“ i’ll see you soon, okay? i promise. “
❝ YES, MADAME LUTECE, ❞ THE GIRL REPLIES with a wide, bright smile. they’ve been working on more difficult vocabuary (vo…cabulary.) at six, elizabeth learns like an eight-year-old. she’s smart, and she’s hungry, consuming every lesson rosalind brings to her like a wildfire in dry grass.
after all, it is her only means of seeing another person. songbird isn’t the same. what elizabeth doesn’t know is that this interaction will be their last – and that her memories of rosalind will fade when the soporific gas curls up through the tower vents.
❝ … ❞ it takes a moment for elizabeth to pile the books in an orderly stack. all the while, she watches rosalind pack her own things, a weight settling uncomfortably in her chest. ❝ when will you be back? ❞
When she had first been tasked to instruct the child in her studies, Rosalind had balked at the very idea that she should be responsible for one that wasn’t even her own. Robert would have been better for the child, she believed. But the woman soon found herself attached to Elizabeth. Unlike most children, Elizabeth devours the knowledge she’s given and demands more. Something that Rosalind herself could relate to. It reminds her of how she herself was as a child.
She pauses, knowing that everything that will come from her mouth is a lie. Their daily lessons have been put to an end, though Rosalind has left traces for the girl to continue. Her own books rest on the shelves along with others that the Prophet would deem unacceptable for Columbia’s future Prophetess.
(Why Comstock didn’t take her training into his own hands, Rosalind will never know.)
So she gives the girl a smile and summons the words. “I will be traveling for quite some time so I’ve left you a few of my own books.” Rosalind leans down to look the girl in the eyes. “I’ll bring something back for you as well.”
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