For @parkerlots because I keep thinking of Lexie & the song Silver Spoon — look at me, writing something again.
Vil just stares. It’s a thing she does.
She looks out from windows at the party bellow, at the glittering lights and the way they reflect on the young girl pretending her shoulders aren’t taunt.
That’s a woman, her lover would say. But Vil has lived enough lifetimes that all she sees is a small girl a flicker away from baring her teeth.
She passes through the balcony in silence, recording sounds and movements in the back of her endless mind.
She sees her grand-nephew, a prince whose head will never need to hold the weight of a crown, all long limbs and anxious jerks.
He sees the boy he invited, one who wears his heart so easily on his sleeve that she doesn’t care to worry.
What she’s watching is the girl. The other partner. The one who looks beautiful and artfully polished outside, but who has the aura of someone who bit and clawed her way from the grave because she refused to be put down.
Vil meets her in a hallway, draped in long robes and the stardust shared with her brother. And as the girl stares back, something inside eases.
Because this is not a girl clinging to a man just to get a grab at jewels and dresses and power. This is a girl who is clinging tightly to something she never expected to have, never wanted to hope for too hard.
And that this is not status.
“Ah. I see. You’re just sad. And scared”, she whispers more to herself than for the room. And if Lexie notices the star-dusted shadows in the corners ease back a little, she doesn’t say as much.
She would do well. This Beasant and this Duquesen with their heads half in the clouds need people to anchor them to earth.
“Welcome to the family,” Vil smiles, then, and brushes past. She needs to find Ersa and tell her that she was right, as her girlfriend often is.
And so Vil retires for the night, into the night.
She’ll talk to Cyrus’ puppy-boy another day.
And hopes, truly does, that the day comes when the girl is no longer afraid of spilling wine.
