for @morgwenmicrofic prompt "dress", morgana/mithian, 498 words
The silk flowed through Morgana’s fingers. Midnight-blue, precisely the shade she’d worn the first and only time she’d met Princess Mithian of Nemeth. She’d been thirteen, emerging from an ocean of grief and casting off her skin without realizing it would bind her. Mithian was eleven and a child to her, who had thought herself impossibly mature.
Now here they were, Princess Mithian on the royal business of a father who loved her, and Morgana…
It was terrible, the thing asked of children, to be always quiet and agreeable in a world they could not begin to understand.
“I hope it’s to your liking,” Mithian said kindly. “I know I presume too much, but it’s such a lovely color on you.”
“It is lovely,” Morgana repeated woodenly. “You have an excellent memory.”
A faint pink kissed Princess Mithian’s perfect angular face. “I—Camelot is a beautiful place. It made quite the impression upon me.”
Morgana felt her lip curl, a cutting-edge expression untempered by any pretense of courtly decorum. “Oh, yes, very beautiful. Though I’m afraid, like most beautiful things, time does put it to rot. Apologies,” she said, not meaning it, “I’m privy to some of your correspondence with Camelot’s king. Have you set a date?”
Mithian let her genteel silence linger long enough to make Morgana twitch. Then she said, “King Arthur is a valuable ally. He negotiates on different terms than his father. We’ve rarely spoken on more personal matters.”
Unless she forced her fists into a softer shape, the silk dress was going to tear. Rent to rags as if by the claws of some horrid beast. In this confectionary manor, in this sugar-glass chamber, alone with this girl who was too sweet to be believed: a beast was an honest thing to be. Her dress was gray now, whatever color it had been before; and it had known sweat and blood and earth; and it hung heavy on her bones, and was starting to itch. It was only fabric; she hadn’t spared it a thought in months. If she was worth the investment Morgause had made of her, she’d tell Princess Mithian to keep her charity and magic herself a new gown or a suit of armor. She hadn’t even tried. What sort of priestess was she? All those lessons and still--
“If the dress isn’t to your liking, I’ll happily arrange for something else. Something simpler, or—I don’t have any men’s clothing to hand, but perhaps a guard’s uniform could suffice until—”
“I know who I am,” Morgana blurted out.
Mithian stopped. Then with all the grace of a duelist, she pivoted with her opponent. Something peeked around her princess’s smile—the flash of a body real beneath the helm.
She took a bold step forward and put her hand, palm down, in Morgana’s, where they would be separated, but not enough, by midnight-blue silk.
“That’s good,” she said eagerly. “That’s excellent. I was hoping I could know, too.”
