Logs:Plenty of Fish
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| RL Date: 6 September, 2015 |
| Who: Everett |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: Reflections on then and now, and Everett finds company for a morning, but only just for the morning. |
| When: Day 25, Month 9, Turn 38... and about a decade earlier. |
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| Day 17, Month 9, Turn 28 "Appearances," his mother said, dabbing powder over the bruises, "matter." Paint and powder, creams and perfumes. She spent an hour every morning just doing her hair, unwinding the curls from the rags she'd tied them up with the night before. Lioretta knew how to manage the appearances. Everett did not understand, not at that age and not ever, where she came up with the marks to pay for it all. It was inconceivable that his mother's husband would have given her enough of an allowance to cover all the little pots and boxes on her dressing table. "You weren't old enough to remember how it was before, but this is better. We have to be grateful for this, dearling." The husband in question was now asleep, or, more accurately, unconscious in the next room. Ev's younger brother and sister were staying the night with their grandparents. Not Everett's grandparents, which was why he'd stayed shut up in here through the worst of the shouting, and what came after. She came in, after, and didn't start to speak until she'd already gotten her hair put up. He'd watched her, watched her face in the mirror. It was so old that the glass reflected only imperfectly, like there was a shadow over her. "You could do better," he said, finally. "You could at least try." "With all three of you? I wish. You'll understand when you're older. It's nice to dream about nice things, but you have to be realistic." Day 25, Month 9, Turn 38 Everett made it out to the bowl before it really sunk in that she wasn't coming. She'd come before, after all. (Boy, had she ever.) But she wasn't coming, and his cheeks burned from what the weyrlingmaster had said. He still had the flask, and he took a few drinks from it as he tried to find her ledge up there, but it was so hard to make out which one it was, from the ground. Shame did not mix well with lust. It twisted, in his aching chest. The bowl was more busy than would normally have been expected for such an early hour. His heart lept every time he saw one of the greens--it was so hard to tell them apart. One of them landed quite near him. The rider was pretty, fair, but not the right greenrider at all. "I know you. The bartender, aren't you? Hey, if you're looking for company, my weyrmate's off visiting his sister." He should have other girls, right? He was entitled to it, as much as any of them. More. He'd been through more than any of them. The angry thing curled around his heart and dug in with claws, and he smiled as easy as breathing. She didn't even protest, or not much, when he got his hand around her throat in the middle of it. She still let him sleep off the rest of the morning in her bed. But, by that night, when he saw her at the Snowasis, she wouldn't look him in the eye. The whole world seemed a little more crisp, a little more clear. He was the bright center of the universe. He didn't even know her name. He was okay with that. |
Comments
Squishy (12:43, 6 September 2015 (PDT)) said...
Ugh heartstrings tugged. And a little concerned. This was a really interesting insight into Everett.
H'vier (16:01, 6 September 2015 (PDT)) said...
You'll be better off once you stop having feelings, yo.
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