Harry & The Foxtail

o2 | elisium

o2

e l i s i u m

An ideal or idyllic place or state.

LOVELY GRACEFULLY STOOD from her chair, crossed the wide, bright room and unlatched the window. The calming breeze swept her curtains aside and the loose raven curls from the sides of her sharp, striking face.

The Foxtails, Lovely decided (as she revelled under the sun's soft yellow music), were hot-headed. The countless arguments and swords slashing were all more than enough to show where this would finish, she didn't need a soothsayer for that: it was as clear as day, that it would end in blood.

One day, she would be proved right.

Yet, now the two families continue to battle, each physically unharmed, yet inside they rot like flowers without water and sun.

If only they could be calmed by the breeze, she thinks as she reaches to lean out of the window, hands gripping the bottom edge which stopped at her waist as she looked outwards.

The gardens were below her brown neck and so she closed her eyelids to enhance her other four senses.

Her eyes closed in a bittersweet manner like a flower closes in a harsh winter, it still wishes to see, yet it cannot. Lovely still wanted to see the beauty, but she wanted to feel it more. She wanted to feel it resonate through her, like a shiver of winter or banquet wine mixing with her blood. She drew a long breath of air through her nostrils. They inflated as she smiled at the smell. This scent was one she would dare not forget, the scent of Gardenias. Her father had the seeds planted, bought from a merchant on the ports of Venice last spring. Lovely let her head hang, following her nose further into the air. The scent was intoxicatingly charming, sweet like orange blossom, floral like jasmine and camphoric and heavy like the sea.

Lovely's smile widened, and she loved it, she loved the feeling of the heavy sea's tempers in her stomach, the sweetness of honey as she ran her tongue over her lower lip, and the floral smell of Jasmine pulling her nose forward. She was drunk, she was drunk on this feeling and she loved it. She loved being drunk on Gardenia.

Two hands had clamped themselves onto Lovely's arms, then she yelped, and didn't muffle the swear word that left her lips as she was yanked back out of the window. At the sheer force of being yanked from paradise, her eyes flung themselves open like moths looking for a candlelight.

"Fuck Lovely, you nearly fell from that window," and in that moment because of his endearing actions Lovely decided, Valentine, was truly a nobleman, but as he was a Foxtail. He too shared a trait, that many other men did in their family, being hot-headed and oh what a fatal flaw it was.  "One harsh wind and I would go to war with your murderer, Lovely. The wind and I, I against the very mother of nature, so you would not die in vain."

"Val, nobody should die in vain," Lovely said knowingly, a light laugh following. Typical Valentine behaviour, to want to start wars with things he could never possibly go against, in this case, mother nature.

However Valentine was not in the same light mood as Lovely, "But, people do die in vain, Lovely and that itself is a crime to the gods." Lovely stopped laughing at his words and gulped, not in fear of him, but of fear of what he refers to. "What ever happens, do not let people die in vain, Lovely. The people you avenge, can be for the better—bring honour upon them and your house. I know you do not yield a sword, dear cousin, but I know choices can be made without one and that is what you will do when the time comes." His eyes had cast themselves over the door of her room, as he uttered the last words, almost remembering something lost or like he too saw the future blood that would run from those very walls, "I carry a sword in the darkness because I must, but you Lovely, are not like the rest of us. Lovely, time changes."