flora
"I was going to ask Deimos whether there’ve been any unusual treks in or out of the Fangs lately." Flora catches the inside of her cheek between her teeth, her thoughts turning briefly towards mageglass and all the unpleasant possibilities a supply of it might explain. When she looks back to Jack, there’s no challenge in her expression this time, only a genuine request for the insight he’s always been infuriatingly good at providing. "Remi’s been cracking down on pirate ships. With less competition on the water, do you think..?" Her brows lift as she lets the question trail off, wondering whether they’d cleared space for something worse while trying to solve an entirely different problem.
She stiffens when he insists he doesn’t need her resources, bracing for the conversation to swing back towards another inventive way of telling her to fuck off. Instead, he leaves the door open by the smallest possible degree, and Flora can’t quite hide the breath of relief that slips from her, gilding the guarded gardens of her thoughts despite every effort to keep them bare.
"It's still passable," she answers, though her mouth pulls into a faint frown. "There’s more of it down there lately that I don’t recognize." Whatever new hands have been marking the undercity, they’ve added dialects and symbols Jack never taught her, but she still remembers everything he did. If he limits himself to those, she doubts either of them will have much trouble understanding the other.
She stiffens when he insists he doesn’t need her resources, bracing for the conversation to swing back towards another inventive way of telling her to fuck off. Instead, he leaves the door open by the smallest possible degree, and Flora can’t quite hide the breath of relief that slips from her, gilding the guarded gardens of her thoughts despite every effort to keep them bare.
"It's still passable," she answers, though her mouth pulls into a faint frown. "There’s more of it down there lately that I don’t recognize." Whatever new hands have been marking the undercity, they’ve added dialects and symbols Jack never taught her, but she still remembers everything he did. If he limits himself to those, she doubts either of them will have much trouble understanding the other.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?
Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
