[P] bite my tongue, bide my time

[Hagar]

HAGAR IESHAN

Truth be told I don't mind
'Cause her hell's my paradise
She can crush every hope
Got her heels stompin' down my throat

W

hat does it mean, to be truly lonely?

Sometimes I think I know it: I will stand in the courtyard, surrounded by ginkgo fans and deep green monstera and paintbrushes and blocks of pigment and think I am lonely. I will look back at the tall windows, ridged in wrought iron and the bleak autumn sun and sigh to myself. How terrible my life is, how lonely: that I am one girl in a family of girls with gunmetal hearts and boys made of more venom than wine.

I will ache up at the windows, the cut of the roof, the pergola at the head of the path that leads to the groundskeeper's hut, and think, oh no, oh no, oh no.

But I am not lonely. Each corner of the estate is packed with servants at work, servants that turn their faces respectfully away from Pilate (but not their eyes) and Adonai. However distant they are, my siblings are packed together like spiteful sardines in a tin. Everywhere I go, even now, as sand turns to dry grass turns to the jagged rock of the mountains and then the cliffs, there are eyes on me, servants in tow.

I have never known what it's like, to be lonely. I think, existentially, I do not even feel it as much as I think. But still it is the only word that comes to mind when I send off the escort party with a smile and think to myself, I am something, and that something is lonely, I'm sure. It is so much worse, to know anyone would do anything, if only I asked.

It makes a girl not want to ask.

I come to Terrastella with the sun at its apex, glinting down on the cobblestone street. A late autumn rain has just blown through the region and the eaves and lanterns glitter with fat, heavy drops of dew. It is beautiful, in the way that the rare desert rain never quite is. Even our petrichor smells like sand and searing heat. Here it is cold, uncomfortably so, cold enough that I shiver as I step into an archway and out of the wind.

I am squinting when I see her, staring blankly in what I hope is a graceful sort of way, befitting an Ieshan. It is so cold I do not know if it quite hits the mark.

"Excuse me," I ask, touching her shoulder, jingling with gold while I do, "I am looking for a jeweler." 'I am looking,' I  say, walking the line between overtly polite and covertly blunt. An implication that is not quite a question. A demand that is not quite a demand.

It would be so simple, to ask.
But I don't. I can't.

@Isabella