Summer Blue (Westmark, 474wc. for Paliphrase)
Title: Summer Blue
Author: kaliscoo (Kali)
Prompt: Dance [for paliphrase]
Fandom: Westmark
Pairing/Characters: Zara
Words: 474
Summary: Even angry, self-destructive dressmakers dream.
The dress had seen better days; the velvet was worn through in several places, and some clumsy seamstress had made thick, ugly, messy stitches trying to keep it all together, stitches which were, to Zara’s way of thinking, worse than gaping holes would’ve been. She frowned, spread her hand over a section of dark blue, dusty cloth, hiding one of the worst seams with her fanned fingers. It had been a beautiful dress when it was made - all soft blue velvet, deep as the sky on a summer evening, and beautifully made. How the skirt must have twirled across a dance floor, swished and swooshed about its wearers’ ankles-! But that had been years and years ago, from the old-fashioned style of the gown, not to mention the tear and wear and moths’ holes, and all things fade away and die. Zara knew this better than anyone.
She let her imagination get away with her sometimes (though most who knew her would be surprised to hear that she even had an imagination to go astray) - it was only a dress, that was all. Some pieces of cloth sewn together to fit some woman who was probably now dead, that was all. A woman who had been on the buxom side - for it to fit the way Zara had in mind, she’d have to take it in here, and here, and maybe a bit here…
She worked the rest of the day and well into the evening, stopping only to light a candle when the sky outside the single window got to be the same dark shade as the velvet, and then grew darker still. She didn’t stop until she was finished, stretching her arms behind her stooped back and bending stiffened fingers, and looked over the finished product by the weak candlelight.
It was hardly the same dress anymore - to fix some of the worst patches, she’d had to shorten the hem considerably, and she’d altered the neckline and sleeves some, trying to make them more fashionable, more like what the fancy women at court wore these days. But it was the same twilight blue, the same soft velvet (she’d have to give it a good brushing over, though, she thought critically), and the skirt, as full as it had ever been, if not so long, would twirl beautifully in the circling patterns of some courtly dance, its wearer light as a feather on her gentleman’s guiding arm…
Zara folded the gown up with brusque, careless movements and shoved it under her bed. “Stay there, for all I care,” she muttered. “No one’ll wear you. No one to wear you for.” She blew out the candle and went to bed, and when she finally fell asleep, it was to bittersweet dreams of summer blue gowns and a gentleman who would never dance with her...
Author: kaliscoo (Kali)
Prompt: Dance [for paliphrase]
Fandom: Westmark
Pairing/Characters: Zara
Words: 474
Summary: Even angry, self-destructive dressmakers dream.
The dress had seen better days; the velvet was worn through in several places, and some clumsy seamstress had made thick, ugly, messy stitches trying to keep it all together, stitches which were, to Zara’s way of thinking, worse than gaping holes would’ve been. She frowned, spread her hand over a section of dark blue, dusty cloth, hiding one of the worst seams with her fanned fingers. It had been a beautiful dress when it was made - all soft blue velvet, deep as the sky on a summer evening, and beautifully made. How the skirt must have twirled across a dance floor, swished and swooshed about its wearers’ ankles-! But that had been years and years ago, from the old-fashioned style of the gown, not to mention the tear and wear and moths’ holes, and all things fade away and die. Zara knew this better than anyone.
She let her imagination get away with her sometimes (though most who knew her would be surprised to hear that she even had an imagination to go astray) - it was only a dress, that was all. Some pieces of cloth sewn together to fit some woman who was probably now dead, that was all. A woman who had been on the buxom side - for it to fit the way Zara had in mind, she’d have to take it in here, and here, and maybe a bit here…
She worked the rest of the day and well into the evening, stopping only to light a candle when the sky outside the single window got to be the same dark shade as the velvet, and then grew darker still. She didn’t stop until she was finished, stretching her arms behind her stooped back and bending stiffened fingers, and looked over the finished product by the weak candlelight.
It was hardly the same dress anymore - to fix some of the worst patches, she’d had to shorten the hem considerably, and she’d altered the neckline and sleeves some, trying to make them more fashionable, more like what the fancy women at court wore these days. But it was the same twilight blue, the same soft velvet (she’d have to give it a good brushing over, though, she thought critically), and the skirt, as full as it had ever been, if not so long, would twirl beautifully in the circling patterns of some courtly dance, its wearer light as a feather on her gentleman’s guiding arm…
Zara folded the gown up with brusque, careless movements and shoved it under her bed. “Stay there, for all I care,” she muttered. “No one’ll wear you. No one to wear you for.” She blew out the candle and went to bed, and when she finally fell asleep, it was to bittersweet dreams of summer blue gowns and a gentleman who would never dance with her...