#mvsquerade

[prudcnce]

Opposite: Zoya Fox { @mvsquerade } Location: Ravensmoor Manor { the bathroom } Time: Mid-evening.

     There was a strange feeling to the evening. People she had not seen up close in months mingled amongst people she had never encountered ever before. After having worked so hard to distance herself from all she knew and all that knew her, it stripped her to be in this place. Every eye did not follow her as they did when she was on stage, of course, but Prudence felt an odd sense of watching about her person that she simply did not care for. There was no solace here, no escape from the eyes that she imagined about her person. A break was desperately required for her to continue on at the party, and when a masked figure appeared from the bathroom doorway, Prudence opted to slip inside. 

     Her head rested on the basin, sweat forced her darkened hair to stick to her forehead entirely. Was this how it felt to be nervous? Stage-fright had dissipated over time, and this was the closest she’d felt to her sixteen-year-old self in years. The left leg hid a silver flask, engraved with the letters H.W. - a gift she had never gotten the chance to give him. But stuck to her right, a small blue vial with the tiniest of spoons lay in wait. 

     The dancer blotted her forehead with a piece of toilet paper, flushed it away, and smoothed out her costume all while making an intense, almost scary, amount of eye contact with the reflection of herself before her. ❛❛You can do this. It’s just another performance.❜❜ A pep-talk, that was all she had needed. She exited the bathroom with a new vigour, which was likely why she was not paying attention to the brunette with which she collided. A collision which led to her secret suddenly being spilled across the floor, like the first fall of winter snow. 

[prudcnce]

Opposite: Zoya Fox ( @mvsquerade ) Location: Harrod’s department store Date: March twenty-sixth, eighteen eighty-six. 

Ten degrees was by far warm enough for the cotton peach ensemble that Prudence had opted for that morning. Her hair, tightly pinned up so that it would not bother nor distract her, was fastened with an obtusely ornate flowers; a final gift she had received from Henry, and still greatly coveted two years post-break-up. Although, of course, that was a fact that she failed to truly admit to herself, and to everybody else. A small child, no older than five, scuttled past her, almost unceremoniously taking her and the jewellery case out all at once. ❛❛Oh!❜❜ Her pitch was high out of surprise, only to be met with a cheeky grin from the potential perpetrator of chaos at her knee. Children, no matter how darling they seemed, always made Prudence inexplicably anxious. The laughter of a child was a foreign sound in the LaVoie household, even when she had been in youth herself. Her social circle was the same of her parents; artists, creators, critics. There was no need for her to socialise with those her own age, with their vast and fleeting issues. That was what had drawn her to Zoya, she had figured. The woman was older, albeit not by much, but enough so that the mundane issues of her peers seemed even more imprudent than usual. 

❛❛Zoya, what do you think of the agate brooch?❜❜ The ballerina called to her companion, her attention moved entirely from the child, and the life that she likely would have had herself, had things not turned so particularly sour. Encompassed by a serpent, there was something about the colouring that vaguely reminded her of warm milk, of her childhood. While the rose-tinted glasses she saw her younger years from had been long removed, there was still nostalgic fondness found on occasion. Particularly surrounding the memories of she and her father, days spent practicing French, their own secret language. ❛❛I cannot decide if it reminds me of the colour of bile, or the colour of my childhood. Would it wash me out?❜❜ She didn’t care for the serpent around the edge, barely noticeable from a distance, but had little doubt that Zoya would certainly notice it immediately.