daily15 - The Young Countess
Sooooo. Back again. Today's word was a choice between "desperate" and "disparate"; I achieved not-quite-adequate results here. Kudos if you can guess who the subject is. I'm not really happy with it, but at least I'm writing again.
(This may not be a good thing, but eh.)
Her first memories were of the darkness and gloom of the cavernous old manor where she was born, and of the chattering servant girls who spoke a language she could not understand. Even as a small child, their skin seemed rougher and darker than hers, and she noted their cacophonous Slavic babble with distaste. What on earth was wrong with them?
Some time later, she learned from her old nurse to embroider. It was a dull job, but it gave her some way to while away the hours between languages and books and strange longings that she did not yet understand. Sometimes, watching one or another of the girls go up and down the hall, she felt the desperate longing to bite her, to cut her with her sewing scissors, and watch the bright blood flow.
She was a tolerable seamstress. She was good at everything she set her hand to, naturally; why should she be otherwise? The child, pale as a lily, sewed and embroidered, stuck full of unacted, unnatural desires like a pincushion. Her unsmiling mouth set when she heard the voices of the Slovak maidservants, stumbling along with her mother or aunt in their accented Hungarian.
One afternoon, when she was perhaps nine or ten, she sat sewing quietly with one or two of the maids, when unbearable need seized her. She fought it down: she had been warned against it, after an abortive attempt one time. It rose in her, lapped gently against her mind, and seized her brain, squeezing tightly and refusing to let go.
She leaned over, when the girl was not looking, and plunged the needle into the plump thigh, the skirts drawn tightly over it. The maidservant let out a yell, and all Hell was unleashed.
The child had eyes only for the bright red spot on the maid's skirt, fading and growing deeper and darker. She could never have said when her mother's arms pulled her away, nor what her mother said afterwards, besides the initial shocked gasp: "Erszebet!"
In that moment, she knew her calling.
(This may not be a good thing, but eh.)
Her first memories were of the darkness and gloom of the cavernous old manor where she was born, and of the chattering servant girls who spoke a language she could not understand. Even as a small child, their skin seemed rougher and darker than hers, and she noted their cacophonous Slavic babble with distaste. What on earth was wrong with them?
Some time later, she learned from her old nurse to embroider. It was a dull job, but it gave her some way to while away the hours between languages and books and strange longings that she did not yet understand. Sometimes, watching one or another of the girls go up and down the hall, she felt the desperate longing to bite her, to cut her with her sewing scissors, and watch the bright blood flow.
She was a tolerable seamstress. She was good at everything she set her hand to, naturally; why should she be otherwise? The child, pale as a lily, sewed and embroidered, stuck full of unacted, unnatural desires like a pincushion. Her unsmiling mouth set when she heard the voices of the Slovak maidservants, stumbling along with her mother or aunt in their accented Hungarian.
One afternoon, when she was perhaps nine or ten, she sat sewing quietly with one or two of the maids, when unbearable need seized her. She fought it down: she had been warned against it, after an abortive attempt one time. It rose in her, lapped gently against her mind, and seized her brain, squeezing tightly and refusing to let go.
She leaned over, when the girl was not looking, and plunged the needle into the plump thigh, the skirts drawn tightly over it. The maidservant let out a yell, and all Hell was unleashed.
The child had eyes only for the bright red spot on the maid's skirt, fading and growing deeper and darker. She could never have said when her mother's arms pulled her away, nor what her mother said afterwards, besides the initial shocked gasp: "Erszebet!"
In that moment, she knew her calling.