Ophus 2709 | Passive Dorm
Aurelie Steerpike hadn't cried when she was gated.
She hadn't cried when she failed the test, hadn't cried when they'd branded her arm, an indelible mark of her own deficiency that would follow her to the end of her days. She hadn't cried when they'd shown her the dorm where she was to live, or given her that first uniform, pale passive blue, too big for her but she would grow into it. Or she wouldn't--who was to say? If her new caretakers had been concerned at her lack of tears, they didn't show it. Likely they found it a relief. One less child to wrangle--at least this one behaved. They'd shuffled her in with the other girls, small and afraid and lonely. She hadn't cried then, either, small face stony and pale.
Nor had she cried when an older woman, trying to be kind, had put her hands on her thin shoulders and tried to coax, in as gentle a tone as possible, some sort of feeling from her. Try as they might, Aurelie Steerpike would not cry. Instead she sat, face set and small mouth a firm line, fist curled around the silver necklace at her throat. Other girls around her cried in the night, for their parents, for their nurses--for anyone, to come to them, to comfort them. Aurelie thought that the older women must have loved these children more than children like her, and perhaps she was right. A child that cries can be comforted and loved--but how do you comfort a child who is dry-eyed and quiet? Aurelie had never been an easy child to love. She was too quiet, too small, too independent but lacking in grace. It was no surprise that these strangers found her no more so than her own parents.
It was only later, when she was sure she wouldn't be heard, that Aurelie let the smallest of sobs escape her. She wasn't sad for being passive, though she would be when she understood what was denied to her. Lying there in her dormitory bed, surrounded by the soft breathing of strangers, Aurelie Steerpike mourned only for her sister, who might never see her again. Would Lilliana, dazzling Lilliana, miss her sister? Aurelie wasn't sure, and it made her feel small and afraid. More than the brand, though her arm still stung. More than anything she had been told. More than the whispers of cruelty that oozed from the walls. Her first night in Brunnhold, she cried alone and in the dark--and promised herself she would never do so again, if she could help it.
