[Closed] Just the Way You Were Bred

[Tom Cooke]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel • Dejai Point

Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720

Both of Cerise’s dark brows raised sharply, and his grin – in spite of everything – broadened.

“Your plus one,” he repeated, almost a laugh, shifting his shoulders with another slightly pained grunt. Sish’s little snout was sharp; he winced, trying to get her head away from his ear to no avail. There was a funny sort of pause; he glanced back up at Cerise, wondering if she’d meant to say something else.

Another pause, and it slipped away. Well, she said, then – I suppose I ought to do that, haltingly, standing a moment more with a little furrow between her dark brows.

One of Sish’s feathered wings spread suddenly, and one of her paws nearly slipped in his scarf. He felt the claw in his skin this time. He cursed again, shoulder jerking; Sish’s other wing spread out, providing him with a face full of golden feathers. For a moment, he couldn’t see. Then he heard a click, and when Sish had rearranged her golden limbs over his shoulders, the room was empty except for the elegant, punctured furniture. He caught a flicker of movement and a click: the bedroom door shutting.

Sish chittered in his ear. He found himself sitting alone in the room with nothing but his thoughts, and Cerise getting ready just a thin wall over.

It wasn’t, he thought, reaching up and trying to arrange Sish’s claws a little less painfully – it wasn’t like he hadn’t spent his entire boyhood, and more besides, in a ladies’ changing room, helping touch up faces and hair and hunt for lacy shapeless things draped haphazardly across the backs of chairs and in piles. It wasn’t him who had so many rules about this shit. It wasn’t him who knew how fami – golly fami, or even normal fami – were supposed to act.

Maybe it was not knowing where the line was that made it so damned strange; he hadn’t a clue what Anatole would’ve done.

Why had she stood there for that few seconds, looking at him like she wasn’t sure what to do? Was he supposed to have left already, taken the cue? Had that been the cue?

It was a while. He thought there might have been running water, at one point. He listened to what sounded like a shuffling noise; he heard what he thought was the rustle of cloth, though he wasn’t sure, with Sish chittering so. She’d twisted halfway round, digging into his shoulder to steady herself as she preened her wing-feathers. A damp feather brushed his face. The smell was like a dockside alleyway every time her jaws parted. There were wet clacking noises.

Eventually, it was uiet, except for a few more shuffling noises. Then he heard a huff. Then a grunt, then a curse, then a more vivid curse. He stared at the smooth wood of the bedroom door a moment, listening to a thump and another huff.

He winced; he thought he could feel it pulling at his own scalp. He frowned, thinking of that lopsided pile of braid. It was a strange, soft feeling again, one he couldn’t put his finger on, one he didn’t much like.

There was a clack like a brush being set down roughly.

He wasn’t sure why he did it. It didn’t take much urging to get Sish off his shoulders; she was already climbing the back of the chair. He heard her sharpening her claws against the upholstery behind him, but he couldn’t bring himself to think about the bill.

He froze at the door, tight throat, something heavy at the bottom of his stomach. He knocked, then, lightly. “May I – come in, Cerise?”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel, Dejai Point
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

The door clicked shut behind her, and then it was just Cerise and her preparations and her thoughts.

Glad at least someone finds me amusing, she had almost said. Glad at least someone thinks I'm joking—she'd come so near to saying something of the truth of it, and she'd already said too much. The differences, the weird little flashes of another person entirely, put her at ease and set her on edge in too many ways at once.

The Perceptivist was not the Clairvoyant; the Perceptivist would not have been sitting in a chair in her Thul Ka hotel suite letting her miraan crawl all over him. But how different was the Clairvoyant, really? Not that different, in so many ways. Very, in others.

None of the difference or similarities mattered now. Now, Cerise had to get ready to go to a party where she would see relatives that hadn't seen her since she was barely out of the nursery. She wasn't Mama. She could never be Mama. But there was a little of her inside somewhere, wasn't there? So she'd have to try to find whatever little scrap of it there was and show it to them. Somehow, Cerise thought sourly, she didn't think a mutual interest in Mircalla would quite cut it.

Luckily, Diana had more foresight than Cerise had herself in these matters. Cerise didn't think that she'd ever thank her for it; she couldn't imagine it being well-received. It wasn't like her stepmother had chosen the items herself, but she'd at least told a maid to remind her to pack something... Nicer. And she had, under complaints and duress. That last weekend had been strange—but she had brought a dress she liked at least. And she could walk in it, which mattered, as they were going to be traveling on foot the whole way over.

No, she didn't think Diana would have chosen this dress for her. It had altogether too many sharp edges and angles over the rust-red of it; Cerise thought it made her look just the littlest bit dangerous. Which was why she liked it, and why she was so sure her stepmother would not. Putting it on after washing her face and other key areas in the washroom, she wondered if that was so.

There were no sounds of distress from the other room originating from man or miraan. That wasn't much of a relief. She couldn't have said why. Perhaps she'd expected to get to go charging out there to rescue one or the both of them from each other, and use that as the reason why she looked the way she did. Now, she thought grimly as she turned to look at herself in the mirror, she had nothing to blame but her own innate talents.

The hair was her real problem. She had slept with it braided; she'd been told that would keep it neat, but she must have done it wrong because now it was worse. Her fussing with it over the course of the day hadn't helped matters at all; it had gone from a braid to a snarl. Getting washed and dressed had already taken her most of half an hour. There wasn't any time to fuss about with her hair. Cerise tried to undo a braid; it did not want to be undone. She pulled again, harder.

That hurt; she swore, loudly and colorfully. Then, remembering who was on the other side of the door, more quietly but worse. Which one of them had given her this accursed mess? Both, she thought; no one parent's powers alone could have done this to her. Sometimes she thought to try her hand at doing it herself, in the chignon styles she'd seen portraits of Mama wear—the exercise had always proven to be futile. A little of Mama in her—but only a very little.

After a good bit of tugging and swearing, she'd gotten some of it free—but not all of it. Frustration welled up hot and sharp in her breast, pressed at her eyes. This stupid party; her stupid desire to impress people who likely didn't care about her at all except in the ways she was like Mama. Which were few; nobody would ever accuse Cerise Vauquelin of being the most beautiful woman in the world. Only the one most like herself, and that was hardly a compliment.

She slammed the brush down in frustration, curling her stocking-covered toes against the floor. She didn't know how to do this. She had never known how to do this; it rarely mattered. The knock at the door, light as it was, made her jump nearly out of her skin. She whirled away from the borrowed vanity, glaring at it. "I'm decent, if that's what you're asking," she spat.

"Come in, if you must," she growled, loud enough to be heard, and then turned back to the mirror. What could he possibly want? To spectate? What did he know about it anyway? He didn't have to—to deal with this.

"Has Sish done something?" Cerise turned, suspicious. "Is she doing something right now?"

[Tom Cooke]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel • Dejai Point

Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720

It wasn’t long ‘til Cerise’s voice came sharp through the door. Floods, but he needed a smoke, or a drink, or something. His hand hovered, knuckles a half-inch away from the door; it dropped hesitantly, then twitched, then rose to the doorknob, fingertips pausing on the ornate-carved wood. That wasn’t what I was asking, he wanted to protest, but it was only half true.

Come in, she growled, if you must.

He didn’t hesitate this time. If all this had taught him anything, it was that the only thing worse than doing a stupid thing was doing a stupid thing halfway. He turned the knob and poked his head through the door.

Cerise was just turning to look at him. “Sish?” His eyebrows raised. “No, no,” and he half-looked over his shoulder, just long enough to see a flash of gold. There were loud pops as she sank her claws into more upholstery. “Well, she’s doing something now; she’s always doing something. But no, that’s not what I…”

He looked back at Cerise. He’d never seen her in a dress like this; most of the times he’d seen her, she’d been in uniform, barring the disaster of the seven. Before, he’d’ve said he couldn’t’ve pictured it. He didn’t have to. His eyes flicked over it, across the imperious-high collar, the faintly pointed seams of the shoulders, the sharp angles of the lapels on the overdress, down the jagged asymmetric sweep of the skirt.

“That – suits you,” he blurted out before he could stop himself. “Very well.” He cleared his throat, looking back up to meet her eye.

She looked flustered; he’d’ve sworn there was a little red around her eyes, if he hadn’t known better. A waterfall of frizzy black curls tumbled over one shoulder, and the rest of her hair was in a snarl. It had been a braid at one point; you could still see the suggestion of a pattern. But it was like a knot somebody’d pulled the wrong loop on. Worse, the bundle of it was hanging off her head just a little, just enough to drag.

He shot a glance down at the vanity, at the brush still with black wisps tangled up in the tines. He thought briefly of that lock of hair in the box. Funny, all that. He’d heard the name Maria d’Alessi, he thought, but not in the context of Anatole, and not in the context of opera, either; he wasn’t sure where he’d heard it, now, except that he was sure he had, and it was something he ought to be able to remember.

But there weren’t any specs of her in the study, or anywhere in the house; except sometimes one would fall out of an old book of Heshath poetry, or one of Anatole’s lawbooks.

It was only briefly, with Cerise sitting across the room from him, all narrow sharp face and pale grey eyes, feet in nothing but stockings at the hem of that magnificent dress. He looked at the braid again and felt something he couldn’t place, something soft and very painful.

“I can help with that,” he said, “if you want.”

Somebody’d better, he thought but didn’t say. He thought of her fixing it herself – likely, he thought now with dawning understanding, just hiding the knot and piling the rest up with it. Standing around at some gallery opening party in front of half her fami with what might’ve been an anchor on her head.

There was a sound like tearing fabric in the room behind him, but he didn’t much care. Leaving the door open, he took another step in. He glanced round for the first time at the bedroom. It was just a lass’ bedroom; it wasn’t so strange after all, down to the rumpling and the pinprick holes in the pillowcases. There was a package on the bed.

He thought he’d smile or make a joke, put something cheery on his face; he felt oddly earnest instead. “Trust me?” He thought saying it like that wasn’t such a good idea, all in all; experience had taught him she’d do just the opposite.

But he came up a little past caprising range, eying what was left of the braid. Worse came to worst, they’d – well, he knew what they’d have to do, if it was that bad. It didn’t seem that bad, though, and he could at least say he wouldn’t make it any tighter.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel, Dejai Point
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

The sound of shredding upholstery followed her father through the door. Cerise didn't bother to crane her neck to see the precise nature of Sish's crimes against furniture around her father's presence in her doorway. There was surely something Cerise could do to make her—stop doing that, she supposed. Not everyone who kept a miraan had resigned themselves to a life of fabrics with holes in them, surely. The idea had just never seemed important enough to not slip her mind when she was in a position to properly consider it.

So not Sish, then. Cerise's head hurt, from all the pulling on it, in that dull, aching way she was growing accustomed to. She never thought she'd miss Anaxi weather in Loshis, but at least it wasn't hot. And in Roalis, in Yaris? It was hot then, but not so... Not so like this. Mugroba, or at least Thul'Amat and environs, was very lovely, and she couldn't wait to leave.

For a moment he was staring at her. The wreck of her hair, most likely. She was, in fact, standing in front of a mirror—she knew it was a wreck. Half snarl, half chaos. None of it right. Sometimes she wished very fervently she could cut it all off. She could. Nothing stopped her that she could identify clearly. Emiel liked it, she told herself; that didn't explain why she hadn't cut it before they met, or any time in the last year. It would be something of a scandal, how short she wanted to go. That didn't explain it either; so was everything else she ever did, at least if it made her happy in any way.

Cerise blinked, and then frowned. "I think so too," she said instead of "thank you" or anything more closely resembling accepting the compliment. It was a strange compliment—not that the dress didn't suit her. It did, she liked it. She rarely paid much attention to what she wore, but she liked this one. It was the source of the compliment that confused her.

And she still didn't know what he had come in here for. Not to tell her she looked nice in her dress. At least she didn't think so. That could, for one thing, have waited until she'd come back out. The need was certainly not dire enough to come in here from the other room. She leaned against the vanity, still in her stockings, still thinking about how she'd manage the rest of it.

She'd unbalanced the whole thing, and it was pulling on the back of her head. She was too old to wear it down, even if she could manage to get it untangled enough to do so. That was only for young girls—Cerise was very nearly twenty. An adult, or close enough to it. Unfortunately.

"No." Her answer was swift and startled, accompanied by a sharpening of her expression. Confusion on her face that looked, as it usually did, very much like anger. Help? How? It wasn't as if—her parents were fashionable people, she supposed, as much as one's parents could be. But Cerise sincerely doubted that extended to practical experience with the dressing of a young woman's hair.

Although.

Although, he couldn't possibly be any worse at it than she was. And she couldn't see the back of her head. She had the strangest urge to step away when her father stepped forward. She held still, didn't so much as flinch, but the desire had been there and she didn't quite know why. The sincerity, she thought, on that face too much like hers, offering to help her with her hair. Asking for her trust.

"No, I don't," she said, still frowning. Her hand uncurled from around the handle of the brush on the vanity. "But I suppose you can't possibly be worse at it than I am." The joke rankled a little at her pride, but it was true. She tried not to pretend to be something she wasn't. Skilled with the management of her own appearance included.

"I have scissors," she added a little more cheerfully, looking away from her father and the mirror both. "If we should need them."

[Tom Cooke]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel • Dejai Point

Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720

The no right off, he’d expected. He wasn’t sure if it was to the question of whether she trusted him, or whether she’d let him help at all. Both, he reckoned. The look in her pale grey eyes, the angry arc of her eyebrows, told him not to come closer. But he couldn’t back up, couldn’t turn around, either.

It was utterly terrifying, how he couldn’t seem to turn away. This was the godsdamned thing, wasn’t it? This was the strange, awful thing about it. Where did the responsibility begin? Where did it end?

But she’d looked as startled as she had pissed, he realized; when she spoke again, she let go of the brush.

Hesitantly, he came a bit closer. Scissors, she’d said, rather matter-of-factly. He raised both his brows at her, but he didn’t say anything.

He might’ve hesitated more. Something felt wrong about closing the distance, about –

He might’ve, but he didn’t, because there was nothing to it. You give me a job, he thought, I do it. “C’mon, sit. And don’t underestimate me,” he added, half tongue-in-cheek, raising one eyebrow at her sharply.

Don’t underestimate what, he realized belatedly, that he could be worse at it than her? He made a face.

He cast about, finding a small chair at the desk across the room; he dragged it over behind her matter-of-factly and lowered himself into it with some relief. It wasn’t very tall, or maybe it was the couple of inches Cerise had on him; he shifted, tucking one leg up underneath him.

He blinked at the mess of her hair first, not quite daring to look over her shoulder at the mirror. He reached into his satchel, fumbling out his glasses and setting them on his nose, squinting through them.

One last moment of hesitation; it was - strange, being this close. But he had a job to do, and he ran his fingertips lightly over the worst of the knot. It’d been like this for a while, getting tighter and tighter while the rest was falling out of place, particularly a handful of loops that were dangling at the nape of her neck now.

Floods, he wanted to ask, what were you thinking, reaching for that brush? The thought of Cerise dragging a brush through this – and none too gently, if he knew her – was painful.

There was only one knot, really, the size of the tip of his thumb, and it wasn’t so bad he couldn’t still see where it looped. Gently and carefully, trying hard not to think about anything at all, he began teasing it out.

“I know a little about braids, though I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me. I don’t have enough to braid myself, anymore.” He was steady-handed as he could be, but he didn’t think it was painless; he heard her grunt sharply once and stiffen, and what he could see of her jaw was set square as a safe. “Can you picture me with long hair? Go ahead, laugh. Or, uh, keep still, actually.”

Once, he looked over her shoulder at the vanity. He could see their faces in the corner of his eye in the mirror, the glint of his glasses. There was a pair of gloves in the same rust-red as the dress, black-embroidered along the seams, but no jewelry or ornaments that he could see.

He’d never seen a golly lady at an Uptown party with her hair down. You didn’t, unless you were a lass. He thought Cerise must know how to – but then… He turned it over in his head. She was nineteen, he remembered. That wasn’t too far off from being a lass, but it was just far enough. And she had admitted herself, over and over, that she didn't know what to do; he just hadn't been listening.

Godsdamn, but he really needed that drink. Could she go with it down? He thought of her and her sharp tongue earlier, talking about how it was fami that cared the most. I thought you didn't care what anyone thought, he might have said, if he'd been too mung to know better.

He knew a baker’s dozen ways to braid hair, some of which he knew were unmistakably natt; more than a little of what he knew was more fit for a tumblehut than a gallery opening. But a braid was a braid, wasn’t it?

“It looks like we won’t need the scissors,” he said. “Not that you seemed too bothered by the prospect.” Careful not to disturb the natural fall of the curls, or what was left of it, he separated and smoothed out the bands of the old braid with his hands.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel, Dejai Point
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

Cerise wanted to say no, to not sit down, out of some stubborn instinct to not do what she was told simply because she was told to do it. She leveled a look at her father and sat. The velvet-covered stool in front of the vanity brought her in line with her own reflection; Cerise looked at her own face and nowhere else. ”I wouldn’t dream of it.” She folded her hands sharply on her knees.

She didn’t turn her head to look when she heard him shuffling around to get a chair. The legs scraped against the floor and then stopped. Just don’t think about it, she told herself. Just don’t think about the sheer impossible strangeness of this, her father offering to—help her with her hair. This wasn’t the sort of thing fathers did, as far as she knew. Not hers, certainly. And here they were.

They also didn’t generally offer to take their school-aged daughters to watch a fight, either. Or forget about their mothers entirely. So really, the two of them were covering a lot of uncharted territory.

It was easier to think about it like that than to think about anything else. She couldn’t actually remember the last time her father had so much put a hand on the top of her head. Before she’d started school, more than likely. After all, she’d gotten to tall for it rather quickly. Too lots of things, she supposed.

She still nearly flinched when she could see him reach out a hand in the mirror. Because the knot was heavy and her head hurt. She’d been confident in her assessment that he couldn’t possibly be worse than she was with this, but that was a rather low bar. They could be equally talented. She would at least not do herself the indignity of whining about it. Although it did hurt, more than when she did it despite him being more gentle than she ever was. She swallowed.

Her shoulders were square and steady, though, and she didn’t pull away. She didn’t laugh, but she did raise her eyebrows at him in the mirror. ”Plaited it often, did you?” She couldn’t picture it. Not the long hair (thankfully) and not the braiding either. Why on Vita, she was tempted to demand, do you know the first thing about dressing hair? And not anything else?

”There’s quite a lot of it,” she said dryly, and only met her own eyes. She didn’t look over her shoulder, though she did make a face for his benefit, just in case. ”Plenty to spare. Alas, I’m told no man would have a woman with short hair. And you know how deeply this concerns me.”

Stupid.

”But I’m glad to hear it. That it isn’t so dire.” She did put more effort than it seemed into the upkeep; she wasn’t about to mention that, but it was true. Just not usually… At home, she didn’t often feel such a need to keep the bulk of it from touching the back of her neck. A tail was easy. Even she could do that. Mostly.

With the knot undone, the weight was easier and more difficult to bear. The back of her neck itched. She held her shoulders still and resisted the urge to stand up or turn around. ”Thank you,” she mumbled, quietly enough she almost hoped he couldn’t hear.

[Tom Cooke]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel, Dejai Point

Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720

He snorted. He was still combing out the last of the braid with his fingers when she spoke again.

He made the mistake of looking up over her shoulder then, at the mirror. At his face just over her shoulder, or half of it, and – hers. She made a funny face, one that was a little too familiar for comfort. He found a smile cracking across his face. He could see it in the corner of his eye, behind hers.

Floods, but that was strange.

He wasn’t sure what expression he should’ve had, to that. The wry smile was still there, but there was a little furrow in his brow. It looked like worry, maybe. He half expected Anatole to open up his mouth and say something, only he wasn’t sure what, and Anatole’s mouth stayed closed, just like his.

Anatole’s eyes were the strangest part; he’d never seen this look in them. Strange, what tricks another man’s face played. Holdovers from old expressions, he supposed, just like the sneers.

She was looking straight at her own reflection, and he was looking at hers. He looked away then; he knew that when you looked at somebody’s reflection, yours was looking at them.

Cerise mumbled something under her breath. He thought he knew what it sounded like. His hand came away from her curls for a moment; it hesitated, then – for just a moment – settled on her shoulder and squeezed.

He shifted in his seat, hid his face behind her. “And whatever would you and Emiel do,” he went on, casual and wry as you like, as if nothing else had been said. Floods, but he hoped it’d take the attention away from that. What the hell? “No smug faces to rearrange? No satisfying crunch of a suitor’s fresh Brunnhold nose under the knuckles?” No bail to pay, he thought, grunting.

It reminded him of Dee’s, almost. It’d all gone, mostly, except for some wispy strands, by the time he was twelve; that was when she’d taken to her hairpieces. But he’d learned to braid on it. It also reminded him of –

He swallowed tightly, but the feeling passed. It was hard to think on much of anything, sitting here, except what the hell they were going to do. What the hell he was going to do, he thought wryly, though he’d only offered to take out the braid.

“I don’t know what’s, uh, in fashion.” He remembered doing up Josie’s hair a couple of weeks before her wedding, suddenly; it’d been the last time he’d done it, that long, wheat-colored plait down her back. Elaborate Bastian braids had been what all the girls in Cantile wanted in those days, to the rage of their mothers.

He scratched his jaw, then started a fishtail a little ways up, keeping a loose grip so as not to pull, letting the curls spill out where they would. He tried to think what he’d seen Uptown. It was frizzy where the old braid had pulled at it, but he thought of some of the buns he’d seen on fashionable ladies, puffed and loose at the edges.

He let that ghost of a braid unwind for now, nodding and easing back.

“I can at least get it up off the back of your neck like that,” he said, “and maybe… I could do a sort of braided chignon, if you had something to pin it with?” He’d never done one; it wasn’t something a respectable nattle would’ve had, for she’d’ve been putting on airs. But he'd done buns aplenty, and he could try.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel, Dejai Point
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

With her eyes so firmly fixed on her own reflection, she could have missed the shifting of her father’s expression behind her. Could have, but didn’t. Not quite. She didn’t catch what it was, but she saw it there at the edge of her vision.

No, she didn’t know what it was. Just that she hadn’t seen it in her memory. And she didn’t understand what she’d done to earn it now.

Clocking bizarre, the whole lot of it. Even her—her and her mumbled gratitude, the words scraping out of her mouth like she couldn’t stop them or say them. Perpetuating the atmosphere they’d found themselves in, underscored by the pop of fabric from the much-abused chair in the other room. The hand on her shoulder didn’t make her jump. Just something inside her felt jagged for just that moment; he took it away soon enough anyway, and that was that on that subject.

She might have been more grateful for the graceful stepping-around of anything else she’d said, except that “Emiel” from her father’s mouth made all her muscles tense. She was so stupid, to have said it at all. If this was all some kind of—of game? But she didn’t think it was; that was more effort and attention than he’d paid her as far back as she could clearly remember. Couldn’t organize some sort of grand plot against her if you didn’t care, largely, what she did from-day-to-day.

”Su—Lady! Do you mean that…? Please, never even—ugh. Repulsive.” Cerise groaned, focused on the part she could, at least, think about. The idea of Lionel McAllister looking to, ugh, court her in any meaningful way made her stomach turn. He was not, she was absolutely certain, interested in her in that way. One could argue that the way in which she was disgustingly certain he was interested was related, but it certainly wasn't the same. Nobody was interested in her like that. She wasn't the type. ”Haven’t you been to my school? There are smug faces everywhere. I’m sure we—I could manage.”

She hadn’t meant to imply that—she had supposed, she realized with a sick kind of foolishness, she had thought to imply that it was a one-time situation. Not an ongoing association. She could, still. She would. She should. Or, she could just not mention it at all, and then she wouldn’t have to lie or think about how she’d told the truth too much all at once. Anyway, maybe that was the truth of it anyway. She didn’t want to have expectations. She wouldn’t.

She almost stood, to see what she could do, now that the braid was out. He hadn’t moved, and she was—curious. That was all. She just wanted to know what on Vita her father had in mind when he pulled over that chair. Something simple was certainly in her abilities—even she could fill her hair with pins to make it stay in place for a few hours. Possibly. Probably. Surely she could do that much.

”Do you mean to tell me that keeping up with the changing tides of young women’s fancy isn’t part of your day-to-day? For shame. I don’t know either,” she added, her face adding the “obviously” to the end of the sentence for her.

The jagged feeling wouldn’t go away. If anything, it got worse when he started. She couldn’t see what he was doing; she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Stop, she almost said; I’ll just pull it up like I always do. It won’t be fashionable, or proper, but neither am I. That felt childish; staying still felt childish too. Just what adult was it, then, that she hoped her mother’s family would see?

”There’s pins just there.” Cerise gestured to a box on the vanity, trying very hard not to think about her father saying the word “chignon”. It was almost as bad as “Emiel”. Almost. ”You don’t have to. It’s just going to fall back out again, anyway. It always does.”

[Tom Cooke]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel, Dejai Point

Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720

He’d smiled a secret little smile, tickled by that exasperated groan; he wasn’t sure why. That was another thing about this: it seemed like every other word out of his mouth embarrassed the hell out of her, like – like, he supposed, a da’s would. In a funny, moony sort of way, it made him want to take the piss, like that was his qalqa, making her huff and roll her eyes like he was a kenser in an Uptown parlor. Like he –

He’d swallowed tightly, trying to put that feeling somewhere he couldn’t reach. Kick it underneath the carpet of his soul, maybe. How it hurt, most of all, wanting something he couldn’t name.

Of Emiel, she’d said a conspicuous – if unsurprising – nothing. We, she’d said, and then I. He nodded, letting it go. Smug faces everywhere, she said, like she was joking.

You’ll tell me, he wanted to ask. Won’t you? You’ll come to me, if you need anything, if either of you need anything. If that happens again, and if you – if you’re going to do this, if you’re really going to do this, and I know a little something about folk who’ve done shit like this, this won’t be the worst of it; this won’t even be the beginning – He kept his lips pressed thin, kept separating out small bands of her hair, kept his mind on having steady hands. The tide passed; he felt a few tense muscles in his back relax.

He peeked over her shoulder, watching her make a face. "Well," he said, smiling a little again, "maybe you'll be a trendsetter, eh?"

Then: you don’t have to, she said.

Silently, he shifted, reaching past her for the box. It was still strange, moving round her in such close quarters. He wondered if this was as strange for her as it was for him. He thought of the younger one – Eleanor – at his bedside then, standing at sheepish attention before Diana told her to sit; he wondered, brow furrowing, what kind of da Anatole had been.

Too much thinking about das and bochi and the like; fit to give him leiraflesh.

With the box sitting open on his knee, he took out a few bobby pins. “Why, only a moment ago,” he murmured, “you said you wouldn’t dream of underestimating me.” He mock-huffed.

Biting one pin and holding another between two fingers, he started again at the fishtail, this time a little further up and to the side on her scalp. It took a while. Separating out the strands had been the hardest part; he was careful not to pull, the same as he was careful to keep track of which strand he was holding and not knot it up with another. The humidity made it harder. It didn’t seem painful, which was, at least, the most important part.

At the end of the braid, he paused a moment, thinking how to do it. The braid was gathered so that it would curve around naturally at the nape of her neck; experimentally, handling it as carefully and loosely as he had the bands, he made to wrap it round one way. Then, tilting his head, he tried another. Nodding, he looped it that way, then took out one of the pins to secure it on one side, then another.

Still holding it in place, he looked down at the box and raised his brows.

There were a few more ornate pins, though not as many as he’d seen in Diana’s things. One of them was silver and dotted with blue gems; he wondered where it’d come from. None of them looked like they went with the dress, but one of them – a simple swirl of gold – made him think of Sish’s feathers. Without hesitating, he took it out, slid it into place, pinned the last of the hair around it, and eased back.

“I think that’ll hold,” he said. “How does it feel? It shouldn’t hurt.”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Dzeqar’ameh Hotel, Dejai Point
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

Cerise had the distinct and uncanny feeling she was being teased. Not the sort of teasing that was meant to make her truly angry, either. They had moved on from smug, broken faces—from her very deliberate non-mention of just who it was who had done the more egregious breaking of faces recently—without so much as a blink. Cerise wouldn't have seen it if he had, but she didn't think... There was a surprising sort of mercy in that. She almost felt guilty.

Imagine that, feeling guilt for doing the smart thing for once and not continuing to speak out of impulse. That at least turned her guilt into a scowl. The scowl in turn became a roll of her eyes at the idea of being any kind of trendsetter. He'd not pulled away, even when she said he could just leave it. Just reached around her for the box. Apart from sharing an umbrella, this was the closest she thought they had been since she was a little girl. In terms of proximity, of course. The ghost of a hand was still on her shoulder; her skin itched.

"Oh yes, I'm so certain that come next season everyone in Thul Ka will have a miraan on their shoulders. None so lovely as our Sish of course." There was a louder, more wince-inducing sound of threads snapping from the other room. "On the upshot, this may make it easier for me to get jackets with properly reinforced shoulders."

"And I'm not saying you can't, although I reserve judgement on this point, I'm saying you don't have to."

Obligated or not, there he was. Doing whatever it was he was doing to her hair back there. Certainly more careful than anything she'd ever done to it. Was it Mama? She couldn't imagine that. But she couldn't imagine a lot of things, when it came to Mama. Sometimes she was certain that she couldn't even actually remember her face or voice at all, and she just thought she did because other people could and told her about it. So how would she know anything about what her parents' relationship had been like?

Diana's face, composure slipping away, swam up from out of her mind. That, she told herself fiercely, was different. Diana was not her mother. She knew that very well.

The whole process seemed to take an age. They were well on fashionably late at this point. She had said there was a lot of hair to deal with, hadn't she? Nobody could say she lied there. For a moment, she felt him pause and she thought he was done. She also thought it was crooked if so, because she could feel it sort of following the line of her head. That was more than she could manage herself; the acknowledgement was begrudging even inside the safety of her own head.

He wasn't done, though. Instead he moved it around, this way and then that; she caught him tilting his head looking at in the mirror. She raised her eyebrows. All of this was sort of embarrassing in a way she couldn't define. Having one of the maids at home do her hair before some dreadful political something or another during the breaks didn't feel so. Then where were pins—optimistically few, unless her problem was placement and not quantity, which seemed entirely possible.

She could see him looking at the box on the vanity, too. There weren't really many options. Cerise didn't have much by way of decorative items to begin with; the nicer ones she had left behind. None of them went with what she was wearing at all. The one he reached for was gold; she liked it because she thought of the swirl of Sish's tail when she looked at it.

"I'm going to have to change my jewelry," she said at first, instead of an answer to the question. She lifted a hand; two silver bracelets clinked together quietly. she had earrings on, as well; those had silver backs, as well. She hadn't any others, though, not being much disposed to jewelry—they were, at least, garnets of a shade that matched the dress, little drops of blood. The silver setting she could do nothing about, but she was away from home. That would have to be good enough.

Cerise tilted her head experimentally; her expectations were low. It held, and it pulled no more than she would have expected it to. Less, in fact. It didn't hurt, after all. She had no idea of the sartorial appeal—but none of it was on the back of her neck, and she at least didn't look like she'd dragged it through a raspberry thicket she had imported for the purpose.

"It will do." Her voice was lofty, but she tilted her head one more time for good measure. It really was much better than she could have done. Cerise unclasped the bracelets and set them on the vanity; she had nothing, really, to replace them with. So she would just have to do without. That was fine—she wasn't much for it, anyway.

"Let's rescue the chair from the Destroyer of Hours, shall we? Her new audience awaits." Cerise stood and turned to look down her narrow nose at her father. Her mouth pulled into a sharp little smile, just for an instant.