“I resent that,” you say, feigning offense. One wing folds dramatically over your chest as if clutching your mother's old pearls for comfort. It is almost like a magic trick, the flash of black and white and black and white and black, like an old TV screen. “I'm a sight to behold in the fall, I promise. I'd bet money you couldn't pick me out of a crowd.”
It has always been easiest to smile-- someone once told you, when you were far too young to consider such things, that anger is the easiest emotion to fake. It is, as they said, as easy as raising your voice, narrowing your eyes and gritting your teeth. In the absence of everything else it will always be the most simple to pretend you are mad, like crackling fire or an oncoming storm. You look at her, this girl who thinks you are mysterious and so terribly dull though you don't know it, and you know in your ever-slowing heart that it is far too hard to be angry, or really, truly sad, when instead you can smile, almost like you mean it, and laugh, and sing.
It turns the eyes away.
(You still do not see the irony: that you waited all your life to be seen, to be wanted, and now that all eyes are on you it is far too much to bear.)
You are both very good actors. Mesnyi smiles though she's angry, the kind of frustration that just singes the edge of each word, enough that it's there but not enough that you notice. She smiles and you smile, though you're so terribly tired, though you look at her book and her face and her horn and something in you starts draining faster than you can identify it.
I aim to indulge, she says, like a songbird, light and flirtatious and beautiful, and in spite of yourself you lean in to listen. Because it is easiest to smile.
In the absence of anything else.
First you ask, “Is that a true story?” but don't wait for the answer, then add, “You've lived quite the life, it sounds like. How do you find the time?” You say 'time' like it pains you; it rings again in your head, over and over. There is a voice saying time as she searches your face, expecting your life in trade for hers. She wants to read you, you think. You wonder vaguely if she will like what she finds.
“I was born in Terrastella.” you say, simply. “I come from a long line of 'makers.' The Arkwrights. If you haven't heard of them they'd be sorely disappointed to know. I myself would be elated.”
You smile, again. It does not quite fit like the last-- there in the corner of your mouth is some bitterness, an uncommon tightness to your lips that you feel and turn away from her in a quiet whf of your feathers, and a shuffling noise as you lift another book off the shelf. It is plain, bound in brown leather, with a title stamped in plain, black font on the cover: ARKWRIGHT MASTERWORKS. You set it on the table.
“We aren't known for our humility.”
Will they tell my story?
@Mesnyi
