#and decency

But also I’m not here to speak for Phil. I’m not gonna do that.

Also stop speculating about our relationship. It makes me really uncomfortable. People simply don’t need to know.”

Y’all, immediately and without remorse: “PHAN IS REAL OMG 👀👀👀❤️❤️❤️”

(A/N: This will hopefully be a made up of few shots popping up here and there. Torin’s shorts will always be titled with a flower or plant, chosen due to their meaning in Japanese Hanakotoba tradition. 

Let’s try to give ‘rose guy’ a bit more of a story, shall we?)

PART 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // TBC

~~~

“Wait!” A pale arm shot out from the barred window of the previous cell door. “Wait, please! It’s you….”

Islanzadí stopped, head gently cocked to the side at the prisoner’s words. She turned back and gestured for Macil and Anara to lower the spears that were poised to drive through the bars. 

A young man with wildly snarled hair and skinned knuckles warily appeared at the window, fingers curling around the cold steel as the Elf Queen approached. His dark eyes flicked to her two guards, taking note of their sharp eyes and ready posture for a moment before turning his gaze back to Islanzadí’s face.

She let him study her, quietly impressed with his boldness, before she spoke up. “Well?”

Her voice seemed to startle him somewhat. His eyes snapped to hers, widening briefly...before his shoulders slumped. He let out a shaky breath and rested his forehead against the bars. 

“You’re not her.” His grip loosened and his hands slid from view in defeat. “You’re almost her but...your eyes. They’re all wrong.” His muttering faded. 

Islanzadí tilted her head slightly. Anyone else would have likely passed the man off as a raving lunatic and continued on, but there was something in the way he had so carefully assessed her that gave her pause. “And what, exactly, is wrong with them?” 

The man paused his fervent murmuring, mulling over the question. His expression was sure and determined when he finally met her gaze again, unwavering. “Cold fire. The kind you can’t put out. Hers had it.” 

The statement hung in the air for several heartbeats. 

Islanzadí turned to Macil and Anara. “Leave us, please.”

Anara’s eyebrows twitched, the only sign of displeasure she dared manifest. “Are you sure, ma’am?”

“I’m quite capable of defending myself on my own if need be, thank you.” The Queen gestured towards the stairs leading back to the ground floor of the captured keep. “Please. Inform the Council that I will be available by sunset, then rest.”

The two elves straightened and tapped their spears twice before they bowed and took their leave. 

The man in the cell returned his hands to the bars, nervously tightening and loosening his grip as the regal elf retrieved a chair and sat across from his door. Now that she was alone, something about her made him feel incredibly small, as if he were a field mouse and she a sharp eyed hawk. At any moment she could swoop in and extinguish his life with little more than cold grace and a flick of her talons, and there was nothing he could do but watch for an indicator of her next move. 

“We are not the first elves you have seen, am I correct?”

“...Yes.” He licked his cracked lips, trying to find enough moisture to speak clearly. One wrong move under this hawk’s watchful eye would send him to the earth. “A few years ago. She was here.” When Islanzadí did not respond beside a stern tightening at the corners of her mouth, the man took a deep breath.

He wiped his hand clean as best he could on his grimy prison greys, summoning all his courage.

Then, before it all abandoned him, the man offered his hand through the prison bars to the regal woman that was now his jailer. 

It’s easy to look around at the world today and think it’s just a mad, angry, crazy, regressive bin fire but it’s not. Every day, in a million and one tiny ways, the 99.9% of people that are good and kind and decent are doing their best for one another. Remember that.