the heat of a cold white flame

"Flora?" Mythra snorted. "Sure. A ten-year-old's idea of a MILF."

Catching Addam's affronted look, she hung a hand out in the direction of Lora. "Mom I Wanna Find?"

It got him to laugh, half a cough, despite himself. Nonsense enough that he couldn't find the real humor in it, or didn't need to.

Mythra couldn't either. She really didn't have any deeper definition of who or what Flora was beyond the abstract concept: Addam's Wife. Someone he was tethered to in something of the same fashion that had seen manifested Mythra's mutually-maddening leash to reality. Because human society had to keep spinning its wheels. Because some other old man or men said so.

Said Addam could control her. Discipline her. Master her.

None of it meant anything. Some of the women in the city had given Mythra disapproving glances as they'd watched her confidently order exactly which dishes she wanted and wait for Addam to not-so-discreetly catch the bill. While it didn't necessarily occur to her to offer to pay her fair share, she did complain about the incident later, and Addam had sheepishly informed her that it wasn't the money they were concerned about, but rather the temerity. Hers, and his.

"But don't they know you're married?"

"Exactly. They do."

So Mythra decided that she didn't think anyone should be apprised of anyone's anything if it meant that you couldn't just keep your mouth shut and mind yours.

After all, why should these random busybodies have more to say about Addam's home life than someone who actually lived with the guy? Even if not...in his house.

Ha. Who was to say that it wasn't Mythra who'd stolen Flora from Addam, rather than the other way around? Or some other way around.

The idea was, in some ways, startlingly appealing, especially given how little Mythra seemed to find anything appealing, nowadays or ever.

If she held Flora's hand, in defiance of all their diatribes about the natural order of things. If she was nurtured, from her unnatural nature, by someone who understood the perils of being a member of the fairer sex.

Maybe her dissatisfaction with femininity would disappear, dissipate, dissolve. Maybe she'd be able to forget about her supposed obligation to perform a delicate divinity fitting of the Aegis.

Because that was all people were, to her, right now. Passageways, gates, into and out of and in and around the labyrinthian locks decorated with codes she didn't know, couldn't seem to learn.

Around, and around, and around. Never through.

It took so long even to find herself a chance to enter Addam's house, to feel like she was being afforded that basic a courtesy. From this Titan to that. On this lead, on that. Meeting this Magister, that Inquisitor. She'd never have said that she wanted to take a break, that she was tired of the training because she was actually tired and not just raring to go, because Aegises didn't get tired. Obviously.

She was just...curious. Wanted to learn more. Wanted Addam to stop saying "my wife" and start saying "Flora" because that was her name, damn it.

Not a secret. Let me in on it.

Let me in on it so I can keep it too. So I can keep her. So I can know.

Flora. Warm, inviting, bright. A lot like Addam, but a little darker. To Mythra, a little more real. A lot safer.

Driver and Blade, one in body and soul.

Mythra had never felt further nor farther from Addam in either dimension. And yet, the way Flora danced around him, so kindly yet so deftly, full of laughter and cleverness, betraying none of her own strength or truth, almost had Mythra believing that it was possible, really possible.

She felt small, but like a flower being cupped and raised, not a weed pinched and put down.

The touch of Flora's fingertips on the crown of her head, not quite possessive but tender all the same. The studying, steadying gaze of Flora's eyes on her cheeks, her temples, her brow (somehow, everywhere but her eyes) that didn't count, only considered. The brush of stray bangs from Mythra's eyes, and the crinkling of Flora's again when Mythra instinctively reached out to mirror the action.

Her Core, furiously cataloguing it all.

Flora cared. Of course. Flora cared.

She was taught that she was coarse, that her rough and sarcastic attitude was out of place in polite conversation. Yet somehow everyone else could hurl the most uninspired insults at her without showing the slightest twinge of remorse, and that was banter.

Flora wasn't like that. Flora didn't do that.

That's what Mythra wanted to believe.

In reality, Flora was just as capable of cruelty as any other young woman of Torna. She'd surely been party to it many a time, in her greater youth. What's the number one trait about teenage girls? They're catty, snooty, sassy. They judge others' appearances, choices, ignorances. Some of it is their own fault. Some isn't. They do to others what has been and continues to be done to them.

But Flora had chosen, eventually, to rise above that, in the way that only a young woman growing older can. And Flora wouldn't do that to Mythra.

Not that Mythra would ever really know if that were true.