Isabella Foster
I like a look of agony
because I know it's true
I
don’t like Denocte, not the way I like Terrastella. Denocte is loud and bustling, there are too many reaching towards you, creepy smiles with missing teeth. Denocte is too closed by their mountains, they are too hidden among the dark alleyways of their Court. No, I do not like Denocte, not the way I like Terrastella. I offer little more to the stallion than a disgruntled narrowing of my eyes and frown to go with it. I wish for just a second that I had brought my bow, but mother had refused the idea. Unlady like, she had said, and would not represent the Foster family well at an event like this. I would never shoot another person, but just having it in my hand offers me some sort of power that I cannot feel with a quiver of arrows slung across my back.
Shadows. I should have known the Denocte monk would have had shadows. Magic, it was all the same. Maybe I am biased, to the fact that our leader, Marisol, she does not have magical powers or gifts, she is the only one in all the Courts to lead without the gift of magic alongside her. “I guess you are,” I say. I do not mean to sound cold, but I know little other ways to speak.
He is not the only one who wishes the date were someone else. I think how much I would rather he be that woman of gold chains, russet hair, and that I were in a Solterran palace. But, I think, Hagar would probably not be caught dead here. Just proving all the more how much cooler and sophisticated she was than me.
“I am,” I respond with my own lack of a smile. We were like to students paired together on a group project rather than two dates beside a romantic winter scene. “I have,” I say, of course I have. A Foster’s biggest fear is embarrassment, so of course we learned to ice skate. “On this very lake actually,” I comment with a strange lack of nostalgia. Terrastella lacked the great lake Denocte has. We stayed in a cabin, the whole family, built snow animals, ice skated, drank hot chocolate. My father read quietly, while my mother played cards with my sisters. My brothers and I warmed our breath on the windows and drew shapes int he fog, only to watch them disappear.
We put on our ice skates and I stand up with him and head towards lake. “You can lean on me to start,” I offer, the ounce of compassion I am capable of. We begin to move, though ungracefully, we are still at least, on the ice. “So you are a monk,” I says, the sparkling conversationalist that I am. “Tell me about that.”
picture colored by Elidhu
@Tenebrae
