[P] bite my tongue, bide my time

[Hagar]

HAGAR IESHAN

i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.

I

am not dumb, as much as I'm sure many others would like to think so. I am not dumb and I see the air fill her lungs in one sharp breath when her eyes meet. I am not dumb and I feel that rotten, selfish thing wiggle its way up my throat and through my teeth until I am smiling. If my mother would be proud of anything I've done it is the carefully curated, almost impossibly unassuming smile that I settle into as she speaks. As if I had never seen it, or heard it, at all.

Your friends? She asks, and I am still smiling, thinking still thoughts, thinking of holding my back straight and my chin level, and meeting the blank slate of her face with my own.

"They would dislike me for saying so, I think." I say, "They are very proud of their work." Does she think me mysterious, I wonder? Powerful? Dangerous? Should she?

Well, she says, since it is just the two of us-- I am hanging on every word, still as poised as before but now my neck hurts, and my back is tight with the strain of it. Since it is just the two of us... what? Isabella doesn't finish. The sentence drops like rock in the ocean, disappearing into the sea-black void as the seconds tick by. I touch the backs of my teeth with my tongue, feeling each curve and groove in the absence of anything else.

I like to think I am looking expectant. I like to think that I conjure just the right amount of disappointment to be inoffensive. I wonder why I care, so much, what she was going to say.

I wonder why I want to know. Gods, I want to know so badly I almost do not hear her finally pull her drawings from their places and unroll them behind me. My legs say to keep walking, to walk and walk until you feel less crazed, less desperate, but the extra step or two that I take after she stops does not cue her to follow, so I turn.

I wish I hadn't, because she fixes me with a look of such stern patience that I almost laugh at her. I don't know how a brick wall can be so endearing. I look at her for too long before my eyes flick down to the pages.

I appraise them quietly, as she speaks. I am an artist myself, though more as a hobby, and I don't think I've ever dreamed up a weapon. Miriam thinks I am one of those girls that paints beautiful people to pine over, drowning in blushing roses glistening velvet. I am not bad at it-- I think all noble children are taught to paint in the distinctly classic way, especially our family-- but I envy her straight lines and her practicality.

Me teeth press together behind my lips.
"Are you an archer?" I ask, "Or do you just design these and give them away?"

Here we are, Isabella says, as we step into the shop--and I am struck with a thought like oh yes, the shop; of course, the shop. Inside it is warmer, the wind blocked by the plates of glass on the window and the delicate wood door. Before us there is laid gold and silver on pillows, some hung with beads of turquoise and others braided alongside glittering gems.

The shopkeeper greets us as we enter, seemingly gliding out from behind her desk, pen still in hand. I turn from her, to Isabella, and answer, "Great question, Biz." and then, quieter: "Why don't you pick?"

@Isabella