ell hath no fury like woman scored. I read that, in a play once. I think of my own family, and how we handle, well anything. I wonder if Hell can still know a fury if its silent.
It is perhaps one of the last truly warm days before winter comes. Already, I long for summer and our frequent trips to the beach house on the coast. Days where my brothers and sisters and I forget our lessons and we are children once more. Our grandfather comes with us, no longer staying in his own large home, his own wife passed just two summers ago. Granny Colette had been a fine woman in the Foster family. Not born a Foster, married one, just like my father, but a Foster all the same by our standards. She was quick to judge and play favorites, but she was also warm. If you went up to their own beach house early in the morning, back when we had been small, you could wake her up and she would have the servants make warm biscuits, as many as you wanted before everyone else woke up. She took us berry picking, saying how us Foster children didn't know how to get our hands dirty while she lavished in diamonds and silks.
She took us to charity events she planned, let us dress up and put on her jewelry and dance on the floor as if we were grown ups. Snuck us each a sip of wine, saying not to let the red stain our lips.
“Know how to mourn with dignity,” my mother had said at the back of the church at the funeral of my grandmother. Everyone kept coming up to us, apologizing on our loss. “It is the Foster way.” As if keening on your knees were in some way, crazed As if their dignity was so astounding—that it could eat away the pain. I still cried when she died, in front of the mirror, with no one around, those big, fat, ugly tears. I have never looked less like a Foster in my life and it was—freeing.
My quill scratches against paper, making notes of alleyways for another map, another improved map of Terrastella for the Foster library. The map I carry has the basic components of the city, all the main streets, the main shops, even side streets and smaller boutiques and bars. But there are these places, forgotten, tiny slivers where life bleeds red and hot. Dusk Court offers the lavish lifestyle, it is even so upfront about its swamp, but there are places they would rather be swept under the rug. I have heard of Night Markets, if never having been, I wonder if it is the rug where everything we sweep ends up. I wonder too how many jewels have been accidentally pushed away.
I move down quieter corners, where I get stared at because I am unfamiliar, or they recognize me and wonder why I am so far from our libraries, our mansions, our money. I draw the alleyways like they are veins from the heart, to the extremities. We concentrate so much on the heart the we forget where the blood must go, lose blood to the arms and the legs, the fingers, the toes, and we lose something we so easily forget how much we need.
I wont let any piece of Terrastella be forgotten.
Another alleyway, this one bustles with life, I am noticed about as much as one would take care to look at a brick wall. This world is loud.
I love it.
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Caspian
the salt is on the briar rose, the fog is in the fir trees.
Caspian was not raised on biscuits but on hardtack and watercress and whatever happened to be growing on the wind-swept meadows between the coast and the city. His mother would not buy butter, or jam, or anything that required making by hands other than her own. He’d always figured this was for monetary reasons, though now he wonders if she hadn’t just been proud. (Only lately is he coming to realize both things could be true.)
This never bothered him unduly. It did not seem such a bad thing, to survive on your wits and what grew around you. He knows, for instance, that the blueberries and red currants ripened in July, and the cranberries in September, and persimmons and apples through the fall -
(Of course all of this is small consolation each bitter January, but the capitol always feeds its people good alfalfa hay when they need it).
Today he is not thinking about hunger at all, or what is ripening on the vine - although he is thinking, a little, of the seasons. Benvolio is somewhere ahead of him, circling the belfries on the ancient church, finding new pockets of darkness to explore. Though today is warm, especially far from the toothy wind off the sea, Caspian knows that soon the days will be unbearably short, and cold, and the bat will go back into hibernation, leaving him alone.
It’s the worst day of every year.
Stop being dramatic. At that Caspian snorts and rolls his eyes, though Ben is too far away to hear him, and he tosses his head before turning down a narrow alley, a shortcut to his sister’s house. Winter must be on everybody’s mind: the cobblestones are bustling like a beaver dam before hibernation, and the paint dances out of the way of a mule pulling a cart of apples, and ducks just in time to miss getting clocked by rough-cut boards lashed to a giant Belgian unicorn’s back. The stallion tosses a swear his way, and Caspian, laughing, turns to insult him back -
And swings his hindquarters bodily into another horse. “Bloody-” he begins, but luckily whatever creative noun he was about to use next dies in his mouth. There is a girl there, a stranger, who looks nearly of an age and of a height with him, but before he notices much about her he sees the paper, and the pen, and the ink. He squints, trying to see how much damage his collision has done.
“Terribly sorry,” he says, grimacing, and from somewhere in his head hears Benvolio sigh, exasperated, What now?
remember the first time we went to Granny’s house, after the funeral. We walked around that house and everything was still set the same as if she she had never left us, as if she would walk through that door any moment. Everywhere were objects she had collected throughout her years. Old items that go so far back in Foster family, in her own as well. She used to bustle about the kitchen despite the servants. She said only she made the best lemonade, she couldn't trust the chef to do it right. All of us agreed. She used to boss everyone around, always telling her opinion, even if it wasn't needed.
But then, the house had been so quiet. There was still her books on the shelves, still her plants in the garden, still her pen siting out on her desk. I remember finding it. My head and my shoulders went first before the rest of body followed. I didn't cry, I did not cry. We do not cry as Fosters, we do not weep. It is so unbecoming, but I could not stand anymore, could not stand where she used to. I grabbed her blanket, wrapped it around myself. Goddess, I could still smell her.
My mother found me.
She told me to act normal. Because I was. Because I could. Breathe. Sit up.
I did what she asked, there was no other choice, not as a Foster.
We walked back out towards the main room, before she stopped me, her face was so close to mine, as if testing to see if I would break. ‘Dont cause distress, don’t remind everyone of the loss. Do you understand, Isabella? Silence is the only protection we have over pain.’
I understood. And I started erasing her from conversation. I behaved like she never existed. The rest of my family did the same. We kept our smiles wide.
“Ugh!” I say muttered under my breath as someone crashes into me. My papers, ink, quill, all of it goes tumbling down. “You have got to be…” I start to say before I close my teeth (though it does little to stop the way I seethe behind my clenched jaw.) I compose myself, those steel eyes look down at the mess that had been created. I gather up my maps, the little ink that is left, and the undamaged quill. My rolls of maps are bent, I would have to redraw them, but at least nothing is damaged beyond repair.
I finally turn those storm grey eyes to my assailant. He looks rugged and worn, where I am shiny and spotless, like every night I am a slate wiped clean, and he wears the marks of life on his shoulders, on his face, as I study him closer. He is dusty books in a library, a sword hanging behind the door of a retired blacksmith. And I am a book never opened, a spine never cracked, silver chains dangling that are told to be beautiful, but ugly in the way they strip you of your freedom.
We could not be more different from one another.
“I offer my own apologies,” I say with more than just practiced politeness. It is said in such a way that it sounds almost natural, as if everyone in the world spoke the way we Fosters do. I don't smile, but my face appears friendly enough, despite the way it sits there with a chill. “Are you in a hurry?” I ask him. “Any ink land on you?” I say, my eyes looking down at his young chest and growing shoulders. He is young, my age about. I knew what I was doing in these strange back alleyways, but what was he doing here? “As a measure of good faith, why don't I offer you my name,” she says, extending her words like a handshake. “I’m Bella Foster.”
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@caspian
the salt is on the briar rose, the fog is in the fir trees.
Caspian doesn’t expect an apology at all, much less one as formal as what he receives. At first he thinks it’s sarcasm, but it didn’t sound that clipped or brittle, and he doesn’t get a good glance at her face as he helps gather up her belongings. He does catch a glimpse of sketched lines that seemed very familiar before they were both straightening again. Already the pace of the street has returned to normal around them, a constant stream in which they are only two new stones.
When his eyes do meet hers, there is something strangely familiar in the stormy gray. But moving on from there, the paint is certain he’s never seen her before; there is nothing he recognizes in her soft-stark color, or her dark mouth, or the shape her vowels take when she questions him. What he can already tell is she is money.
That might mean opportunity, if he hasn’t bungled it too badly already.
“Almost always,” he answers cheerily, then examines himself as best he can, glancing over his shoulder to check his rump, the point of the collision. His hindquarters are mottled and flecked, but only with the pale gray and deep blue they always are. “I think I escaped unscathed,” he says, glancing back at her. Caspian is about to tell her she has a spattering of ink at her throat, a shape reminiscent of petals, but she speaks again before he gets the chance.
He arches a brow at her. To him, names were cheap currency. He himself went by half a dozen, depending on who he was speaking to. But when she finishes with Bella Foster, the other brow rises too.
Foster is a name that does drip its weight in gold. Even if he hadn’t known it just from being Terrastellan, he would from the low conversations of the smugglers and traders, who liked to guess at the treasures the grand estate might hold.
“A pleasure,” he says, as though they are meeting in a ballroom and not a crooked alley with soot darkening stone walls. His gaze falls again to the rolled papers, to a hint of lines that could be roads and buildings. “I’m Caspian. Are you, ah, lost?”
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.”
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Caspian
the salt is on the briar rose, the fog is in the fir trees.
Every time her eyes meet his he feels that same nudge of recognition, of having seen that specific shade of slate-gray before - and not just the color but the way it measures him. Only he knows for certain he’s never met a Foster, never met any of the wealthy families of Terrastella at all - they liked to keep themselves separate, even at the festivals. In fact, his only brush with that kind of power (and more) had been a few months ago, when he’d turned to find Queen Marisol joining him on the cliffside above the turquoise sea.
He prefers his people, rough-edged and rowdy and with no idea how to weaponize manners. And why would they, when hooves and teeth and (sometimes) wits could settle any dispute?
Though Caspian was keen enough to see through her smile, the bit of humor in her question seems genuine. “No,” he replies, a grin tucked in the corner of his mouth. “Not unless you really really mean it.” When she repeats his name with an ellipses clear behind it, he makes no effort to respond. He could make up another name, could pretend to be something other than what he is - but why? So he lets the silence hang, just a moment like the trough of a wave, until she continues.
Now his interest turns keen, sharp as the lines of ink on the creamy parchment. “Easy enough to ignore roads you don’t travel,” he quips, watching her expand the map to include the alley they stand in. He squints, blue eyes traveling the lines, ticking off the ones he recognizes and wondering just why the nobles might suddenly care about the city’s less trafficked areas. He could think of a few miscreants who might not be happy such a map was in their hands - but who would be happy to have it themselves.
He could also think a few miscreants who were morally inhibited enough to consider kidnapping a Foster, a possibility that could become quite real depending on which districts she intended to explore alone.
It’s an unsettling thought, but one that gives him an idea.
“An admirable attitude,” he says sunnily, “but time is money, as they say. I know these back routes pretty well, myself - if you want a guide.” Caspian regards her through his long lashes, trying to look as boyishly convincing as he can.
e looks like the boys that come to our library and sit quietly in the corner, as if terrified to touch anything they shouldn't touch, they don't say anything, as if so nervous of saying the wrong thing. They are the street boys our family finds and they say, with those so generous smiles. “We will give you an education, we will give you a job.” And they take them in and let them stay in boarding houses. They pile pressure on them in the shapes of books and essays written on Foster paper. They say be successful so we can show the world how great we are. He reminds me of these boys and girls, these children, he reminds me of them before they were broken and the spirit of the streets still lived in their eyes.
A grin tries to hide on his face, but the sharpness of my steel gaze catches it. “Okay then, I won't say it,” I say with something like a smirk, although it does not reach my eyes. “Not until you deserve it.” There is something in the way I say it, that says this may be hard won, though not impossible.
I hold the papers open to him, eager to share the work I had done so far. Maybe, for the sake of my last name, I should be offended by what he says, but I only look at him from the corner of my eye. “Or rather, wish never existed,” I say honestly, bluntly. I rove my eyes over one last time before folding it closer to me.
“And what is your time worth, Caspian?” I ask him. I don't think of this as anything more than a business exchange, what else can it be? “You know what I need from you, what is it that you need from me?” I ask. There is plenty I can give him, plenty my family can give him. I have learned from being a Foster that there is so little in the world that is done for free. Good will is only done if good for both.
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Caspian
the salt is on the briar rose, the fog is in the fir trees.
Not until you deserve it, she says, and that is the first time he truly looks at her, beyond those eyes he thinks he knows, beyond the doe-soft dun skin and the last name Foster. His first reaction is to grin, but close on its heels is the thought: and what do you know of deserving anything?
Funny, how those born to riches always seemed to think they’d played a part in earning them.
Ah, but he’s in no mood for cynicism, at least not beyond what keeps him alive in fed. And he likes her well enough, and the gentle way she holds the parchment, and the smell of the fresh ink. He leans in when she offers the map up to him, his gaze curiously roving each street and alley, each neat rectangle of a shop or house. Briefly he wonders if this is more how Benvolio sees the world - in blocks and rows. Except, of course, the bat doesn’t ‘see’ much at all. “Oh,” he says offhand, the bridge of his nose almost touching hers as he finds the place they stand, and the white, unmapped space beyond, “I’m not so sure about that. They know they have their purposes.” Or else, he thinks wryly, they wouldn’t exist.
Caspian straightens when she folds the map away, nibbling an itch on his shoulder and watching a filly half a block away try to convince passersby to purchase her flowers. Ones she’d gathered for free, no doubt, possibly even from the Queen’s own gardens.
Bella’s question draws his attention back. He is well accustomed to bartering - not everyone could pay the same, after all, and she was certainly good for anything he might ask. But what to ask?
“How can I say, if I don’t know how much of it I’m spending?” He answers with a smile, an arched brow. “Speaking of time, I’m needed elsewhere -” (only his sister’s, and needed is a stretch) “how about we meet here, midday tomorrow?” Caspian taps a corner on her map where the lines end at a low-town pub. With her affirmation, he ducks his head in a mock bow. “Good day, Miss Foster,” he says, making no attempt to smooth his broad country vowels, and turns away to vanish down the busy cobblestone street.
catch something in his eye. What was it? Curiosity? Some other question lingering there. I stiffen my lips against it, whatever it is. It doesn't say much. My mother always says I am far more apt to frown than to smile. So different than Agatha or Imogen, who are much more prone to smiling, smiling those wide, beautiful Foster smiles.
I look down at my map, following his eyes with my own, over every street and every curve. “You think?” I question him, though I do not expect a response, I do not even know if I want a response from him. The nobles control so much, but there must be places out there that rail against it. It is an interesting thought. Maybe I will bring the attention of these alleyways to my granddad. He will not tell me out right, but Fosters are good at more than just reading words off of parchment. We are much too good at reading words written across faces. We have to be.
I fold the parchment away and watch Caspian for a moment. He seems…at ease here, like he blends in. I wonder if I could possibly manage the same. My ears move forward as he states his exit. “I think that sounds reasonable.” I manage to say around an empty smile. “You as well Caspian. I will see you tomorrow.” I dismiss him and turn around heading out the way I had come in. Even the way we leave is so vastly different. Different worlds Lawrence once said as we volunteered at some shelter for those who could not feed themselves. Different worlds, I think as we walk our separate ways, but that did not mean we could not bring them together in some thing mutually beneficial.
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Caspian
