Since she can remember Florentinne knew there is no chance getting over the high fences that kept her part of captivity hidden from freedom.
"I could try on that necklace, I'd look dangerous," she thought with a covered smirk and reached after a necklace with black obsidian for an eye of a silver dragon with red spots. But the second she was a few centimeters away from it, next to her stood her aunt with her arm on her shoulder and eyes colder and harder than the glare reflection on the jewelry she was eyeing.
"We wouldn't want Raiona's followers to think, that we, the wealthy families want to get in touch with them in any kind," she said with falsly honeyed tone of her voice, "Right?" Flora knew this wasn't a question, when her aunt's fingers sharply dug into her shoulder which would look like an incentive that didn't need words to anyone but them.
Ah yes, the beauty of belonging to Rubrichans: 'No, you mustn't, It's Raiona's property!' and 'You know we love you but you mustn't go there; It's Raiona's teritory.' Said like urges and warnings from evil but in truth the words that locked you into handcuffs of expectations of you ancestors that fell onto their descedants.
They'd probably be invisible too if it weren't for Liella. The rules, under which the 'great' families operate, actually forbid her to even know her, let alone even talk to her. Well, she also shouldn't admire her for her coffee coloured skin, warm smiles with dimples and curls, that are often pulled into a ponytail (and every so often change the colour) that held them with difficulty and eyes that held a world, whose every corner she wanted to explore as much as she wanted to breath.
Li showed her that we can be the person we want to be, we don't have to go follow the unwavering rules that they were planting into their heads since they opened their eyes into this world next. The only problems, that cornered them from every side, were causing her troubles. Because Flora belonged to the part of the society, which held tradition in its hand and tied to it all the children born to it, which had to obide by it regardless of their wishes, until they knew only that and started to despise all else, which wasn't coldblooded control. Not to mention that Rubrichans were one of the most influential of them all.
The worst part of it all was, that Liella held the other side of that society, which was named after Raiona, their first leader and were doing what they wanted as long as they didn't hurt another person. In other words everything her side stood against. But the more Flora got to know Li, the more she was realizing, that maybe letting somebody else do something for you, without you knowing what it was might not be that bad. It dawned on her that maybe to take a break from this absurd from commands life might be better than constantly following the same orders all the time that made her life so dull and full of routine. But that came with time...
"That light pink dress in the corner is just beautiful, Florentinne," one of her aunt's friends pointed with her finger to a kitschy dress with ruffles and so many layer that Flora was baffled, how could anybody even dress this and not faint from all the heat, that the woman would have to endure. Not to mention she'd look like a nicely bred pigglet. She of course couldn't say that, so she covered her uncomfort with carefully made mask of polite smiling.
"Beautiful, Mrs. Margaret, truly. But me myself would rather try on that one over there," she hinted at the dark red dress, that had pleasant to the eye material, which glimmered like velvet, stretched a bit more from the neck to the chest, then from the waist down folded, continued to be a tad over her knees and its long sleeves ran to the start of its elbows.
"Ah but isn't it a bit... too... simple?" Margaret visibly didn't want to be too wild with her choice of words even if her true thoughts shaped her face structure: it disgusted her because it didn't have enough ruffles, patterns and above all open cleavage, that would make her more 'attractive for the man's eye'. Flora wasn't aware at the time that the feeling, which rose up then, was contempt to dressing according to some standards, given by men based on what they themselves wanted to see.
"Ah, don't listen to her, Margaret," said Flora's aunt gently, but her voice was imbued with poison, which Flora knew all too well and despised so deep in her heart that she had to bite her tongue. "She meant only that she would rather try that one on one of Them. Maybe with it they'd look more appropriate than in those straight up disgusting clothes they wear," she was horrified with each word, but when she mentioned Them - Raiona's followers - she frowned and turned her face into the monster she only showed Flora, when the latter had to live through scolding. Just like she had later that day.
"No, no, It's alright, Klemette," adresses Flora's aunt Roseleneia, who had the most fiery significance from them all and for whom Flora really didn't know, for what reason she stayed in such awful company. "The girl has her own taste, which is a tad more elegant. It is the way it is. It, however does not mean, that she will wear it to events and balls."
The others nodded at this statement because they knew she was right, but Klemette squeezed her lips into a thin line, looked over Flora and then smiled that devil's smile and in the same day Florentinne in one of the luxurious carriges took with her her first dress she liked home. And definitely not with the thought of a girl, that stood in front of a hanging product in an adjacent line.
Every girl longed for something but most of them didn't get it. Florentinne now was aware this very well, when she looked at Liella when she laughed out loud at the story she told her in a way that those adorable dimples shown and Flora was coloured red. Surely only because of the breakage of colours at the view, which spread before them. Li was the first one that ever heard only because she sat next to her on the balcony at the sunset with regret it's setting and listened to Flora's stories. The latter only smiled, but the smile was genuine and something special: it was for only one person that managed to earn it. Liella.
(I'm sorry for grammar mistakes, English is not my first language and I suck at it)
YOU ARE READING
¦Stories I only tell you, Li¦
Adventure"You're worth more than whatever is holding you back here, Flora. Don't let them destroy you because you think that way," she told her gently and wrapped her hands around Flora's. "Li, if I go they'll kill me, just like my mother," she whispered a...
