Isabella Foster
I like a look of agony
because I know it's true
I
t is my default setting to be unimpressed. So I politely apologize but I remain neutral enough. It was often so infuriating for my siblings. I gather up my supplies with the boy and tuck them away. He is just as unrecognizable to me as I may be to him. He is certainly not one of the students that come to the Foster library to study, I would have known him instantly. Those students always did like to buddy up with either myself or one of my siblings. They also probably would have started apologizing profusely by now. It is a relief in some ways to not know him.I try to make a smile broaden the length of my mouth, to comfort him, but as always, it falls short of my silvery eyes. So, instead, I just frown kindly in his direction. “Well, thank goodness for that then,” I say. It is only when my name tips from my lips that a look passes of his eyes like pages turning in a book. Foster. A name that sits in Terrastella’s bank, guarded with locks and keys, collecting more and more gold. I have never known what it is like to be like him, and I probably never would. We are worlds apart in the same Court.
“Would you like me to say the pleasure is mine?” I ask with uncharacteristic humor poking through the cracks in my Foster mask. “Caspian….” I pause, waiting to hear his surname, it doesn't exactly cross my mind that this may not be a common thing everywhere. “No, not lost, not exactly,” I begin, pulling out the parchment I had been drawing on. “I am updating Terrastella’s maps,” I say, showing him. “It seems the nobles had conveniently forgotten many of our alleyways and side streets,” I say as if I am not one of them, but instead, had lived my life just as Caspian had his. Is lying to yourself as much a sin as lying to another? “So, lost perhaps for now,” I say and draw another line. “But not for long.”
picture colored by Elidhu
@Caspian
