fiori del cuore

(Continued from Fractions & Factions: The Return.)

“By the way, I don’t think anyone knows this — what is your drink of choice, Leona Autumn? I know, I get it, it’s like picking which child is your favourite…”

The mixologist makes a face only someone distraught at having to choose a favourite of anything would make. “I don’t know if I can choose just one, Lord Jaezred. I…” She looks around, as if searching for the answer. When her gaze passes over the one she made for him, she pauses, thinking.

“Perhaps my drink of choice is the unexpected creation. The one made from collaboration.” Leona looks at Jaezred and smiles.

Now it’s Jaezred’s turn to blush. “W-Well now, I’ve never know you to be a charmer, Miss Leona,” he stammers a bit, adjusting his collar and pulling off the cravat tied around it. Is it just him, or is it getting warm in here?

“What?” Leona asks, confused. Then she realises what she said, and her face flushes a deep crimson. “I’m not. A charmer, that is I, ah— Here! Let me make you a new drink.”

She quickly busies herself with making him a fresh cocktail whilst he sits there, inwardly still soaring from the unexpected compliment. It’s stupefying to hear this cocktail master say that her favourite drink is the one he made with and for her.

“Hey. Make that drink for yourself. On me. Or…would you like me to hop in back there and make it for you?” He rises to his feet and begins taking off his coat.

“How about we make it together?” Leona offers, smiling, stepping to the side to offer him the space to work beside her.

“Very good.”

Jaezred lays his jacket across the bar, hops over it, and rolls up his sleeves as he throws a wink at her.

Leona doesn’t tell him the name of the cocktail they’re making, but it involves gin, crème de violette, champagne, a splash of blue curaçao, and a squeeze of lemon juice. He steals glances at her in between pouring liquids into a mixing cup, somewhat entranced by the view of her working up close; where everyone else sees a pretty, red-haired human woman, his witch sight grants him the vista of her true form: a slender nymph with birch-white skin and a mane of auburn leaves for hair, large horns of willow bark curling up from her temples, her eyes black as the decay of the melancholic season she bears in her name. She is terrifying and beautiful all at once.

“Sometimes I think it’s mad,” he mutters, in such a way that only she can hear.

She glances at him, raising an eyebrow. “What is?”

“That no one else here knows how truly breathtaking you are.”

There is silence from the mixologist for a long moment.

“It never matters to me how I look. I know my strengths”—Leona does a complex series of hand gestures over the mix Jaezred places in front of her, causing the liquids inside to spin into a whirlpool—“and my weaknesses. My mother, she…she gave herself too readily to the first man who saw her as she truly was. It nearly destroyed her, in more ways than one.”

The whirling concoction begins to slow as Leona returns to the part of the mix she was working on, doing her best to not look Jaezred in the eye.

He turns his gaze to the new whirlpool of liquors. “I see. I’m… I’m sorry to hear that.”

She smiles sadly. “All of this,“ she says, gesturing to the fiore popolare, taking in everything as a whole, “it is all I have ever wanted. My own place where I can do what I love. I cannot do it without them.” Leona looks out to the patrons. “But not everyone feels safe with the strange and unusual, even here. That’s why, those who do know the truth…” She turns back to look up at Jaezred. “…are truly special, to me and this place.”

He looks out over at the fiore too, resting his hands on the bar, and nods. “Then I’m glad that you have made what you love, a place that is dear to the hearts of many here in the Dawnlands.”

The drow lord turns to face her again. “You know, I was thinking about how funny it was that Morinn, someone who worked so hard to make everyone think she’s emotionless and so very ordered, would fall for a man as wild as the Lord of the Hunt. Love makes one do the damnedest, most improbable things. For better, or for worse.”

“No one is without emotion, as much as they may wish or seem to be, either.” She thinks for a moment. “I wonder what this will mean for her and the Winterlings… I had no idea that she and the Lord of the Hunt were together.”

“The gossip over there must be raging right now. Can one get hot tea in the Winterlands? Apparently so!”

Leona laughs. “I’m glad the gossip seems to be revitalising you! Here—” She twirls her fingers and some silvery white crystals rain down onto the rim of the glasses. “Done.”

Jaezred grins, picks one glass up, and holds it up for a toast with her. “To cocktails and normal conversations.”

“And to the friends who see our true selves,” she says, clinking her glass against his.

He takes a hearty sip of the deep blue cocktail. It’s sweet and floral, and the small tang of citrus cutting through balances the flavours, keeping them from overwhelming everything; the effervescence from the champagne lengthens said flavours and the dryness of the gin ends it at just the right amount.

But there’s another flavour in there, coming in at the tail end of the palate — it’s got to be that silver powder. And it feels, to Jaezred, something close to…home. He stops and holds up the glass to his eyes.

“Wait, is there…moonlight in this?”

“Perhaps,” Leona says, a smirk curling her lips.

Jaezred looks at the glass in his hands, the low light catching on the silvery-white crystals on the rim. As he slowly turns the glass in his hand, those crystals transform the light into moonbeams that shine and shimmer through the deep blue liquid. He’s been through the Witching Woods enough times to realise the taste he has on the back of his tongue is the same smell as those mysterious woods, misty and confusing who do not know their way through them.

“Well? What is your verdict, my lord?”

He is hypnotised by the pale, mystical white light captured in this dazzling drink, so familiar yet still enchanting every time. After a moment, he puts the glass down and looks Leona in the eye.

“Flying bloody colours. You’ve done it again, Leona Autumn. As I thought you would.” He spreads his arms and smirks. “Well, you have your prize. You may ask me of one thing, anything you’d like, and I shall fulfil it. So…what will it be?”

She sets her own glass down very carefully. Gathering herself, Leona takes a deep breath as she clasps her hands tightly together.

“I did not do it to gain a favour from you, Lord Jaezred Vandree. I did it because…I wanted to show off to the one person who truly knows and appreciates my talents, but has never tried to use them or me for their own gain. I would like to be your confidant, a person you can come to if you ever need to have a normal conversation. Let me show off the unique and fantastical drinks I make, ones you challenge me to create or my own concoctions. You can be my first and only critic I care to impress.”

Jaezred is truly at a loss for what to say. His usual glib charm has left him at this moment, blown away by an autumn wind. This, he did not expect.

“Consider your wish granted,” he murmurs, a smile and another blush blooming on his face.

Leona beams up at him, the feather-like leaves of her half-nymph form fanning out with delight at his words.

“Oh, and if anyone asks you to make a potion again, send them my way. I’ll take care of them.”

“Ah yes. Noted, my lord.” She nods. Then frowns. “In the case of Oriniax and who she turned out to be… Knowing what I know now, I’m not sure what I would do. She was hurting, lost and, if you could believe it, so small and vulnerable… No one should have to live in such a state. But on the other hand…” Leona glances at him.

“You did nothing wrong. Often are compassionate hearts like yours taken advantage of. Regardless, if someone like that ever comes to you with a similar request again, just send them to me. Let me bear the burden of consequences.” He winks at her. “I’ll handle it. I have moonlight in my eyes. There are few who can trick me.”

“Then I am fortunate to have you to call as friend if I need your eyes to see what mine cannot.”

There was an audible hesitation at the word “friend”, perhaps because Leona had never called him that before and was worried she may have assumed something too forward. Jaezred just chuckles.

“Call on me anytime…friend.”

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Co-written with the ever-brilliant Riah 🍁