[Memory] To Linger in a Garden Fair

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 14, 2717 - Early Morning | A Side Garden

Work had begun at dawn, as it always did, the Roalis sun just peeking over the walls of Brunnhold when a quartet of passive girls came to settle in a small and oft-unused side garden towards the eastern side of the campus. Two of them were leaning against each other and laughing at a taller, darker haired girl, who had a look on her face of distinct displeasure that seemed directly related to the laughter. The fourth girl, the shortest of them all, smiled a smile that did nothing to disguise that she was a thousand miles away.

“Really, Bee--you should have seen the look on your face!”

“I really don’t see what’s so--”

“Of course you don’t, you couldn’t see a joke if it bit you on the erse! Mercy’s absolutely right there.”

“But did you have to pull so hard? A-li-o-eeee, I’m going to feel that for a week…”

“Ha! I didn’t hit you that hard--I’ve hit Aurelie harder. Haven’t I Aurelie?”

The silence from her chattering companions is what drew Aurelie Steerpike, the fourth girl, back to reality. Her three companions looked at her expectantly. Dread crept over her--she had been spoken to, hadn’t she. Oh chimes, she absolutely had. Before she could open her mouth to apologize, the first girl--young woman, really, Mercy, huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Don’t waste your time on Matron Aurelie, Lottie--she’s too good for our childish ways.” The other three laughed; Aurelie’s face flushed, annoyed. The barb hurt--it always did. Instead of biting back, she just smiled and shrugged. It was simpler that way. Eventually they would get bored and return to--whatever it was they’d been doing to poor Bernadetta. Then everything would be fine again, and they would go on ignoring her like she wanted. Patience and good sense, that was the key.

Eventually, Aurelie was proven correct. Her companions, wishing to wallow in a rare moment of idleness between their early morning tasks and what was to occupy them later, fell into easy patter and idle gossip. Aurelie listened to them, smiling and nodding along, waiting for her chance--ah! There it was. They’d stopped paying attention to her entirely. Her chance to slip away.

And slip away she did, wandering deeper into the garden. The sun overhead was gentle, not yet high enough in the sky or late enough in the season for the heat to be oppressive instead of welcoming. A breeze moved gently through grass, carrying on it the scent of freshly-trimmed hedges and warm stone. After a moment’s exploration, Aurelie found what she was looking for--a small bench in the garden, sheltered from immediate view by the low-hanging branches of a tree. Not out of the way enough to be completely invisible, but more private all the same. The perfect spot for a private conversation, reading--or practicing one’s new and somewhat clandestine hobby.

Aurelie checked to make sure the others were still occupied--they were just where she left them. Feeling sufficiently unobserved, she removed several things from her pocket: a scrap of cloth (part of a cleaning rag that had seen better days) stretched over a round frame, thread given to her by one of the other women in the laundries (“for repairs”), and a good, sturdy needle. She also had in her other pocket a clumsy drawing, poorly rendered by her own hand, that planned out a series of stitches. Carefully, Aurelie threaded her needle and began to make hesitant stitches. She could only practice when she was alone, or late at night when Bernie was asleep. If anyone saw her… Well, nobody would. Her hobby was her secret, just for herself. How had it looked on that dress again? Something like… a loop or…? Without realizing it, she had become completely absorbed in her practice, dead to the outside world.

[moralhazard]

Early Morning, Roalis 14, 2717
A Side Garden

Uzoji could not sit still. It was not even twenty hours from the Rose to Brunnhold when one caught a good wind, and the Eqe Aqawe was a ship that never struggled to find the line of the wind. They had seized it, and they had soared, and yet Uzoji still felt sluggish and heavy. He had taken the first shift, and then slept, exhausted, in a bed that had never felt too large before, strangely cold without Niccolette beside him, and Willie had flown the second leg.

Uzoji had woken up to pale, pre-dawn light streaming in through the shutters, and been unable to bear even another moment in bed alone. He had sponged off sweat from dreams he didn’t recall, shaved his head smooth, and he had dressed. He had made kofi on the stove, pacing the narrow confines of the ship’s kitchen while it brewed, and leaning on the deck’s railing while he drank it, watching the distant sweep of red roofs. Then he had left the ship behind. He’d only intended to walk to the Stacks, thinking maybe of breakfast, but he hadn’t found anywhere that interested him to stop, and before long he’d been drifting through campus.

The noise of the students was welcome at first, bright and cheerful as they began to spill from the dorms and buildings, rushing to and from. And then it had become a bit too much, and Uzoji had ducked into one of the smaller side gardens he remembered from his school days, and kept his wandering. Gradually, some of the ache in his head cleared; gradually, he could think.

It was not that they had fought. It was rather than he knew Niccolette was angry with him - he knew that he deserved her anger - and that instead of fury sparking hot, she had greeted him with something icy cold, something he still could not name. She had said almost nothing; she had scarcely looked at him. She had told him she would not come to Brunnhold with him. It was not like her, and it left him uneasy.

He would, Uzoji knew, have felt better if she had broken every dish in the house - if she had screamed and called him names - if she had slapped him. Any of those and he would have known what he was dealing with; any of those and he would have known what she meant.

She had asked, Uzoji thought. He would not have forced the knowing on her; it had been a lapse, momentary and meaningless, not more, and it had meant nothing. How could it, relative to the weight of all they shared? How could she think, even for a moment, that anyone else could ever mean anything? He wished he could make her understand that. But he had known what he expected, when he faced her question squarely and told her the truth. It was not what he had gotten, and he did not know what to make of it.

Perhaps he should not have left. Uzoji began a loop around the garden a second time, and he sighed. Perhaps he should not have let her stay behind. What was he to do? Drag his wife to their ship kicking and screaming? Actually - kicking and screaming would have been an improvement, Uzoji thought with a groan.

He stopped, then, on the path, and rubbed his face with his hands. There was a bench nearby, wasn’t there? Shaded by branches, and well out of sight - particularly in the evening, and he and Niccolette had sat on it more than once -

Uzoji rubbed his face again. He would fix it, he promised himself. They had time; he had time. He would take himself back to Niccolette the moment this delivery was through. He would beg. He was not too proud for it, not when it came to her. He would find the way.

The Mugrobi ducked beneath the branches that led to the bench, and stopped; it was a surprise to see a small red-headed figure on it, although perhaps unexpected redheads were more common in Brunnhold than anywhere else - but this one was a surprise, because she was in a passive’s uniform, and even more so because he knew her. Uzoji had always had a knack for names and faces, and his encounter with the young and younger-looking passive had been unusual enough that it had stuck well in his mind.

”Miss Steerpike,” Uzoji said, and he bowed lightly. He didn’t approach, not more than enough to clear the low-hanging branches, but he smiled, fondly, for what felt like the first time that day.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Had Aurelie not been so absorbed in her fancywork practice, she might have sensed the approach of another person. She would then, accordingly, have had the good sense to put her little project away and out of sight. It wasn't that there was a rule against her having a hobby, persay. They just weren't on the whole encouraged to do so, as well as the question of where she got the supplies for it in the first place when she made no wages. Alack and alas, the red-headed passive was indeed far too absorbed in her task to notice even the sights and sounds around her, much less Uzoji's approach.

As such, the sound of his voice in greeting startled her so badly she nearly leapt out of her own skin, sending her project scattering from her lap and onto the grass. "Bells and chimes, what did you--oh! It's you!" Aurelie was so surprised to see Uzoji standing nearby that the exclamation had just come flying from her mouth. A blush crept up her face at her rudeness. She recognized him--of course she did, it wasn't often that strange foreign men offered her warm drinks and a sympathetic ear after she made a spectacle of herself in a hallway. That sort of a meeting rather stuck with one, she felt. She just hadn't expected to see him this particular morning. Or any morning, generally speaking.

"G-good morning, er, Mr. Ibutatu." She had a fairly good memory for names, usually speaking, but she fervently hoped she was right on this one as well. "Do you--oh, I'm sorry, I'll just--oh ticks, where did my needle go? Er, just a moment, and I will be out of your way..." The girl was starting to babble, a much more nervous and chattery creature than when he saw her before--a side effect of the surprise. Realizing what she was doing, Aurelie bit her lip to still her tongue. Oh, where had that needle gone? If it came down to it, she could leave it and figure out how to replace it later, but if it was still on the bench somewhere and Mr. Ibutatu managed to get stuck by it... Surely if having a hobby wasn't against the rules, injuring visiting galdori with said hobby had to be.

[moralhazard]

Early Morning, Roalis 14, 2717
A Side Garden

Aurelie yelped a thoroughly mild exclamation for how badly startled she seemed, and jerked with such force that she scattered the cloth she’d been working on off her lap and onto the grass. She promptly turned bright red, stammering a greeting that rolled into an apology.

He had not, Uzoji thought ruefully, meant to startle her. It seemed rather consistent for the last few days; he was beginning to question his own judgment, and that was a dangerous place to be. He could not afford it, not for long.

“There’s no need to get up on my account,” Uzoji said, firmly. None of the yelping anxiety in her voice seeped into him; he was as cool and calm as he had been when he greeted her. He smiled at her again, and knelt unhesitatingly, picking up the bit of cloth.

“Here,” Uzoji did not make to hand it to the girl, but he set it on the edge of the bench. His field was a little more scattered than usual, a faint anxious prickle to the static and physical mona, hotter and heavier than usual. He knew Willie had not wanted him to fly the night before, but Uzoji Ibutatu was still the captain of his own ship. He still knew himself. If it had been a struggle, it had been a struggle than he had won, with his crew and the mona both.

The galdor didn’t linger close to the bench, but took another few steps back, casual and easy, still with a smile on his face.

He needed to trust himself, Uzoji thought.

“I met your sister recently,” Uzoji said. His tone was still easy, even light, but there was a gentleness to it now. He had known when he met Lilliana Steerpike that the two must be closer than cousins, even though the memory of dirt smudged on Aurelie’s reddened face contrasted sharply to the glittering ballroom that surrounded them, even though her sister had a beauty that the little passive did not, not quite. He had always had a knack for faces, and he had not mistaken that chin.

And Uzoji known, too, when he had spoken to Aurelie, before, that it had not been anger or hate in her voice at the word sister. It had been something closer to longing, something undeniably sad, but a little wistful alongside it. He imagined Lilliana Steerpike to be such a sister, for a smaller, shyer girl.

Uzoji had never thought of doing anything but trusting himself and his instincts; doubt, even in such matters, was a weakness he could not afford. “Miss Lilliana Steerpike.”

All the same, Uzoji did not say another word, not yet; there seemed to him to be no reason not to wait and see if he had read this current correctly. He settled his hands into his pockets, and gave Aurelie a little more time.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Aurelie had been preparing some excuse for why she needed to leave, really, and he could do whatever it is he was here for as soon as she'd gathered her things together, when she heard the word "sister" and froze. Immediately, her embroidery and her desire to leave were forgotten, scrap of cloth only making it as far as her knee before she dropped it. Even her anxiety dissipated, replaced instead with an intense longing to hear more. He'd met her sister? Was he sure...? Oh, but he was--he said her name. Her Ana! Aurelie didn't remember mentioning she had a sister, but no--she had, hadn't she? She'd been thinking of Ana all that day when they'd met.

"Ana?" All at once her posture was attentive, fair vibrating with her desire to hear, to know. It wasn't that she never heard about Ana--it was just so rare with her living in Florne, and lately she'd felt--she wasn't sure what it was she felt, really. Some kind of ache in her that had started last year and only seemed to grow. It couldn't be loneliness or longing, she thought, as she'd been without her sister for eight years now, but something close.

"How--? Where was she? Is she doing well? Isn't she just wonderful?" Aurelie beamed, propriety forgotten along with her practice. The questions came tumbling out of her, a rushed jumble of breathy excitement. Then her smile slipped a little as a sobering thought came to her. "Did you... I wasn't, er, that is..." Did you mention me? Aurelie didn't know how to ask, and wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer. Surely meeting Lilliana's passive sister wasn't important enough to make mention of, not to Ana, but some tiny part of her hoped for... something.

[moralhazard]

Early Morning, Roalis 14, 2717
A Side Garden

Aurelie froze, and then turned to him, wide-eyed and eager. Uzoji smiled at her, and he thought he had judged her correctly, and that these words were welcome. He did feel a faint sense of relief, all his confidence aside; at least he had gotten this right.

“At a party in Vienda,” Uzoji answered the first two questions in one. He grinned at Aurelie. “She seems to be doing well. I only talked to her for a few moments, I’m afraid, but she – er – you know she lives in Florne…?” He trailed off, and – shifted, then, and for the first time, his bright, friendly smile faded.


“My wife is from Florne as well,” Uzoji explained. “Niccolette. She and Ana are quite friendly, I think,” he smiled again, but there was a tension at the edge of it, a little strain that rippled through him. He smoothed it from his field, and he was not so tense as to colorshift, at least.

He had not, Uzoji realized, quite thought this conversation through. Aurelie wished to speak of her sister; he was glad he had judged her correctly in that. But did he? Because it was hard to think of her without thinking of Niccolette. It had only been a few weeks ago, one of the parties that dotted the end of the rainy season in Vienda – pouring rain outside, and inside, politicians and socialites and all the rest, in a gloriously bright cacophony of noise, laughing and talking and drinking, naturally.

He had seen Niccolette across the room, glittering beneath the lights, and had gone to her; he could not but go to her. After all this time, she drew him in as effortlessly as she always had, the first day he had seen her at Brunnhold. Covered in mud or dressed in glittering gold, she called to him; she always had, and she always would. She knew that, Uzoji thought; she could not but know. Hadn’t he told her, time and time again, what she was to him? His moon and stars, his shores and tide – the very center of all that he wished to be.

And Niccolette had turned to him, and smiled, bright and soft all at once, and made the introductions to – Lilliana Steerpike, in some sort of sleek gown, quite lovely, with hair like fire. But he could see the outlines of that beautiful face in Aurelie’s as well – all the better for her wide-eyed excitement, although it seemed to have dimmed again.

“She seemed wonderful,” he offered, smiling a little more on the word Aurelie had offered. He was not quite sure what she had been hoping to ask about with the question she hadn’t finished. "My wife speaks very highly of her." Uzoji cleared his throat, and shifted, and shoved his hands a little deeper into his pockets, his gaze lowering from the passive to the grass beneath the bench. Hulali’s tits, but he was a fool; he shouldn’t, Uzoji thought uneasily, have left. He could have sent word – he could have – he shouldn’t have left her.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

So it wasn't even that he had merely met her, but this wife knew Ana? The world felt very small, though she wondered if this would surprise her as much if she, too, knew people out in the world. Was this normal? Was her world truly so small and isolated--so much more than she'd really felt? The idea of knowing someone who knew someone else--a circle of associations not regularly encountered. It seemed impossible to her, living as she was behind Brunnhold's walls. Never to step outside them again.

Even wrapped up as she was in excitement to hear about her sister, Aurelie couldn't help but notice the strain that went through Uzoji's field at the mention of his wife, or the way his smile faded. She didn't know the galdor well, or at all really, but she had eyes and she could see that something was askew from her memory of months ago. He'd looked so happy, speaking of his wife before.

"Oh, yes sir, I did know she was in Florne. I read--er, well, that is to say, I heard... She'd moved there." To be further from her sister, perhaps. A selfish thought, but she couldn't shake it. All these years, she'd wondered. "She must have come to visit... home," Aurelie murmured. The last part felt strange and bitter on her tongue. Aurelie chose not to dwell on it.

The young woman would have been happy to let the conversation end there and leave, but... something was off. She couldn't quite imagine what it was, but something was definitely amiss. Aurelie fidgeted, chewing on her lip. She was so unused to being spoken to as if--as if she were a person, with connections to other people that left these walls. And he had been kind to her, before. She should... should try to... to be friendly. More than polite, at least. Or was being friendly the polite thing to do in this situation? Looking up at the leaves above the bench, she decided to make an attempt.

"Is she... is she with you, your wife...?" Perhaps this was why he looked so tense--they had been intending to meet here, and instead he'd found some moony little passive doing terrible needlework. If she asked, he could tell her so, and she would be free to leave. That would help, she thought. It often helped when she left places.

[moralhazard]

Early Morning, Roalis 14, 2717
A Side Garden

Home, Uzoji thought, was pronounced very differently than sister had been. Uzoji wondered; Lilliana was, if he recalled correctly, two or so years older than himself and Niccolette. She must have been at least ten years younger than Aurelie. Had she been as fond of Aurelie as Aurelie was, clearly, of her? He thought of the bright, glittering woman he’d met, sharp and clever and almost magnetic. He knew she was Anaxi, but he was had not been surprised to learn she called Florne home.

“No,” Uzoji said, with a deep sigh, at Aurelie’s question. “No, she’s – ah, at home at the moment, I imagine, in Old Rose Harbor. We’ve a house there.” What, he wondered, was she doing now? Reading, probably, he imagined; meditating, perhaps. Whatever emotions she was feeling, whatever emotions she had kept from him, he could not imagine she kept them from the mona. Even now he could not be jealous; even now, he could only be proud.

Aurelie must have wanted to ask Niccolette questions, he thought, and he was briefly sorry it would not be possible. He had scarcely been able to tell her anything of Lilliana; he scarcely knew anything. It must be very little that she'd heard, that she'd - Uzoji frowned, faintly, thinking of the way she’d started to say read, and worriedly corrected herself to heard.

“Flood the Circle,” Uzoji said, after a moment, looking down at the passive. “Do they really think you can’t read here? Or do they just try to keep you from it?” He rubbed his hand over his bare scalp, frustrated and annoyed with the thought of it. It was a shame, he thought, and not for the first time; not only with Aurelie, but so often with many of the passives he’d met during his own days at Brunnhold. Of all the differences, all the things that had been strange, it had been the gated passives that had most irritated him.

Uzoji grimaced, then, looking down at Aurelie and thinking of the reactions of other passives he had met, when similar topics came up. “My apologies,” he said, after a moment. It was not Aurelie’s fault that he was worried about Niccolette; he needed, Uzoji thought, to watch his control. He had not fought with her, not really, in nearly three years; perhaps he had forgotten the knack. “I allowed my frustration to speak for me – I shouldn’t have said that.”

He had met passives here who had been terrified at the thought of the way things were for imbala; more than terrified. Passives who shook their heads, and said stoutly that it was wrong, sir, and waited to be dismissed. Passives who had stared at him, wide-eyed, as if he were the crazy one. Perhaps Aurelie had more courage than any of them. But worst of all, there had been passives who had wept for what they could never have, and shaken their heads as if they could somehow cast out this new, terrible knowledge. He had stopped trying, after one such conversation; he had not meant to start again.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

His words, however they were intended, had struck a blow to Aurelie. Did the galdori of Anaxas think they couldn't read, their poor broken children? Aurelie was sure they knew otherwise--or else, why were none of them allowed to do it? To even consider it? No, that would have been simpler. The bitterness that welled up in her as she thought of it surprised her; it wasn't often that she thought of the education she might have had, if born whole. The life that was ended for her. What was the point? She hadn't been, so here she was. Aurelie had heard, a rumor of a rumor, that things were different outside of Anaxas. Aurelie couldn't imagine it any more than she could imagine herself as Queen; it seemed equally absurd.

"You needn't apologize to a scr--to me, sir." The bitterness tried to push out from her heart and through her teeth and tongue. She very nearly forgot herself--she had to be more careful. "I apologize, sir, I--I misspoke." Aurelie shrank into herself, a small woman becoming even smaller, as she tried to keep herself in check. The forgotten embroidery practice was picked up from her knee and put back in her pocket. She hadn't found the needle, but it was, perhaps, just lost. It didn't matter, anyway. Exhaustion gripped her in a way that was more than physical, and she sighed.

"I do not often get the chance to read the papers," she said after a pause, softly. This was true--even if it weren't against the rules, when would she have had the time? Like most things forbidden to her, to dwell on it seemed pointless. Impractical. "So thank you. It's good... to know my sister is well, somewhere. I am, ah, sorry to have--to have pressed."

[moralhazard]

Early Morning, Roalis 14, 2717
A Side Garden

Uzoji sighed when Aurelie refused his apology, and then promptly offered one of her own. He rubbed his left hand over his face, feeling the hard metal of his ring dragging against his skin, and left her in silence a moment or two longer than he should have, long enough that she sighed, with the weight of an ache much older than her years, and continued again.

No, Uzoji thought, she wouldn’t have much of a chance to read the papers. She thanked him, and apologized again, and Uzoji raised his eyebrows. It seemed little use to tell her she didn’t need to apologize to him; she was well within her rights to think she did, and he was a fool if he tried to tell her otherwise. They were not two equals, standing here; Uzoji guessed that Aurelie was entirely aware of what would happen if he went and told someone – in truth, he didn’t even know who – that a passive had spoken back to him in the garden.

Uzoji sighed again. “Miss Steerpike,” he said, slowly, looking down at the girl. Hulali’s tits, she’d managed to make herself look even smaller on the bench, as if by trying hard enough she might manage to disappear. “You’ve nothing to apologize for.” Uzoji crouched, then, so he was looking up at her instead of the other way around, his forearms resting lightly on his knees.

“Whether you accept it or not,” Uzoji said, gently, “on my honor and my honesty, I am sorry.”

The Mugrobi sighed again, and he didn’t rise, still studying the passive. “Let me think. Your sister looked lovely,” he grinned at Aurelie, slowly. “I’m not so knowledgeable about women’s fashion, but she was wearing one of those fabrics which is quite sleek, but reflects the light. Like a gemstone. Like an amethyst, I should say.”

“She and Niccolette had been talking about some woman she’s been seeing in Bastia,” Uzoji continued. “She was amusing my wife with a discussion of how she could hardly be seen with someone, these days, without it being rumored that they are engaged,” he raised his eyebrows at Aurelie, a little playfully. “Even still, I don’t believe she has any trouble finding women to date,” he said, smiling.

“She mentioned your parents as well,” Uzoji continued. “My wife is not terribly close to her family, and from Ana said, I had the sense it’s much the same for her. If I had to guess, that’s why she prefers Florne," he offered Aurelie another smile. "She’s a lovely woman, your sister. Bright and vibrant. It doesn’t surprise me that she and my wife get along well. I think…” Uzoji was quiet, for a moment, turning the party over in his mind, thinking of the woman in the amethyst dress, laughing beneath the light. “I think she’d be proud of you too.”

Uzoji leaned forward, and carefully picked up the needle glittering in the grass at Aurelie’s feet. He smiled at her, and rose, setting it carefully on the arm of the bench.

“I’ll stop troubling you now, Miss Steerpike,” Uzoji said, gently, and took a step back with a light bow. “I wish you all the best.”