The words come sharp, but not cleanly; there is too much old humiliation caught beneath them, too much remembered wanting and losing and watching Jack somehow make even his damage into everyone else’s weather. "I mean...it isn’t like she’s a real person, right? Or at least...surely she was made to be exactly what Jack wanted?" Her eyebrows lift, judgmental and almost pleading in the same breath, because if the alternative is that the man somehow manifested a fully autonomous woman out of his ship and then immediately started introducing her around like that is normal and dating her, Flora might well need to reconsider what she actually meant to him, and that is not something presently she has any intention of doing.
Luckily, Jack Barclay fucking his ship is exactly the sort of horrifying gossip capable of dragging them both out of emotional sincerity by the ankles, and Flora is more than happy to be hauled. [asy]"Honestly, same when I first heard about it," she says, her nose wrinkling as disbelief and judgment settle back over her features like a much more comfortable robe. "I dunno. I mean, I know he does still have the ship, because the Ark was moored in the Port not too long ago, and I heard from my soldiers about Jack and The Ark going to meet with the Blackfox and then just...being in Torchline again." Which is not, admittedly, the sort of sentence Flora ever thought she would need to say with a straight face, but here they are, apparently living in a world where ships can spill drinks on her and still somehow also be ships.
With a restless little splash at the water, Flora lets the starlit surface break around her fingers, her mouth pulling into a shape that is part sneer, part grimace, and part something she refuses to inspect too closely. "I can’t decide if I’m offended or flattered that I was replaced by basically a puppet." The words come sharp, but not cleanly; there is too much old humiliation caught beneath them, too much remembered wanting and losing and watching Jack somehow make even his damage into everyone else’s weather. "I mean...it isn’t like she’s a real person, right? Or at least...surely she was made to be exactly what Jack wanted?" Her eyebrows lift, judgmental and almost pleading in the same breath, because if the alternative is that the man somehow manifested a fully autonomous woman out of his ship and then immediately started introducing her around like that is normal and dating her, Flora might well need to reconsider what she actually meant to him, and that is not something presently she has any intention of doing.
The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true
But honey, most of them are true
