Difference between revisions of "Logs:Green Seventeen"

It was a perfectly nice green dress.

She'd laid it out on the end of her cot, and there it stayed, looking appropriately dress-like. Couldn't fault it for that. Casseny traced a nail over the embroidered trim around the neckline. A modest neckline. The kind of neckline a mother gets for her daughter. Her calloused finger rode bumpily over the slightly raised nature of the design. Nothing sensible about it. Just some shapes. She supposed they were fine enough shapes.

Below, the bodice was figure-hugging. Below Casseny, she was still longer than she was curvy.

Her blossoming womanhood had generously granted her another inch-- she'd carefully measured that morning on a hunch-- but none of it in her breasts.

Plucking at the loose skirt beneath a sewn-in waist belt, she wondered if her ma had factored that in. Had guessed, or noticed. She wouldn't expect her to. Want her to? Begrudge her if she didn't. Still, it was something she thought about. She was trying to be more conscious of what others noticed. She spent a lot of time managing her expectations.

Stretching her arms above her head, Casseny let them fall back down onto the top of her head, fooling with the hair there but briefly. It was soon swept into a tight, flawless runner's tail, high, but not too much so. When her hands fell back onto the dress and its cuffed upper sleeves, its lower ones that unbuttoned all the way to above the elbow to allow for more movement if needed-- oh, she liked that--it was to fold it up.

It didn't occur to her to think of wearing the dress to please her mother.

She was already thinking of the day-- of E'den's physical therapy-- inventory, then lessons. She'd been taking on a few more. Here and there, and some other things. Managing their expectations.

The forefinger that had brushed the dress touched now at an actual bit of material on her shoulder. Twisted. Its design infused with meaning far less whimsical than those fashioned on a dress. Still. Someone had used one to make the other. Maybe even had an expectation. Ebeny had spent marks on it-- something everyone had less of now, but that she got, in part, from her own knot. Her position. People's expectations.

It wasn't their fault that Casseny was--- Casseny.

Oh well. Smooth, untested, fabric slipped from her hands into the wooden basin of her footlocker. Here, the dress would stay. Safe. It's not like she was throwing it away. It's not like the color reminded her of Laurienth, of shapes that weren't quite, of a design more complicated the less material that made it.

No, she'd had a different knot in mind when she'd woken up that morning. And it didn't involve any mystical formula or feeling; it required work, experience, evidence.

And it certainly expected her not to be late.

The chest slammed shut and clasped with a satisfying noise.