nothin' bougie 'bout you cozy as a hand me down

get my car door, isn't that sweet? then pull me to the backseat

For one dazzling, stupidly impossible second after Safrin vanishes, Flora just stands there blinking at the empty space where a goddess had been.

The blue candleflames shiver around the shrine, jasmine hanging sweet and expensive in the air, starlight still scattered across the glass walls as if the room has been dusted in crushed constellations, and Flora can feel the kiss like a secret pressed beneath her skin, warm and bright and absolutely terrifying in the way only something wonderful can be when it’s too late to take it back. Her lips part, but nothing comes out at first, not even one of the extremely useful and intelligent comments she normally keeps on standby for moments of divine emotional assault, because her body has apparently decided that all available resources must be redirected into standing upright while her pulse tries to turn itself into a firework display.

She’s mine, Safrin had said, and Flora’s mind catches on it like silk snagged on a ring, tugging once, twice, until the whole thought unspools in a glittering rush. Not borrowed. Not politely favoured. Not almost, or maybe, or under consideration pending whatever impossible nonsense the gods usually liked to make mortals do for a crumb of attention. Done. Hers. Safrin’s. A lifetime of fealty, a vow already sinking roots through her ribs, and if fear is there too, it’s swallowed instantly beneath the wild, champagne-bubble fizz of oh gods, oh gods, oh gods that goes racing through her blood.

Adrenaline hits hard enough that Flora’s hands fly to her mouth, gold rings cold against her flushed cheeks, and depending on where Kaisel is in Wildering House, the magical bond between ring and bracelet might catch the bright, violent spike of it before she has even managed to breathe properly. The house certainly does. As if the spirits have been waiting with their faces pressed invisibly against every keyhole in the place, Wildering House erupts around her in a delighted riot; doors slam somewhere down the hall with the enthusiasm of a standing ovation, lights flicker wildly through the glass-walled room, drawers rattle open and shut, and from deeper in the estate music suddenly bursts to life at a volume that suggests at least one ghost has decided this moment requires choreography.

Flora laughs, the sound coming out half-hysterical and wholly thrilled, before it breaks apart into something much louder as she whirls away from the shrine, curls bouncing loose around her face and aqua eyes blazing bright enough to rival the starlight still clinging to the windows. "KAISEL!" she screeches, all dignity abandoned somewhere between divine vow and haunted house celebration, her voice ringing through Wildering House with enough force to carry down halls, over balconies, through glass and coral stone and whatever chaos the spirits are currently making in their ecstatic little rampage. "K A I S E L!"

no one's ever had me, not like you

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

See I'm never gonna quit, got my legacy set in motion

A very loud THUMP echoes down the hall from the room where Kaisel had been diligently working away. She doesn't know it, and that's quite intentional. The moment he picked up on the fact she'd been busying herself with some project that did not seem to involve him, he'd quietly slunk away to do his own individual task, which at present has been severely inhibited by the sudden poltergeist activity of the house celebrating alongside her.

"MORA??" The muffled shout of her name carries with an edge of worry, in part because she's yelling with all the energy of an emergency, or at least she's certainly feeling it and now he is too. He's also never seen the house quite so alive as this before. "I"M COMING!" he shouts through the hook of their bracelet and ring, the starburst of her energy letting him know she's near enough.

In a rush, he comes barreling down a flight of stairs, hopping past the last few steps onto the tile. The momentum staggers him forward a touch, especially when he turns his head and locks eyes with her further down the adjacent wing. He catches himself by hooking his arm around the wall he'd pass in motion, the grip enough to leave a dust of paint under his fingernails as he hoists himself around the corner. "ORA!" he declares, the crest of concern snapping out towards her with the unquellable force of it inside him. He quickly tugs out the metal nails currently pinched between his lips. "What's happening?? Is something wrong? Are you okay?"

In his haste, he did not de-secret himself as he'd originally planned. The disheveled wear of his hair is furthered by stripes of paint globbing bits of it together, a smear or two of which is drying on his forehead and cheek. The nails gleam between his thumb and forefinger, hammer still held aloft in his other hand. Bits of drywall and wood chips dust the TORCHLINE shirt he has on, full of holes and rips from spars and corners of equipment that snagged him. Only his loose, lightweight sweatpants seem marginally clean, but even those bear the smudges of fresh debris on them.

Kaisel

I've only just begun, I won't stop until it's done

get my car door, isn't that sweet? then pull me to the backseat

Flora scarcely registers the way Kaisel squawks her name in all its various panicked little shapes, because her own delight is too loud, her heart hammering a bright, brutal rhythm against her ribs until the whole world seems to narrow into motion and colour and the absolutely impossible fact of what has just happened. She sees him come into view and doesn’t notice the paint drying in his hair, or the dust clinging to his TORCHLINE shirt, or the nails pinched between his fingers and the hammer still held aloft as if he’d come ready to fight either a ghost or a structural emergency, which honestly is very heroic and deeply on-brand, but not currently making it through the sparkling hurricane inside her skull.

"Kai!" she cries, incandescent with adrenaline as she flies toward him, her posture giving him exactly enough warning to brace before she launches herself into his arms, because whatever else is happening, whatever vows have just rooted themselves beneath her skin, whatever terrifying, glorious, star-bright future has cracked open in front of her, there is no version of this moment where she doesn’t need to be wrapped around him immediately. Her arms lock around his neck, legs winding tight around his waist, gold jewellery flashing as she clings to him with her curls tumbling loose and her face shining so brightly it might as well have stolen the blue candle flame from the shrine.

Through the bond, her emotions come rushing in like a happy ocean, bright and choppy and sunlit, all glittering crests and warm spray and the kind of reckless, wind-tossed joy that turns the whole horizon gold. It is excitement too large to hold neatly, a tide crashing hard enough to salt the air between them, and even as she peers down at him, breathless and wild-eyed, her hands are already sliding from the back of his neck to frame his face as if she needs him to understand this before the house shakes itself apart in celebration.

"Safrin was just here, and—!" She cuts herself off with a gasp, trying to catch enough air to make words happen in any sort of order, which is inconvenient because her thoughts are currently wearing heels and sprinting down a marble staircase. Her delighted expression twists suddenly wry, apology flickering through the shine of it without managing to dim her smile. "Okay, and I know I should have talked to you about this first, but it all happened so fast, and—" The bond detonates like a firework, Flora’s emotions suddenly smothered in gold and light, joy bursting hot and brilliant through every corner of her until it’s all champagne foam and sun on water and stars falling into the sea. "She made me a demigod!"

no one's ever had me, not like you

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

See I'm never gonna quit, got my legacy set in motion

The shape of urgency gradually orients itself into something familiar and completely understood by Kaisel. Flora is panicked, but it’s a storm of such pure elation that it bends back into a sense of terror, shooting off the normal spectrum of considerable happiness.


Metal rain pitter-patters on the floor as the nails scatter, followed by the streak of golden lightning that is Flora and the thunder of the hammer plummeting to the ground. Kaisel drops it all the instant she rushes forward, arms cupping her securely against him, although just barely in time. He staggers back a half-step or two with the force of her momentum before swinging her around, a laugh bubbling up suddenly in his throat.


He shifts her better against him, the land trying to hold the hurricane. There’s no hope against the force of Flora though, and gradually Kaisel steps back to slouch against a wall, in need of the extra support. Before he can ask or properly wonder, his face is in her hands, gaze vibrant with the curiosity and contagion of happiness.


Without the wall behind him Kaisel would surely have toppled over with the way he’s leaning further and further over the edge of curiosity. The fall would have fully come when she asserts that she should have talked to him first, setting it out like a chess move she already knew she’d have to be making, but still is moving the same pawn despite it.


The way she feels right now, it’s almost blinding. He didn’t realize he’d reached up and plucked the sunlight itself from the air, but with the bright intensity of all of Flora’s feelings, he can’t imagine what else he’s experiencing. It dims, barely, into something less mind-meltingly angelic and more Renaissance. ”A demigod!?” he repeats, breath stumbling, heart kicking suddenly into an upticked pace.


The word lands like a book opening up, pages scattering in the wind with all the implications and twists that come with the story. There’s one resounding answer that hums back in response over the bond though, and that is a proud excitement that the book is even open at all. ”WHAT!? Flo-ro that’s insane!!!” He shuffles her higher up, twisting off the wall in a series of spins full of laughter, as if the pair of them were auditioning for a music box. ”You’regonnabesostrong! AndGASP I can channel you, no way! Wait, so can others, oh my god what if they channel you when we’re fucking???”

Kaisel

I've only just begun, I won't stop until it's done

get my car door, isn't that sweet? then pull me to the backseat

Flora remains blissfully ignorant of the nails scattered across the floor, the hammer abandoned somewhere beneath the general category of Things That Are Currently Not Safrin Making Her A Demigod, and the paint and dust streaked over Kaisel like he’d crawled out of a wall in the middle of a home renovation fever dream. Normally, she’d notice. Normally, she’d absolutely have questions, several of them dramatic and at least one involving whether her husband had joined a secret carpentry cult without telling her. But right now the whole demigod-ness of it all has swamped every observant part of her beneath a golden tide, and in his arms she’s nothing but a vibrating ball of sunlight, breathless laughter, and limbs wrapped around him as if physics is simply a suggestion for people with less exciting news.

When the wall catches them, or him, or whatever part of this glorious collision needs architectural support, Flora only laughs harder, her curls spilling forward as she nods so fervently that her earrings flash against her neck. "I know, I know, I know," she gasps, though she absolutely does not know anything beyond the fact that Safrin had kissed her and called her mine and left her with a vow glowing somewhere beneath her ribs like a star swallowed whole. Then he’s spinning her and Flora tucks herself beneath his chin with a squeal of delighted laughter, clinging tighter as the bond between them blazes wide open, all incandescent joy and champagne-bright adrenaline, her thoughts scattering in every direction like sunlight broken over waves.

The pride she feels from him is something she’ll marvel over later, when the first impossible brightness has dimmed enough for her to actually touch the shape of it without burning her fingers. Later, she’ll think about how he hadn’t been upset, hadn’t gone cold with jealousy, hadn’t doubted whether she should have been offered this or whether she deserved it or whether something so enormous might tip the careful world they’d built together onto its side. Later, it will find some soft, permanent place in her chest, tucked beside every other reason she’d married him. Right now, though, Flora can only laugh with sheer, ridiculous delight, her hands sliding into his hair as she grins against him.

"Oh, you’d better channel me," she says, the words bright and breathless, as if this is not only obvious but immediately mandatory, and the idea of him calling on her power sends another glittering rush through the bond because gods, what an absurdly perfect thing, what a stupidly beautiful thing, to become something divine and have his first thought be not distance or danger but reaching for her.

Then the rest of what he says catches up properly, and because this is them, because somehow becoming Safrin’s demigod and maybe possibly changing the entire shape of her future still has to include a practical crisis about divine interruption during sex, Flora’s mouth drops open in theatrical horror. "Oh my gods," she says, aqua eyes widening, "what if they channel right as I’m about to cum and then they ruin it?" A missed orgasm, of course, being more of a travesty in Flora's mind than suddenly showing up somewhere naked.

no one's ever had me, not like you

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

See I'm never gonna quit, got my legacy set in motion

The weight of what she's been offered won't fully register for him for some time; possibly ever, truthfully. When he's only got the glory to go off of, when he's only standing on the one side of the rope that's tugged, constantly rescued by the momentous power deemed worthy enough to mantle some mortals, how can he do anything other than consider the demigods heroes among men? What has been bestowed upon her is an honor, and while he wouldn't mind being afforded a similar gift of divine approval someday, her success does not overshadow the potential for his own. In time, he might begrudge more than the six-seconds of her presence thieved from his side, he might catch a glimpse of what it's like to be on the side of the cord that is constantly yanked with the urgency of need and chaos (or at times, an utterly annoying lack thereof), but for now, this appears as nothing more than celebratory. She is worthy and capable, and he has always thought as much.

"UUUUGH!" he groans with no undue theatrics at the possibility of her ruined release. "That'd be the worst. I wonder if you can delay answer, just by like, a little." No different from a parent knocking on your door while on the last stroke or two, a frantically shouted, in a minute could be enough to do the trick, the interruption and risk of being caught sometimes a heightening experience even, and sometimes a killer of its own accord. Although, delaying answering a door for your parents doesn't have quite the same stakes as the cosmic forces and dire needs at play with demi-god summoning, and more than an orgasm might be killed if she waits. That potential seems far too unlikely to even surface to his mind, for now content with simply ensuring she cums as much as she pleases.

"Let's practice!" he suggests, bright with the potential. Though that sounds entirely like an invitation to work her towards the edge of pleasure, a role he'd never balk at, he means it much more simply than that. He leans her subtly back down to the ground, ready to dash back up the stairs and into a separate part of the house. "You stay here, I'll go channel you somewhere else!!!"

Kaisel

I've only just begun, I won't stop until it's done

get my car door, isn't that sweet? then pull me to the backseat

Flora gives a bouncy little shrug, which, given that she’s still wound around Kaisel, sends her shifting slightly in his arms in a way that makes her grin flash wide and helplessly pleased, because apparently even discussing the divine logistics of orgasm interruption can’t stop some bright, adoring part of her from noticing the way he holds her. "Maybe instead of delaying, I get a warning?" she suggests, her nose wrinkling at the thought. "Although I guess I dunno how that would work. Normally when you channel, even you don’t know when you’re going to do it necessarily."

As he leans her back down toward the floor, Flora lets her legs unwind from his waist, her feet finding the tile while the rest of her remains close for half a second longer, fingers still caught near his shoulders before she finally lets him go. Her delight hasn’t dimmed so much as changed shape, the initial explosion of it settling into something molten and fizzy beneath her skin, all gold bubbles and candlelight and the wild unreality of having a brand-new word attached to her name. The thought keeps turning over and over inside her, too bright to look at straight on, and every time it brushes against the bond it sends another warm little flare of astonished joy through her.

When Kaisel suggests they practise, Flora laughs, bright and delighted. "Okay, but you can’t make me do anything stupid!" she calls after him, even though the moment the words leave her mouth she knows, with the grim certainty of a woman who has voluntarily married chaos in sweatpants, that this is almost certainly going to make him try to do exactly that.

Still, as he prepares to dash off, Flora swallows and tries to take stock of herself, which is a hilarious thing to attempt when her entire body feels like someone has poured sunshine directly into her veins. She flexes her fingers, glances down at her gold rings, then presses one palm lightly against her chest as if there might be some visible seam where mortal ends and whatever Safrin has made of her begins, but of course there’s only the hammering of her heart and the strange, glittering awareness that something has changed even if she can’t yet name where.

no one's ever had me, not like you

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

See I'm never gonna quit, got my legacy set in motion

Laughing with the breathless, reckless quality of something too genuine to even trying holding in or disguising, Kaisel takes the stairs two at a time, Flora's joy nipping at his heels as he goes. The unfettered glee of it all makes him the picture of boyhood and mischief, especially when he shouts back a far too-innocent sounding, "I WOOON'T!!!" Truth be told the thought hadn't even crossed his mind until she offered it up. Now, fully inebriated on the cocktail of their shared happiness, her's a strong blend, he's absolutely plotting something fiendish.

There'd be no point in channeling her for something unworthy though, especially not for her first time. So Kaisel quickly gets to work improvising as his bare feet slap around the second story, and even when he pelts out of range of the bracelet and ring's connection, the subsiding swell of joy rolling off her doesn't do much to diminish the roll of it inside him. Least of all now with scheming. Dicks do enter his mind for a moment. Specifically, just his dick. He could place himself in the shower, ask her to help him lather up properly. He shakes that away quickly though, and settles on something not too far from that train of thought.

Flora, please help me oh sexiest demigod with the best fashion sense. I'm in crisis. His channel for her will bring her to their bedroom, where he has currently mostly entirely undressed himself and holds up two shirts. "Which one should I wear for the celebratory dinner we're going to right now?"

---

Kaisel channels Flora, 1/2 Leafchange 320 channels

Channeling (Accepted) : Allows an Accepted to channel a herald/demigod/spirit during a time of crisis (2x a season). Can be combined with other accepted channeling to increase power. Type: Light | Rank: Upgraded | Cost: Action

Kaisel

I've only just begun, I won't stop until it's done

get my car door, isn't that sweet? then pull me to the backseat

The pull is nothing like Flora expects, which is rude, because a girl should really get some sort of instruction manual after being kissed into demigodhood by Safrin and then immediately stress-tested by her husband.

One second she’s downstairs bracing herself for whatever ridiculous thing Kaisel is about to try, and the next there’s a tug through her so strange and sharp that her breath catches halfway up her throat. It doesn’t feel like teleporting, not exactly, not like being moved by the hand so much as being hooked behind the ribs by a thread of need and drawn through the world before she has time to decide whether or not she wants to go. The glass-walled room vanishes, the shrine and candles and jasmine dissolving into a blink of starlit dark, and then suddenly she’s upstairs in their bedroom, standing in front of her husband with the dizzying certainty that she’s been called and therefore has arrived.

"Kai—" Flora begins, obviously about to say something about the fact that he is mostly naked and holding up shirts like this is somehow an emergency, except the words snag. Her brows knit together as she blinks at him, because beneath the instinct to sass him, beneath the very real urge to snatch a pillow from the bed and launch it at his head, there’s something else winding itself around her will. Not tight, not painful, but undeniable, a strange binding that presses against her from every side with the shape of the request he’d made. Help. Answer. Do what she was called to do. Somewhere in the back of her mind, six seconds begins counting down like something tangible, bright little grains of time slipping through a divine hourglass, and Flora’s mouth drops open with a dazed, startled little laugh that almost doesn’t make it out.

"The purple one!" she blurts, pointing at the shirt. "It goes better with your ey—" Then she’s gone. The bedroom snaps away, and Flora is suddenly back downstairs, her breath landing hard in her chest as if it had been waiting there for her to return. For half a second she just stares at the empty air in front of her, aqua eyes wide and then she breaks into motion with a burst of breathless laughter, already dashing for the stairs with her curls bouncing wildly loose around her face. "BABE, THAT WAS SO WEIRD!"

no one's ever had me, not like you

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

See I'm never gonna quit, got my legacy set in motion

She appears like any other channel usually does—abrupt, brief, and with all the power to change the course of his current affairs. Yet, there's nothing usual about this channel, not when it's Flora who's divinely placed before him. Not that he'd doubted anything, but seeing the reality of it firsthand settles the understanding in a much more undeniable way. Here she is, tugged through the fastland that demigods get VIP access to alongside the gods, and it leaves his mouth openly gaping even after she pops back downstairs.

It takes him a beat longer to recover, by now the sound of her laughter already wreathing the shouting muffled by distance. He flings the unchosen shirt aside and still pants-less, dashes down the hall with heavy footfalls as he works to button up his purple shirt, unaware it's off by one button, or the paint still clinging to his hair. "WHAT WAS IT LIKE!?" he calls back, hitting the top of the stairs and peering down at the frantic bounce of her curls as she wombles up the stairs. "Did it feel exceptionally heroic?" his grin spreads as he leans against the railing, expression completely alight with the adoration of watching something incredible and rare.

"Was it like, you blinked and there you were? Or did you see the-the-" his hand rolls at the wrist, trying to pluck out a word. "The in-between," he settles on. "Was it hella hot or cold or bright or dark or everything all at once? Did you turn itty bitty or super fast or ?" He only stops because his breath has all left him, and he drags in a fresh dose of air with no undue exaggeration. "WAIT!? Do you have...powers now?" His scalp prickles with the possibility, eyes widening slowly.

Kaisel

I've only just begun, I won't stop until it's done

get my car door, isn't that sweet? then pull me to the backseat

Flora meets Kaisel on the stairs with a grin so wide it nearly splits the last few shreds of composure she has left, climbing higher until she’s one step above him and can throw her arms around his neck and beam down at him. "It kinda felt like..." She pauses, laughing as she searches for words that make any amount of sense, which is difficult when the thing she’s trying to describe apparently lives somewhere between divine kidnapping and being slingshotted through a straw. "Like if you could be shrunk down and then yanked through a hole as a string?" Wincing at herself, she shakes her head, curls bouncing loose around her face as her expression crumples briefly into yeah, okay, terrible explanation, but what do you want from me, this is literally brand new. "I didn’t see anything, though. There was maybe, like, one millisecond where I knew it was going to happen before it did." Her eyes widen suddenly, aqua bright with dawning horror beneath all the glittering excitement. "So that’s going to be super inconvenient."

Still, inconvenient or not, it’s impossible for her to stop smiling when he looks at her like that, all breathless wonder and adored disbelief, as if she’s something rare enough to make the world pause and stare. Flora’s fingers slide into his hair, combing through it affectionately as he nearly suffocates himself on questions, and it isn’t until her fingertips catch on drying paint that she actually notices the state of him. Her brows tug together in distracted confusion, gaze flicking from the streaks in his hair to the smudge on his forehead and then briefly lower toward the shirt he’s buttoned wrong, because apparently while she was being divinely remade, he was either renovating something or losing a fight with an arts-and-crafts cabinet.

"What is—?" she starts softly, frowning as she tries to pick a bit of paint free without pulling too hard, though the question is immediately swallowed by the much larger, much shinier subject at hand. As he asks about powers, Flora bites at her lower lip, the smile fighting its way through anyway until she’s beaming down at him, her fingers still tangled in his hair like she’s afraid the whole moment might fly apart if she stops touching him. "I can definitely feel one ability for sure," she says, nodding quickly, the words spilling out bright and breathless as another surge of gold-bright excitement flares through the bond. "Maybe two."

no one's ever had me, not like you

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

See I'm never gonna quit, got my legacy set in motion

It both doesn't make sense and yet perfectly does, and Kaisel is left with the only appropriate response to something as brain melting as trying to comprehend divinity with only mortal experience. "Cool!" Thoughts about how that sounds very worm adjacent and how he'd still love her even if she's string don't stick long enough to turn into anything meaningful, not when the tide of giddy excitement still laps up either of them and burns bright in chest and eyes alike. His arms slip around her waist with a loose ease, drawn there as if they're nothing better than a magnetic salt and pepper shaker on display.

"I wonder if you ever get used to it, like how you wake up right before you alarm sometimes?" Though there's more habit to sleep, even if it feels like a chime should always be jarring, especially when pleasant dreams are at stake. Her interruptions would be anytime at all. "Bet your dads would have some tips! They've been demigods basically forever, so, clearly they found out how to handle all the little things." They certainly seem content and settled into the role whenever he sees them.

Although they have had plenty of reasons to rejoice, this feels different. Not theirs, not entirely, not the way engagements and weddings and moments they've strung together have belonged to them. This involves everyone else too, in a small way, and this is the first, private moment they get with it, and that's fleeting. So he'll capture this purified joy and bottle it if he can, because he'd not give this feeling up for anything. Maybe it's just the fact he can feel all of it like never before, nothing even close to this having happened since her birthday, but he thinks this is its own, special feeling, and it deserves to be. "So where do you want to go? We have to celebrate a momentous occasion like this, so somewhere nice, and that you love." He's saying this as she reaches for his hair, fingers suddenly tugging at something he didn't realize was too tight until she touched it.

His brows scrunch against the peel of her fingers, strips of the paint coming away with her. "Oh, uh, well I was leaving my mark in all the rooms, that way it feels like ours. Guess it left its mark on me too." A fresh coat of paint in some with a just different shade. Kaisel was here carved into cetrain baseboards behind beds. Pictures hung up that weren't there before, or pictures swapped in rooms or walls. Subtle, almost unnoticeable things in most cases, but he would know, and he trusted she'd notice some in time. It feels like a distant thing now, aside from the very close by smudging of paint and leftover sprinkles of wood and drywall.

A line of eager approval spreads over his lips as she confirms that she can feel something newer, belonging just to her, nestled within now. "C'mon, don't leave me hanging, details Ro! A demonstration, if you please, unless—it's not gonna destroy the house, is it?"

Kaisel

I've only just begun, I won't stop until it's done

get my car door, isn't that sweet? then pull me to the backseat

Flora gives Kaisel a bouncy little shrug, the movement full of fizz and light, her smile still too bright to be contained by anything as sensible as moderation. "I dunno," she admits, though the thought of her dads immediately has her nodding emphatically, curls slipping over her shoulders as excitement catches all over again. "But yeah, they probably would know. I’ll have to ask them after I tell them about all this." Her eyes widen with glee, somewhere between anticipation and outright menace. "They’re gonna freak."

His question about celebrating has her nibbling at her lower lip, head tipping slightly as she shoots him a playfully thoughtful look, one brow lifting as if she’s taking the matter with the grave seriousness it obviously deserves. "Hmmmm, somewhere nice that I love?" she echoes, drawing the words out before her smile curves wider, sweeter, more obviously loaded by the second. "You meeeeeeeean, like a picnic in the cove in sweatpants, where we have food delivered?"

Then his explanation about leaving his mark in the rooms catches up with her properly, and Flora’s head tilts as she glances again at the paint in his hair, the dust on his shirt, the faint signs of handiwork all over him that no metaphor in the world could’ve accounted for. For a second she just stares, the thought clicking neatly into place, and then laughter bursts out of her, bright and delighted and helplessly adoring. "Well??" she asks, fingers still combing absentmindedly through his hair as she picks away another fleck of paint. "Are you going to show me, or am I supposed to find them all on my own?" The idea of a scavenger hunt of Kai sends a warm little ache through her chest, because he’d really heard her, had taken her worries about him feeling like a guest in Wildering House and answered them in his own sly, lovely way, and even through all the gold-bright shock of demigodhood, Flora can feel how much that matters.

Grinning, she shakes her head at the question of destruction. "No, it’s not going to destroy the house," she says, and then her expression turns mischievous as she reaches to tug at his mis-buttoned shirt, straightening the fabric with a faint frown of concentration before sinking down onto the stairs and patting the step beside her for him to do the same. "Okay," she says, lowering her voice. "Watch this."

She draws in a breath and reaches for the newness inside herself, for that bright, strange place she can feel now, and the magic comes far more easily than she expects, blooming outward with a smoothness that makes her stomach flip. All at once the stairs, the house, the sunlit afternoon around them are layered over by something else, and then overtaken entirely.

The bedroom aboard the Sugartide rises around them in perfect detail, moonlit and intimate and gently rocking with the steady lick of water against the hull. Starlight slips through sheer curtains and dusts midnight glitter across every edge of the room, catching on seashells, glinting on a feather boa, silvering everything it touches. The air turns rich with lilac and salt, warm skin and the familiar closeness of summer night, and in the middle of it all is the bed, tangled sheets, and two younger versions of themselves curled together in that hush that had felt too soft and too sacred to touch too quickly.

Flora’s breath catches, because even though she’s the one making it, the scene arrives with such startling completeness that it nearly steals the floor out from under her. There she is, shirt ridden up around her thigh, one leg stretched across Kai's hip, her body curved into him with a lazy, feline kind of pleasure that had not been about urgency at all, but about staying, about fitting herself against him as if nearness alone might be enough to keep the whole fragile, beautiful thing from changing. She can see her own hand moving over his chest, up along his collarbone and the curve of his neck, can see her fingers carding slowly through his hair, brushing it back from his eyes so the moon could find the copper threaded through his lashes.

The recreated quiet is so perfect it almost aches, though what Flora notices most isn’t the silvered room or the gentle sway of the boat, but Kaisel’s face as sleep slowly tries to steal him from her. His eyelids are already closed, his lashes lying dark and copper-touched against his cheeks, and every softened breath makes it seem as though the night is carrying him farther from her by inches while the Flora tangled against him only watches, caught in that thin, glowing space between wanting to let him rest and wanting, selfishly and terribly, to keep him with her just a little longer. There is no audience for the way she looks at him, no one to catch the tenderness spilling unguarded across her face, not even Kai himself, and maybe that’s why the memory preserves it so clearly now: the slow sweep of her eyes over him, the small, helpless curve of her smile, the way her fingers linger in his hair as if touch alone might keep him from drifting beyond reach. Then, before sleep can take him entirely, she shifts closer through the moonlit hush, her nose brushing his, her breath mingling with his for one suspended second before she leans forward and kisses him.

Flora, sitting on the stairs beside the man she’s recreating this for, can feel the shape of that moment as sharply as if she’s inside it again: not the joking brush of lipstick at her party, not some casual affectionate contact tossed out like confetti, but something gentler and deeper, a kiss that had not asked for anything even as it offered everything. In the illusion, her lips press to his with aching care, all affection and trust and gratitude and the terrible sweetness of discovering that safety can feel like wanting, that friendship can deepen into something warm and low-burning and entirely impossible to mistake. The magic holds every detail of it: the sway of the boat, the hush of breath, the softness of moonlight, the smell of salt and lilac, the exact shape of the quiet that had wrapped around them that night.

Flora glances almost shyly toward Kaisel then, her cheeks flushed in a way that has nothing to do with the warmth of the memory and everything to do with letting him see how carefully she’s kept it. "That is one of my absolute favourite memories," she says softly, the admission slipping out with a small, helpless smile.

no one's ever had me, not like you

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

See I'm never gonna quit, got my legacy set in motion

He hadn't realized he'd been inviting himself into a trap, but the tilting shape of her mouth and the cut of her eyes amounts to the same warning as an unexpected feast laid out in an abandoned house. Tempting still, even with a stark awareness of don't. Although that's never really stopped him before, least of all when she's involved. "Yeeeah?" he returns, fingers extending towards the buffet instead of withdrawing. All the better for it too, because sometimes a spooky spread is just a potential to sit by the water with your girl. "If that's what you wanna do, then yeah," he grins, thumbs brushing against her side.

"I'd been thinking one of those over the top places where you have to go get burgers afterwards because the dinner was actually more about experience than eating, buuuuut your vision sounds way better." Sometimes things did not need a show to be celebrated, just the time carved out to actually celebrate them. Maybe better to keep her all to himself while he still could, cherishing these last moments where the secret only belongs to them and she isn't at risk of being turned into string again any time soon.

One eye squints shut partway as the gentle comb of her fingers against the clump of paint tugs at his scalp. It pulls at just one hair in particular, the rest shuffling beneath the work of her fingers into something more separated. "Bold of you to assume I remember them all. We'll both be finding them for some time." Easter eggs of love and impulsivity His attempts mostly consisted of walking into a room with an armful of tools and a heap of possibility. He'd scan the walls with his hands on his hips, and without much vision, execute something. One of the first ones he'd been ambitious and considered adding a whole new window, but quickly he left it as just a hole, covered by one of his new paintings. Art is basically a window.

The original explosion of her champagne feelings has subsided from the cork pop and the overflowing foam of excitement to the much steadier, but no less sparkling, hum of bubble-bright happiness. It buzzes between them still, the effervescence rolling off every word and uplifting every movement, even when she's pulling him down alongside her. The attention to his shirt catches him too, and seeming to notice it's skewed set for the first time when she tries to set it back neat, he works the buttons back into proper order as they take a seat. Maybe they'd not be going to Docks & Decadence anymore, but he'd still be wearing the shirt appointed to him by demigod Flora. If anything, pairing it with sweats would give just the right amount of lazy opulence this day deserved.

"Okay, watching," he says with a soldier's focus. His tone is brought lower, because witnessing this for the first time deserves the reverence that only whispers can deliver. Admittedly, he doesn't know where to watch, or what for, and his copper gaze stays on her with an expectant force. This is quickly impossible to maintain when the room around them transforms.

It flickers in bit by bit, at first, transitioning like someone's first PowerPoint. Stairs melt out to a familiar, but different floor. A bed slides forward, thrust in like a stage prop. Gradually, he's back in the Sugar Tide, enough so that he reaches out a hand to her thigh as if expecting the lurch of water beneath them at any moment and he's seeking the anchor of her as always. It's reminiscent of their storytelling in the House of Midnight, but this feels more immersive than that. His other hand reaches out, trying to brush over the new surface surrounding them, attempting to discern if she's transported them in some new fashion.

His marvel dawns into recognition rapidly as the stars completely set the scene. Not teleported then, at least not like her compass or the yarn-yank of channeling. Certainly this is still some semblance of motion, brought back in time more fully than his own mind can manage, to a moment he knows well enough the edges have begun to blur like a photo fading at the edges from too much handling. Is this—? He doesn't dare speak. Barely tries not to exhale if he can help it. His thought doesn't finish though, the strand dropped when the full weight of his attention shifts along with the Flora echo.

As it did then, his entire body freezes as the kiss lands. That moment rushes back with such a staggering clarity it's as if he's reliving it. The fear grips him firmly again, the chill of it brushing up against the bond. It doesn't last, thawing a second later beneath the heat of her lips, adjusting to the sudden shock of having everything he'd so carefully arranged around her yanked away like covers in the night. The sensation flips into urgent desire, keeping in tempo with the subtle shift of the Kaisel remnant kissing her back. Now, as then, his hand curls tighter against her, repeating the attempt to hold her with him for more than a mere moment.

When he breathes in again it's loud, roughened with the delay and the sudden, freeing effect of certainty filling all the old holes made by worry. If he'd only known how she'd looked at him then... "To think, I nearly ruined everything the next day." Barely able to rouse his voice in response to her, the hushed sound falls away easily, attention still snared by the repeating image of her tangled with him that evening. He shakes his head, a faint chuckle slipping free and dwindling into a groan that he buries into the palm of his other hand. The sound muffles and quiets behind the muzzle of fingers, lips smearing as he pulls it away and into his hair as if to straighten himself out. "I was so sure we would only have that one night that belonged to us." He glances from past her to present her, scooching closer to her on the stair-seat at once, both arms winding around her now in a sideways hug as he squishes into her side. "Do you know the first thought I had, when you kissed me?"

Kaisel

I've only just begun, I won't stop until it's done