here is the ghost of bernadetta von varley's first answer:
nothing. to bernadetta von varley, they are nothing, and would it be that it did not take one to know one. but she is nothing—she always has been. because filth recognizes filth just as noble recognizes noble, and that is why ferdinand von aegir cannot tell for anything what she is behind that held mirror.
a noble's duty, he says. her inherited land, he says. and her gaze falls, mouth going dry for all of the things she remembers she can never say aloud. another breath, then: how to whisper i don't and i hate it in the same one? how do vultures know to only eat what is dead?
when bernadetta von varley was three heads tall, they took away her horn and sat her on a bench before weighted ivory keys. when her fingers were half a pin long, they stuck two in her palms to train proper posture. the very first compromise she had ever won was the harp, and for this privilege, calloused fingertips were far more prize to her than complaint. so here is the ghost of a girl’s second answer for ferdinand: suspended by strings, all she played was the part.
this sheet of glass between them, cracked on one side and crystalline on the other. she kept her head bowed, and he kept his head high. neither of them knew each other’s truth beyond the boundary. the lesser of them was better off for it, bleeding hand dragging along her mirror-half’s splintered reflection.
“polymath?” she parrots, blinking wide. ferdinand is already going on again, but contemplation lowers bernadetta’s gaze as she muses, not really to be heard over him so much as to finish hammering out her own curious train of thought. “well, um. i’ve never really thought about that before. it’d already be impossible enough to find one person to like me, let alone—”
his praise oddly tickles. cut off by its candor, she almost finds herself leaning toward it, the weight close to rolling on her heels. what might he say if she told him she could even use both hands? that house varley discouraged the uncommon breeding that was using her left, but that she had never untrained it. would he be just as impressed? would he at least pretend to be? the fleeting hope bubbles in her chest, only to burst at her own behest. no, no, don’t be stupid. she reminds herself of herself, frame shying away instead.
“us… similar? i mean, i don’t know, i—” she did not know how to hold this, such a comparison. but as for a tune? bernadetta’s finger, shakier and half-curled, chases after ferdinand’s on the measure. he had treated her so far with more hospitality on her land than its very inhabitants, and so she found herself able to afford him this much. “a-anyway, hold on! it’s a little dusty, but that one should probably be… hm hm hm~ ♪ ♫”
there was no love here for her. she did not feel a thing. not in its winters, not in its chapels in which scarred hands folded in prayer, not in her return to the county that she would sooner abandon than inherit. whatever might have existed had been long lost to one man’s orders to have a boy beaten to death. it had been sealed into this casket, then her uncle’s for good measure. and there would never be warmth for her again after that.
“...wow, you weren’t kidding about knowing your stuff. you said you wanted to see my work, but i don’t think it’d be any better than whatever you'd make. wait! y-you weren’t just going to judge it and rub it in my face, were you?! bernie knows she's got a skill level issue, but that'd be too much!”
but ferdinand von aegir, concert master, only needed to keep looking into the reflection he saw. nobility’s timeless mirror, held up by her right hand. and its knuckles grip the handle as it would an old candlestick.
