you're too young & eager to love (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
impertinences) wrote2022-08-16 02:59 pm
impertinences) wrote2022-08-16 02:59 pm
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Another AWS session down! I've lost count. I think this might be 5.
Some context: I wanted to explore Despina and Orson meeting and leave a set-up for future meetings, the next most logical being her debutante party where the community is formally acknowledging that she's Maxine's legacy and the next in line for the Vannier Head-of-House position.
“For fate may hang on any moment and at any moment be changed.”
Jeanette Winterson
The girl in the parlor has tiny wrists and delicate ankles. Her arms and legs are thin, coltish even, as she grows into her limbs. There is only the hint of womanhood about her hips, but the thin summer dress with its lace trim does little to hide her budding adolescent breasts. Fresh-faced and pink-lipped, she wears her hair long and free; it’s not as blonde as the Vannier matriarch’s, more of a honey-brown, but there are other similarities—the dynamic eyes, the slender nose, the arch of the brow, the self-possessed demeanor. Baron, with his silver hair and weathered-map of a face, looks all the more aged and archaic beside her. One of his arthritic hands hovers, hesitating, behind the child’s back, like he had planned on shepherding her out of the parlor and into the formal entrance hall but is now too afraid to touch her.
“We have visitors,” the old caretaker announces to the house, his voice a toad’s croak. “From the Vannier House.”
Vida, who is already in the parlor along with her brothers, rolls her eyes. “We can see, Baron, thank you.” Her tone is dismissive before she looks at the girl, curious. “How old are you, child?”
“Twelve, and I’m not a child. I’ve …” the girl pauses, searching for the polite word, “flowered.”
“But not deflowered, one can hope,” Orson quips from the large bay window. He’s pushed back the curtains and is watching the night, following the strolling couples as they pass the property gate with its wrought iron spikes. Now, like Vida, he turns to regard their guests. Beside him, Gideon sits on a cream-colored camelback settee. Basque stalks across Gideon’s shoulder slowly, the bird’s bright eyes blinking at the girl. She is as fresh as new snow, pure as dawn. They can all smell it, even Basque, whose dark feathers ruffle up suddenly. Gideon strokes a finger down the back of the crow’s head.
“She’s a bit plain looking for all that, wouldn’t you say?” Vida who is closer to Baron and thus closer to the girl, sweeps her gaze up and down the child who, sensing the appraisal, has taken a self-conscious step back so that she is more in the arched threshold now than the parlor itself. One of her small hands fidgets with a silver bracelet on her right wrist. “She has the look of a ferret without half the cunning.”
Gideon is laughing when Maxine’s voice slips like syrup from behind them all. “Is this what courtesy looks like at Linemell, Hadassa’s city, Hadassa’s hearth even?” Her voice lacks warmth despite its cadence, but the rebuke is still mild. “Despina is young and gently bred and she has a legacy to inherit. Mind your tongues.” Stepping behind Despina, Maxine is a voluptuous ivory-skinned woman in gossamer blue. Her wheat-colored hair is plaited down her left shoulder in an elegant fishtail braid. She places a reassuring hand on the girl’s shoulder, and Despina’s posture straightens.
At the sight of Maxine, Orson’s grin splits his mouth. He steps from the window and bows with an elaborate flourish of his arm, charmingly playful. “My tongue is my concern but I cannot speak for my brother’s or sister’s.”
“We are not here to bandy words with you. Or your siblings.”
“A pity. I love a bandied word.”
A hint of a smile ghosts across Maxine’s face. “Bless your heart, now where is your matriarch?”
“Here,” Hadassa says from the front door. She has come in with the iron-scented wind, the sounds of the city behind her until Laith, fresh from the first of the night’s kills, closes the door behind them.
“Hadassa,” Maxine says, turning, and now her smile is full. She takes the darker woman by the shoulders, kissing the air beside both her cheeks. “It is impolite to enter another’s city without greeting. We wanted to make our presence known.”
“Nonsense, I did not think our two Houses stood on such ceremony.”
“If we do not have our traditions, what do we have?” Maxine shrugs lightly. “You remember Billie?”
Hadassa is the only one to notice the woman near the door. A black glove covers her entire right arm. She nods at Billie, who nods back.
“Frankly, I have a favor to ask of you,” Maxine says, glancing at Laith who has lingered in Hadassa’s shadow.
“Let’s speak in the other room.” Hadassa places her hand in the crook of Maxine’s elbow, congenial, and Laith opens the large wooden doors that lead into the formal dining room for the women. “Baron,” Hadassa calls over her shoulder, “Do make sure the children behave themselves.”
Baron serves tea on a silver tray, but none of them touch it. He retreats to stand in the parlor corner like a statue, his eyes as blank as his old mind. If he has any intention or capability of corralling the progeny, it is not easily apparent.
Despina has circled the parlor twice, inspecting the oil paintings on the walls. She had seemed drawn to the portrait of a curly-haired youth with a pink umbrella standing amidst the grim backdrop of a city, but then she lingered in front of the fireplace, touching the various candlesticks and opening a velvet-lined ornate box full of dried rose petals. Finally, she’d taken a seat directly across from Orson, the only other person in the room now beside the caretaker.
“Who are they?” she asks, nodding her head towards the others loitering in the hall.
Orson lifts his eyes from the book on his lap and follows Despina’s gaze. “The tall brooding fellow by the stairs is Gideon and next to him, the perpetually bored looking woman? Vida. The wraith who followed Hadassa like a shadow is our youngest and newest brother, Laith.”
“And you?”
“You tell me. A legacy such as yourself should know all the great families.”
Despina smiles a little, shrewd now that she has been found out. “Orson. You’re of the first generation of this House.”
“Right you are, my young lady,” he says leaning forward to take one of her hands and kiss her fingertips in an old fashioned gentlemanly style. “Best to stay close to me. I am the most hospitable here, excluding our beautiful matriarch, of course. She has a reputation for being quite the hostess, to be sure.”
Still smiling, Despina smooths her hands across the front of her dress. There is a hint of a blush on her cheeks. “I have not been to many parties. Well, only one really. I was given a little champagne.”
“We’re a covetous breed. We don’t like others to pluck what we’ve been growing.”
“I know,” she says. “All my life I’ve been told what an honor it is to be me and to protect that honor.”
Orson makes a noise like he understands, but he does not comment. After a moment, she asks, “What are you reading?”
“Nothing. See?” He shows her the leatherbound book, which is upside down. “I find that if I look busy, I can stay and listen.”
Despina hides her girlish laughter behind her hand. “I can look busy too.”
“I do not doubt it.” He hands her a book from the stack beside him. It’s a collection of poetry in a language Despina does not know, but she opens it anyway and pretends to scan the page.
“What do you think they are talking about?” She pitches her voice into a whisper, conspiratorial.
Orson shrugs, looking to the closed dining room doors. Laith is still lingering there, hunching, chewing on the side of his thumb. “Who knows? Affairs of state? Which House will foster the Tribunal’s upcoming visit? The best whore house in Linemell?”
Despina’s blush is the color of morning roses, a delicate pink that colors the entire bridge of her nose and brightens her cheeks. She rubs the corner of a page between her thumb and forefinger softly. “I hope it’s about me. Maxine rarely calls in a favor.”
Abruptly, Orson leans forward, and Despina leans back into the winged chair with its stiff cushion. “Have you had any of it yet?” he asks.
“What?” She’s still whispering.
“The blood. A thimble full, perhaps?”
“No.”
“So you are utterly unspoiled.”
Despina nods but the movement is uncertain. She exhales softly when Orson sits back in his chair, propping his ankle up on one knee. When he returns to his book, it is upright this time and legible.
She asks to see the garden, so the house complies, except for Laith and Billie who stay near the dining room. Baron moves the untouched tea to the back patio near the hanging porch swing; Vida lights the torches along the garden path; Gideon introduces Basque near the pansies, crouching down so that she might stroke the crow’s feathers. Basque pecks lightly at her bracelet, and Despina unhooks a small moon charm for the bird to keep. Basque holds it in his beak, flying to the patio railing where he walks back and forth, his talons tapping.
“He will treasure that like a dragon treasures gold,” Gideon tells her, amused.
“I have plenty if he wants more,” Despina says.
“Should you like, you may give him one each time you visit.”
Despina nods her thanks and watches as the blonde retreats back into the house. Vida has taken a seat on a bench beneath a Hawthorn tree, and she seems to be studying her nails religiously.
At just under five feet, Despina is an average height for a girl of her age. Still, Orson stands seventeen inches taller, and she must peer up at him to meet his gaze. “Do you have a crow?”
“No, not a crow.”
“What then?”
Orson grins down at her. “You have to leave some secrets where they are, otherwise there will be nothing left to be discovered.”
“What if I never see you again though? I’ll never find out.”
“Never is a long time for us.”
“Were you scared?” she asks then. “Of eternity?”
He seems confused by the question and rubs the back of his neck, turning to follow the path along the garden beds. Despina sticks by his heels. “Grateful, I would say.”
“Billie says that most of us are not legacies.”
“That’s correct.”
“It seems sort of sad, doesn’t it? To make such a decision about the rest of your life without much warning?”
Next to the star jasmine, Orson’s smile looks rueful. “Maybe it isn’t sad at all. Maybe it’s brave.”
Despina thinks on this, her dress as white as the flowers in the darkness. When she takes Orson’s hand inside of her own small one, he is surprised.
“Yes,” she says after a moment, “maybe it is.”
They stroll the garden twice, half in silence, until Billie calls for Despina by the back door. The girl doesn’t say goodbye to any of them except Basque, although she drops a quick, respectful curtsey to Hadassa before running out the front door, Billie following behind her. Maxine, amused, says her goodbyes more properly and thanks Hadassa a second time before leaving with a promise to visit again soon.
“What did she want?” Orson asks, lighting a cigarette.
“Laith,” Hadassa says, clearly amused.
“What for?”
“The girl will be turning thirteen soon, and she has recently … what do mortals call it now? Come into her womanhood? They want to mark the occasion with a celebration, and they’ve asked Laith to make her a dress. A custom piece.”
Orson’s laughter gets caught on his cigarette smoke. “I hope you’re kidding. She’ll end up looking like a Ravenstone painting.”
“What do you mean? Half of my wardrobe is Laith’s work.”
“Yes but dressing a child and dressing you …”
“Point taken,” she says with a smile. “Maybe he can make something with peach-colored silk. To match Maxine’s accent.”
Orson laughs again, handing the rest of his cigarette to Hadassa who breathes in a mouthful of smoke only to exhale a smooth plume of it above his head. “What did you think of her? Despina?”
“Precocious, but that’s to be expected given her circumstances.”
“Maxine says she’s willful.”
“Maxine would know.”
“Can you even remember what it is to be that young?”
Orson shakes his head, and there’s something almost sad or even thoughtful about the way his head hangs afterwards.
Some context: I wanted to explore Despina and Orson meeting and leave a set-up for future meetings, the next most logical being her debutante party where the community is formally acknowledging that she's Maxine's legacy and the next in line for the Vannier Head-of-House position.
“For fate may hang on any moment and at any moment be changed.”
Jeanette Winterson
The girl in the parlor has tiny wrists and delicate ankles. Her arms and legs are thin, coltish even, as she grows into her limbs. There is only the hint of womanhood about her hips, but the thin summer dress with its lace trim does little to hide her budding adolescent breasts. Fresh-faced and pink-lipped, she wears her hair long and free; it’s not as blonde as the Vannier matriarch’s, more of a honey-brown, but there are other similarities—the dynamic eyes, the slender nose, the arch of the brow, the self-possessed demeanor. Baron, with his silver hair and weathered-map of a face, looks all the more aged and archaic beside her. One of his arthritic hands hovers, hesitating, behind the child’s back, like he had planned on shepherding her out of the parlor and into the formal entrance hall but is now too afraid to touch her.
“We have visitors,” the old caretaker announces to the house, his voice a toad’s croak. “From the Vannier House.”
Vida, who is already in the parlor along with her brothers, rolls her eyes. “We can see, Baron, thank you.” Her tone is dismissive before she looks at the girl, curious. “How old are you, child?”
“Twelve, and I’m not a child. I’ve …” the girl pauses, searching for the polite word, “flowered.”
“But not deflowered, one can hope,” Orson quips from the large bay window. He’s pushed back the curtains and is watching the night, following the strolling couples as they pass the property gate with its wrought iron spikes. Now, like Vida, he turns to regard their guests. Beside him, Gideon sits on a cream-colored camelback settee. Basque stalks across Gideon’s shoulder slowly, the bird’s bright eyes blinking at the girl. She is as fresh as new snow, pure as dawn. They can all smell it, even Basque, whose dark feathers ruffle up suddenly. Gideon strokes a finger down the back of the crow’s head.
“She’s a bit plain looking for all that, wouldn’t you say?” Vida who is closer to Baron and thus closer to the girl, sweeps her gaze up and down the child who, sensing the appraisal, has taken a self-conscious step back so that she is more in the arched threshold now than the parlor itself. One of her small hands fidgets with a silver bracelet on her right wrist. “She has the look of a ferret without half the cunning.”
Gideon is laughing when Maxine’s voice slips like syrup from behind them all. “Is this what courtesy looks like at Linemell, Hadassa’s city, Hadassa’s hearth even?” Her voice lacks warmth despite its cadence, but the rebuke is still mild. “Despina is young and gently bred and she has a legacy to inherit. Mind your tongues.” Stepping behind Despina, Maxine is a voluptuous ivory-skinned woman in gossamer blue. Her wheat-colored hair is plaited down her left shoulder in an elegant fishtail braid. She places a reassuring hand on the girl’s shoulder, and Despina’s posture straightens.
At the sight of Maxine, Orson’s grin splits his mouth. He steps from the window and bows with an elaborate flourish of his arm, charmingly playful. “My tongue is my concern but I cannot speak for my brother’s or sister’s.”
“We are not here to bandy words with you. Or your siblings.”
“A pity. I love a bandied word.”
A hint of a smile ghosts across Maxine’s face. “Bless your heart, now where is your matriarch?”
“Here,” Hadassa says from the front door. She has come in with the iron-scented wind, the sounds of the city behind her until Laith, fresh from the first of the night’s kills, closes the door behind them.
“Hadassa,” Maxine says, turning, and now her smile is full. She takes the darker woman by the shoulders, kissing the air beside both her cheeks. “It is impolite to enter another’s city without greeting. We wanted to make our presence known.”
“Nonsense, I did not think our two Houses stood on such ceremony.”
“If we do not have our traditions, what do we have?” Maxine shrugs lightly. “You remember Billie?”
Hadassa is the only one to notice the woman near the door. A black glove covers her entire right arm. She nods at Billie, who nods back.
“Frankly, I have a favor to ask of you,” Maxine says, glancing at Laith who has lingered in Hadassa’s shadow.
“Let’s speak in the other room.” Hadassa places her hand in the crook of Maxine’s elbow, congenial, and Laith opens the large wooden doors that lead into the formal dining room for the women. “Baron,” Hadassa calls over her shoulder, “Do make sure the children behave themselves.”
Baron serves tea on a silver tray, but none of them touch it. He retreats to stand in the parlor corner like a statue, his eyes as blank as his old mind. If he has any intention or capability of corralling the progeny, it is not easily apparent.
Despina has circled the parlor twice, inspecting the oil paintings on the walls. She had seemed drawn to the portrait of a curly-haired youth with a pink umbrella standing amidst the grim backdrop of a city, but then she lingered in front of the fireplace, touching the various candlesticks and opening a velvet-lined ornate box full of dried rose petals. Finally, she’d taken a seat directly across from Orson, the only other person in the room now beside the caretaker.
“Who are they?” she asks, nodding her head towards the others loitering in the hall.
Orson lifts his eyes from the book on his lap and follows Despina’s gaze. “The tall brooding fellow by the stairs is Gideon and next to him, the perpetually bored looking woman? Vida. The wraith who followed Hadassa like a shadow is our youngest and newest brother, Laith.”
“And you?”
“You tell me. A legacy such as yourself should know all the great families.”
Despina smiles a little, shrewd now that she has been found out. “Orson. You’re of the first generation of this House.”
“Right you are, my young lady,” he says leaning forward to take one of her hands and kiss her fingertips in an old fashioned gentlemanly style. “Best to stay close to me. I am the most hospitable here, excluding our beautiful matriarch, of course. She has a reputation for being quite the hostess, to be sure.”
Still smiling, Despina smooths her hands across the front of her dress. There is a hint of a blush on her cheeks. “I have not been to many parties. Well, only one really. I was given a little champagne.”
“We’re a covetous breed. We don’t like others to pluck what we’ve been growing.”
“I know,” she says. “All my life I’ve been told what an honor it is to be me and to protect that honor.”
Orson makes a noise like he understands, but he does not comment. After a moment, she asks, “What are you reading?”
“Nothing. See?” He shows her the leatherbound book, which is upside down. “I find that if I look busy, I can stay and listen.”
Despina hides her girlish laughter behind her hand. “I can look busy too.”
“I do not doubt it.” He hands her a book from the stack beside him. It’s a collection of poetry in a language Despina does not know, but she opens it anyway and pretends to scan the page.
“What do you think they are talking about?” She pitches her voice into a whisper, conspiratorial.
Orson shrugs, looking to the closed dining room doors. Laith is still lingering there, hunching, chewing on the side of his thumb. “Who knows? Affairs of state? Which House will foster the Tribunal’s upcoming visit? The best whore house in Linemell?”
Despina’s blush is the color of morning roses, a delicate pink that colors the entire bridge of her nose and brightens her cheeks. She rubs the corner of a page between her thumb and forefinger softly. “I hope it’s about me. Maxine rarely calls in a favor.”
Abruptly, Orson leans forward, and Despina leans back into the winged chair with its stiff cushion. “Have you had any of it yet?” he asks.
“What?” She’s still whispering.
“The blood. A thimble full, perhaps?”
“No.”
“So you are utterly unspoiled.”
Despina nods but the movement is uncertain. She exhales softly when Orson sits back in his chair, propping his ankle up on one knee. When he returns to his book, it is upright this time and legible.
She asks to see the garden, so the house complies, except for Laith and Billie who stay near the dining room. Baron moves the untouched tea to the back patio near the hanging porch swing; Vida lights the torches along the garden path; Gideon introduces Basque near the pansies, crouching down so that she might stroke the crow’s feathers. Basque pecks lightly at her bracelet, and Despina unhooks a small moon charm for the bird to keep. Basque holds it in his beak, flying to the patio railing where he walks back and forth, his talons tapping.
“He will treasure that like a dragon treasures gold,” Gideon tells her, amused.
“I have plenty if he wants more,” Despina says.
“Should you like, you may give him one each time you visit.”
Despina nods her thanks and watches as the blonde retreats back into the house. Vida has taken a seat on a bench beneath a Hawthorn tree, and she seems to be studying her nails religiously.
At just under five feet, Despina is an average height for a girl of her age. Still, Orson stands seventeen inches taller, and she must peer up at him to meet his gaze. “Do you have a crow?”
“No, not a crow.”
“What then?”
Orson grins down at her. “You have to leave some secrets where they are, otherwise there will be nothing left to be discovered.”
“What if I never see you again though? I’ll never find out.”
“Never is a long time for us.”
“Were you scared?” she asks then. “Of eternity?”
He seems confused by the question and rubs the back of his neck, turning to follow the path along the garden beds. Despina sticks by his heels. “Grateful, I would say.”
“Billie says that most of us are not legacies.”
“That’s correct.”
“It seems sort of sad, doesn’t it? To make such a decision about the rest of your life without much warning?”
Next to the star jasmine, Orson’s smile looks rueful. “Maybe it isn’t sad at all. Maybe it’s brave.”
Despina thinks on this, her dress as white as the flowers in the darkness. When she takes Orson’s hand inside of her own small one, he is surprised.
“Yes,” she says after a moment, “maybe it is.”
They stroll the garden twice, half in silence, until Billie calls for Despina by the back door. The girl doesn’t say goodbye to any of them except Basque, although she drops a quick, respectful curtsey to Hadassa before running out the front door, Billie following behind her. Maxine, amused, says her goodbyes more properly and thanks Hadassa a second time before leaving with a promise to visit again soon.
“What did she want?” Orson asks, lighting a cigarette.
“Laith,” Hadassa says, clearly amused.
“What for?”
“The girl will be turning thirteen soon, and she has recently … what do mortals call it now? Come into her womanhood? They want to mark the occasion with a celebration, and they’ve asked Laith to make her a dress. A custom piece.”
Orson’s laughter gets caught on his cigarette smoke. “I hope you’re kidding. She’ll end up looking like a Ravenstone painting.”
“What do you mean? Half of my wardrobe is Laith’s work.”
“Yes but dressing a child and dressing you …”
“Point taken,” she says with a smile. “Maybe he can make something with peach-colored silk. To match Maxine’s accent.”
Orson laughs again, handing the rest of his cigarette to Hadassa who breathes in a mouthful of smoke only to exhale a smooth plume of it above his head. “What did you think of her? Despina?”
“Precocious, but that’s to be expected given her circumstances.”
“Maxine says she’s willful.”
“Maxine would know.”
“Can you even remember what it is to be that young?”
Orson shakes his head, and there’s something almost sad or even thoughtful about the way his head hangs afterwards.