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f she closes her eyes and lets the cold and the moonlight flutter through her eyelids she could almost pretend that she was back home – that the feeling in her heart was happiness and not the heaviness of a self-inflicted solitude – back home with the pale body of her mother next to her and those soft blue eyes always watching, smiling, shining like the stars overhead. and that somewhere out in the shadows lurked her father and the other children he had created. that in the morning they would race across the snow fields in the soft light of the sun, and florish even as the winter continued around them.

it’s only when she opens them that the cold stark reality hits back in and therese is dragged back down from her stupor.

but at least this time she is not so alone. when she had been in paradise, and even in the ravine, she felt as if she had not existed, floating between being present and being nothing more than a forgotten figment of someone’s mind.

she’d laugh at him, if she had known – that vercingetorix had thought of her, missed her, whilst she had spent the same time missing herself. she’d laugh, but she would also be happy. no one has really missed therese, not even therese’s mother.

the feeling of his teeth against her skin brings her out of her daydream, and she turns to watch him, wide eyed until she realised that the gesture had been done out of playfulness and not spite. “oh, a flower. definitely a flower. there was a plant that grew on the slopes of my first home, when all the other’s had died and been buried under layers and layers of snow they would florish. like little droplets of snow.” she smiles, “not all flowers are delicate, some are stronger than they appear.”

she pauses, and then adds “you are not quite so pretty as the snow drops, i think, but pretty enough,” she nudges his shoulder, returning his playful gesture.