estelle
Tell the wolves I'm home
C
arefully she wound up her hair. Each tendril still feels unnaturally cold, dry ice upon her neck. She shivers but Estelle has not stopped shivering since she felt herself slip toward death’s cool embrace. Her heart still feels as if it breaks off ice with every beat. Every contraction is a struggle. It does not feel warm and wet within her chest, not as she expects it to.
Across her torso she drapes a gown. It is sheer and midnight blue, struck through with silver that gleams as stars - or, she cannot help but think, like shards of ice. Into the twine of her hair she places pink flowers, rich with a blush. It is the only bit of heat upon her skin. Until now her body had always been a thing of pride. It was the perfect example of a Tonnerre. But, oh, Estelle herself was born with a mind that did not belong anywhere near the Tonnerre house. She tried to fit, she let herself be molded by the Matron’s demands. But Estelle Tonnerre was not the silver of stone, ready to be sculpted. She was the silver of diamonds, hard, unyielding.
She stands amidst the statues, frost-bitten and still feeling the frigid cold of her strange dreamscape. If Dune had not come, would she still be wandering there, rather than stood here, amidst this lavish party, reminding herself what it is to live a lie? She walks and feels the family’s wealth gaze out at her from the eyes of every statue. They watch her and she feels their eyes upon her spine, mocking the girl cast out of her own lavish family. Her chin tips up and Estelle walks as every well raised girl should, but there is a hardness to her spine. It is arrow straight and violent as a sword’s promise.
Never had she thought that one of the statues might be anything other, until it steps off it’s plinth and towards a golden man. “Prince”, the statue (a polished actor adorned and made to move as if her body is liquid marble) calls him. Estelle turns her lightning eyes upon him. He is the mellow of a midsummer night and she the frigid cold of a winter’s morn. He is still cradled within his family and she, banished, unable to bear honouring her family’s name a moment longer.
A few of the guests moved on, their initial delight at the statue, come to apparent life, fading, But the prince remains and Estelle moves to stand beside him. “Is all this -,” She says of the statues, the party, his family, the expectations, the everything, “not stifling?” Her lashes lower, she does not know what sacrifices are expected of him only that, if she knew, she would likely whisper ’run’ into his ear. Estelle has already paid her own sacrifice to her family, her body bears the scars and her reward for it was banishment and a festering ire.
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