The door opens, and for just a moment so short it's a cruelty, you see Mesnyi, and not the Mesnyi she is trying to be, because for that single, cruel moment you are the same.
'Sacrifices were made,' the girl says like it's offhand, like it is not the answer to every question you could ask of her and that he could ask of you. You try not to smile sadly, just tucking your mouth into place and nodding with your eyes closed.
You know this feeling well. You often wonder because you cannot quite remember, if who you are is some cruel trick of fate or a deliberate choice. You think, if it had been a choice after all, someone should have held out their hand and said 'no.' Someone should have stopped you. Someone should have stopped them.
A father, or a mother, or anyone, should have protected you, because you are not going to protect yourself. You know this, now more than ever. Sacrifices were made.
"I'm sorry." you say, in a rare moment of vulnerability, in a brief flash of solidarity with this girl you don't even know-- and then, just as it began, it is gone. She's looking down at your book and grinning, and you try to stuff your too-large body back into its shape and call your waning motivation anything but what it is. Your body still stubbornly refuses to dissolve on cue.
She comments on your family's distinct lack of humility--a trait you like to think you don't share--and you tip your head to one side with the quiet whf of your feathers. Mesnyi looks at your for a long moment, like she's reading again. You wonder if she is. (She isn't, not really, but when you look back down at her, her eyes are so large and so soft that it makes your head ache, and the stillness with which she eyes you has you internally writhing to escape it-- so perhaps she succeeds unintentionally, in the end).
You take a deep breath, to steady yourself. It doesn't help, much. "I suppose we must," you agree. "though, if I'm being frank, I think you might have me beat. I'm unbelievably clumsy."
Mesnyi asks to eventually see your work; you do not bother to point out that some of it is in the book that you hand her. You are not so sure you want to show her at all. "If you insist," you say, "but I'd rather stroke your ego than my own. The Arkwrights don't need less humility, by any means."
