i could be the reason you can't sleep at night
"A what?" Flora’s eyes flick from Deimos to the sudden rise of flame, the word leaving her mouth with all the bright disbelief of someone who has just realized, far too late, that she has been encouraging a man whose idea of escalation is apparently architectural.
The wall comes up broad and brilliant against the beach, and Flora’s entire body answers with a sharp yelp before any of her pride can make a smarter suggestion. There’s no slipping around it, not with enough time to be clever about the attempt, and certainly not with the sort of dramatic grace she’d prefer if anyone is going to be watching her run away from a controlled inferno. Instead she darts backwards, bare feet digging hard into the sand as she retreats from the slow, stalking push of it, curls bouncing against her shoulders and her heart launching itself somewhere up near her throat.
For one wild second, the only reasonable thought she has is that Deimos has very clearly misunderstood the difference between training and lightly terrorizing Torchline’s queen for sport, but the fire never surges fast enough to close the distance. It gives her room, deliberately and maddeningly, and Flora uses every inch of it until the flames finally gutter out and leave the beach bright and ordinary again. "HOLY SHIT," she calls, breathless and laughing despite herself, because terror and delight have braided themselves together for the afternoon. Her grin flashes toward the Sword, sharp and exhilarated, and then she’s moving again before either of them can get too comfortable with the distance between them.
This time she darts forward instead of away, cutting hard to one side and then the other in a zigzagging rush meant to make herself more difficult to predict. It probably isn’t elegant, and it almost certainly isn’t a tactic anyone would describe as refined, but Flora isn’t aiming for refined. She’s aiming for fast, difficult, and just irritating enough to make hitting her feel like less of a certainty.
3/4
The wall comes up broad and brilliant against the beach, and Flora’s entire body answers with a sharp yelp before any of her pride can make a smarter suggestion. There’s no slipping around it, not with enough time to be clever about the attempt, and certainly not with the sort of dramatic grace she’d prefer if anyone is going to be watching her run away from a controlled inferno. Instead she darts backwards, bare feet digging hard into the sand as she retreats from the slow, stalking push of it, curls bouncing against her shoulders and her heart launching itself somewhere up near her throat.
For one wild second, the only reasonable thought she has is that Deimos has very clearly misunderstood the difference between training and lightly terrorizing Torchline’s queen for sport, but the fire never surges fast enough to close the distance. It gives her room, deliberately and maddeningly, and Flora uses every inch of it until the flames finally gutter out and leave the beach bright and ordinary again. "HOLY SHIT," she calls, breathless and laughing despite herself, because terror and delight have braided themselves together for the afternoon. Her grin flashes toward the Sword, sharp and exhilarated, and then she’s moving again before either of them can get too comfortable with the distance between them.
This time she darts forward instead of away, cutting hard to one side and then the other in a zigzagging rush meant to make herself more difficult to predict. It probably isn’t elegant, and it almost certainly isn’t a tactic anyone would describe as refined, but Flora isn’t aiming for refined. She’s aiming for fast, difficult, and just irritating enough to make hitting her feel like less of a certainty.
3/4
