stretched on your grave / darlings, day 3

on the sand, the girls are drying off and licking their wounds. 

as always, mine are the deepest, and i nurse them with a fierce desperation not to let them see that i flinch when i move. my body is a pincushion of a thousand splinters; i have been battered and bruised and impaled by the the last few days, but i keep my chin steadily up, play out the pantomime of strength when i have very little left. i think its evolutionary; if you show weakness, of course, your friends and family will turn on you and pick your bones dry. i'd like to avoid that, so i make a show of being okay. i swim back and forward, stretching my tired muscles, letting the salt lick my wounds and cursing the water for what it has done today. 

andromache calls out to us both: florentine, eulalie. i see she has dropped the 'flo' now the danger has passed, jammed her mouth full with all the syllables it takes to bring this alliance together. it's evidence of our parents' derision for us, to saddle us three with such burdens. let me braid your hair, she offers, which is sweet. 

just a minute, i say, although at this point my hair is a matted mess and could do with the touch of somebody who knows how to untangle it. i have spotted something in the distance - a dark smudge, right out across the bay, where i swear it wasn't before. i'll be there in a second.

_[DARS]

[flo swims against the current]

xlTRQhO7hG1-20

"Florentine?" Before I can even finish saying her name, she's in the water. Florentine is really such a mouthful... says the girl called Andromache. So when I yell out to her again, I fully give in and adopt the nickname, stressing that single syllable. "Flo! Aren't we wet enough already!?" 

Evidently not. I get up off of my bucket and test the surface of the water with my bare toes. It's still, except for the ripples caused by Florentine. But it was still before the tsunami too. With a sigh, I manage to shove aside my mistrust of the waves, and I pull my tunic up and over my head, leaving me in just my vest and underwear. On national television. Amazing. Underdressed, I wade out after Florentine. 

I'm waist deep when Florentine's call reaches me. Eulalie? Gone? I whip my head around. Besides our things, drying out in the sun, the shore is abandoned. "What the fuck?" Loathe to be alone, suspicious of the stillness behind me, I swim out after her, doggy paddle style to keep my head above water. "Where did the loverboys go? Maybe she ditched us for the manservants?" I laugh mirthlessly. Fat chance. 

I follow Florentine out further when she keeps swimming. She has a good eye for these things. And now? Well, now she's knocked Eulalie off of her spot as my number one ally.

_{[ DARS ]}