"Come on, baby bird, it's time to wake up."
A hand at her shoulder, shaking her gently. The touch is tender, the voice is low and full of the kind of irritation borne of true affection.
"Just a few more minutes," she mumbles into her pillow, turning her face away from the light. The bed is so soft and deep, the blankets warm and the pillow cool against her cheek. Just a little longer, a little longer. A laugh from above her, then a gentle pinch on her cheek. She squawks her indignation, but opens her eyes and turns to the source.
Her sister sits on the edge of her bed, already dressed with her hair neatly bound in an elaborate collection of braids. She thinks of her own hair in despair--will it ever look so tidy? Perhaps this was a secret they told you after graduation. Or perhaps Lilliana just had a very good ladies' maid. Mother will have to help her find one, too. Graduation was close, and then she will ask. Just a little longer, a little longer.
"No more minutes, Aura. Our cousins will be here soon, and Papa is in such a state worry about it. Mother has been all morning calming him down. You know how he gets during the winter holidays." She did know, of course she knows. Papa worried so when it came to family. She tries to sit up, to clear her head of slumber's grasp, but she cannot. Something is holding her down, holding her in. The feathers in her mattress are just so soft, she thinks. Just a little longer, a little longer.
A great bell chimes from somewhere in the house: the grandfather clock in the foyer. Or is it in the sitting room? She finds she cannot remember. What does it look like? What color is the wood? She doesn't know. It seems urgent to her to know. She opens her mouth to speak, but there is no sound. Where is her sister?
"Oh," her sister says mournfully, and she finds that she cannot see her sister's face though she looks right at her. It's as if all the edges are lost, the shapes there but not quite right. She is peering at her sister through a dim glass--but isn't she right there? "No more time now, Birdie." No! She wants to cry out, to sit up. Why is her body so heavy, her voice so still in her throat? "No more time at all."
Just a little longer, a little longer...!
Aurelie's eyes opened slowly. She was still half in the grip of the dream, confused--wasn't she just at home?
No. She would never be home again.
"What an awful dream," she muttered to herself, rubbing her eyes and sitting up. More to assure herself that it was true than because she felt it with any conviction. Dreams could be cruel.
"Wassit?" There was a sleepy mumble from above her--Bernadetta must have heard her. "Y'dreamin', Aurelie? What about?”
”Nothing, Bernie. Go back to sleep.”
Perhaps it was the weather, sky hanging low over the red walls of the University dark with the promise of Achtus rain, that held her captive. As Aurelie went through her morning duties, she found herself trapped in the grip of it. The details were lost to her waking mind; all she had was a feeling of softness and content, something far away and dear. Her every step was weighted with it. The halls were mostly empty of students, and it felt like the space filled with the soft shuffling of passive voices. Scraps of scraps that echoed through them. She walked through it in a haze.
Today she was cleaning classrooms, an early start on preparing them for the return of students in the new year. The work wasn’t hard, but it was exhausting, as they went through each room one by one--this one had desks that needed scrubbing of a rude message written on the edge, this one (clearly mostly occupied by lower-year students) sticky with seasons of sweets. An experiment gone wrong and left to linger in some abandoned closet. The work kept her hands busy, and soothed her mind. No time for idle contemplations.
“What do you think this is?” Aurelie looked up from the particularly stubborn spot of something on a chair to see Bernie holding something mysterious, delicate and expensive-looking. Bernie never could keep her hands to herself--it was one of her least charming qualities. Aurelie squinted at it from where she crouched on the floor, but shook her head.
”I haven’t any idea, Bernie--but it looks breakable. Be careful with it.” Her roommate snorted, tossing dark curls over one shoulder dismissively. She was always telling Aurelie that she worried too much; Aurelie was always telling her that she was very often right.
“Yes, Matron.” Aurelie winced. She hated it when Bernadetta called her that. Still, Bernadetta made to put the object back on the shelf, though she had her body angled not to the shelf but to Aurelie while she did so. “Honestly, Aurelie, I’m not a child! I won’t break it, I just wanted to look--” Before Aurelie could cry out, the great fragile thing slipped from Bernadetta’s careless grasp, falling to the floor and shattering in a great explosion of glass and noise. The blood drained from her roommate’s face. Immediately, there were heavy footsteps in the hall--their real matron, coming to investigate.
Maybe if Aurelie hadn’t been so trapped in daydreams, she would have done what Bernadetta did and scarpered off to a different room. Or, more likely, she could have caught the dark-haired passive and made her stay, to explain to whatever Patron or Matron that came what had happened. Aurelie did neither of these things. Instead, she remained to try to gather the pieces together. So when the Matron did appear, a tall and weedy woman who had always reminded Aurelie of her least favorite aunt, she was the only one to be found.
“What have you done?” Aurelie winced, and though she opened her mouth to explain, the chance never came. “You moony little twit--do you know how valuable a tool that was? What were you thinking even touching it?”
It wasn’t that Aurelie had never been yelled at before--she had been at Brunnhold a full eight years now, she had been scolded far more harshly than this. But wrapped as she was in the warm cocoon of the dream, that safety and security of it, the girl felt suddenly overwhelmed. The protests were given up as she was marched out to the hallway. It wasn’t even her fault the thing broke--but did it matter? Someone had to be at fault, and she was there. A great despair threatened to swallow her up as the Matron carried on, and Aurelie found herself doing something she had not done in many years--she burst into tears. Great, ugly wracking sobs that twisted her up and crumpled her face, red as her hair. If anyone could hear her--good. Let them. She just didn’t care anymore.