The States

The Land of Flowers

1640
Her first clear memory is of the sand beneath her feet, the ships sailing in.

1670
Her younger years are a blur.

She doesn't remember much between her creation and being found on the doorstep of the church, feet torn to shreds by thorns and the scar spilling down her shoulder in frost-like fractals.

What she does remember, she remembers vaguely: running through forests barefoot, flowers woven into her dark hair, gentle hands holding her, the soft pad of an animal walking beside her.

Mostly, she remembers being alone.

She was named by a nun. María Esmeralda Amalia de Gracía Iglesias. (Foundling. Orphan. De Gracía Iglesias, grace of the church.)

The nuns don't like her much- they say she's unnatural, that she never gets sick and she's too strong, that her eyes are too knowing.

She is good, though. She remembers her prayers and they say she has a voice like an angel and she never speaks out of turn and she's obedient.

1700
Sometimes the religion seems to burrow under her skin. She feels out of place, and bizarrely, like she's disappearing, sometimes. 

She keeps looking down and expecting to see holes through her stomach where pieces of her have vanished into thin air. 

Spanish doesn't sit well those days, choking the words from her throat. 

Sometimes she is acutely aware that she is not a human, that she isn't a lamb of god because what lamb can toss around a black bear and live decades and not age at all. 

She was born from the land, born in a field of flowers, motherless, a fully-formed child with eyes the color of gemstones. If the nuns knew about that part, they'd think she was some sort of demon. Something that should have been drowned. Even saints age and die, and she does neither. Her scraped knees scab over in seconds, gone before the day is over. 

Sometimes, all of it is too much. She gets the urge to go go go, to wander aimlessly.

She always comes back in the end.

1730
She thinks she might have known the man before. He's familiar and yet not at the same time. 

He looks at her with sympathy. "Oh, Florida, what have they done to you?"

He speaks in a language she doesn't remember learning. She looks down at her bare feet to avoid meeting his sad eyes, studying the ragged hem of her dress where it caught in thorns the other week instead. She doesn't know how long she's been gone, but it hasn't been long enough yet. 

She pushes at her memory. It offers up a faded memory of a purple flower, spiky, one that cut her hand when she picked it, and dark hands cleaning off the cuts. 

He sighs. "You used to be wild. They have made you like them."

1769
They never tell her it's wrong because they don't think that it would ever be an issue.

And then it is an issue.

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁

She kisses a girl that was her best friend. Florida's hands shake and her hands cup the girl's face and her heart is a fragile, trembling dove in this girl's hands.

Her mouth is still warm from the kiss when the nun slaps her.

1811
Alfred knew exactly who she was the second he met her.