(no subject)
I awake again to the curiously distant heat, for the rooms of the home I stay in stay cool enough, and dark, but the sun is almost something I can smell, growing. It's terribly early, and the hottest part of the day is hours away yet, but I rouse myself and dress, and take up my wig, turning it over in my hands. Keeping it clean is a terrible bother- daily wear it was not made for, and in such heat. My own hair, a pale strawish hue of what used to be such a lovely red, I fear, has grown thicker and longer, but is still short. After so much time in the sun when I had so rarely sat out in it, my complexion is rosier, though not close to golden the way so many here are, and it makes my locks look shabbier a color still. No, I cannot venture out from the house without it. I dress for the day, a mere two layers of cotton and a bodice, for that's all the heat will let stand.
Exiting the doors of New Pemberley into the first tropical fragrance of the stay, I stop short, surprised but not flustered. There is a horse. He is tall and white, looks as though he's been dusted with grey about the ears and just at the center of his forehead. He must be seventeen hands, and tackled beautifully- I walk forward, and though he gives the slightest start it is of interest, not skittishness, and he lifts his head, then drops his nose to my palm as I gently catch his reigns. The saddle bears my rose, and dangling from a gold chain set through the bit loop, a small engraved tag. To Elizabeth.
Well, how thoughtful.
The sun is substantially higher, the landscape brighter, when I eventually slow my steed on the sand. Unnamed as of yet- to have but one horse, I must give him careful, due consideration. His gait is not just beautiful, it is perfect, but he does not give it easily. Willful but not ill tempered. Vibrant. I know we shall get along famously. It is not until I have stopped his canter that I see the white tent ahead of us on the beach, constructed tightly but still billowing gently in the breeze off the sea. The sun glances off the metal that holds it up, and a pendant banner licks the air from an extra post mounted above the flap that forms it entrance. I walk my horse nearer, fixated on the colors. My colors. Surely not two gifts in one day? Sliding from my mount, patting him gently across the flank, I step, almost timidly, forward.
I have done so before, but it was storming, then, was grey and fierce and the mouths of a thousand warships' canons were aimed at my coasts. This is but one compartment of what was a larger tent. There were many things within it then- a desk, maps, weaponry. Now there is only a stand, and hung upon it from various hooks, a suit of armor; beneath it, the tunic and pantaloons and other vestments prerequisite to wear it; and the wig made especially for the occasion. Even the sliver of sunlight that touches it, cast in from behind my shoulders, gleams back like blazing glory. It seems so different, in sunlight before calm seas. I walk to it, to run my fingers along the grooves etched across the breast, the shoulder. It is beautiful, now, as pure ornament- for why should I don it again? To what purpose would it be? I have no wars to fight, here. I have no troops to rally. I should be thankful. I should be grateful. Instead, I feel suddenly silly, and useless, and terrifically sick in my heart with my missing of home. I lift the wig I've worn so thoroughly, here, sighing at the touch of salt air rustling the thing wrap of my head dressing, and set it carefully hanging from a gauntlet, too afraid to let it get near the sand. With the greatest care I bring down my Tilbury wig, a perfect mock up of my hair as it was when I was a maiden, in age if not virtue. No, I had to wed my state to regain that. But this, the ease of it, the flowing volume. If I am to feel silly and displaced, it shall not be by yearning for grace. I do and am and so there is not harm, and as I slide two of the amethyst-tipped pins from my hard used courtly wig and slide them, lanced gently past the temples, into the crown of my warrior self, I feel the strangest burgeoning sensation, alike to the squeeze before weeping.
I am met with my reflection in the fiercely polished armor. It looks new-forged. In a way, so do I. I wear no powder, nor rouge- I have none here. The blurred image, cut through with spiraling lines of the crest, looks almost like one that greeted me quite frequently twenty years ago. My past reflected on my past. I leave the tent, moving to my horse and catching his nose and chin with both hands when he gently dips his head to my shoulder. I stroke the short hairs across the bridge of his skull, and rest my cheek there and look out to the sea. Oh, Raleigh. Were your new worlds ever so treacherous as this one?
[NDPD and item post combined! Hey, efficiency. If you haven't seen the movie, a picture here.]
Exiting the doors of New Pemberley into the first tropical fragrance of the stay, I stop short, surprised but not flustered. There is a horse. He is tall and white, looks as though he's been dusted with grey about the ears and just at the center of his forehead. He must be seventeen hands, and tackled beautifully- I walk forward, and though he gives the slightest start it is of interest, not skittishness, and he lifts his head, then drops his nose to my palm as I gently catch his reigns. The saddle bears my rose, and dangling from a gold chain set through the bit loop, a small engraved tag. To Elizabeth.
Well, how thoughtful.
The sun is substantially higher, the landscape brighter, when I eventually slow my steed on the sand. Unnamed as of yet- to have but one horse, I must give him careful, due consideration. His gait is not just beautiful, it is perfect, but he does not give it easily. Willful but not ill tempered. Vibrant. I know we shall get along famously. It is not until I have stopped his canter that I see the white tent ahead of us on the beach, constructed tightly but still billowing gently in the breeze off the sea. The sun glances off the metal that holds it up, and a pendant banner licks the air from an extra post mounted above the flap that forms it entrance. I walk my horse nearer, fixated on the colors. My colors. Surely not two gifts in one day? Sliding from my mount, patting him gently across the flank, I step, almost timidly, forward.
I have done so before, but it was storming, then, was grey and fierce and the mouths of a thousand warships' canons were aimed at my coasts. This is but one compartment of what was a larger tent. There were many things within it then- a desk, maps, weaponry. Now there is only a stand, and hung upon it from various hooks, a suit of armor; beneath it, the tunic and pantaloons and other vestments prerequisite to wear it; and the wig made especially for the occasion. Even the sliver of sunlight that touches it, cast in from behind my shoulders, gleams back like blazing glory. It seems so different, in sunlight before calm seas. I walk to it, to run my fingers along the grooves etched across the breast, the shoulder. It is beautiful, now, as pure ornament- for why should I don it again? To what purpose would it be? I have no wars to fight, here. I have no troops to rally. I should be thankful. I should be grateful. Instead, I feel suddenly silly, and useless, and terrifically sick in my heart with my missing of home. I lift the wig I've worn so thoroughly, here, sighing at the touch of salt air rustling the thing wrap of my head dressing, and set it carefully hanging from a gauntlet, too afraid to let it get near the sand. With the greatest care I bring down my Tilbury wig, a perfect mock up of my hair as it was when I was a maiden, in age if not virtue. No, I had to wed my state to regain that. But this, the ease of it, the flowing volume. If I am to feel silly and displaced, it shall not be by yearning for grace. I do and am and so there is not harm, and as I slide two of the amethyst-tipped pins from my hard used courtly wig and slide them, lanced gently past the temples, into the crown of my warrior self, I feel the strangest burgeoning sensation, alike to the squeeze before weeping.
I am met with my reflection in the fiercely polished armor. It looks new-forged. In a way, so do I. I wear no powder, nor rouge- I have none here. The blurred image, cut through with spiraling lines of the crest, looks almost like one that greeted me quite frequently twenty years ago. My past reflected on my past. I leave the tent, moving to my horse and catching his nose and chin with both hands when he gently dips his head to my shoulder. I stroke the short hairs across the bridge of his skull, and rest my cheek there and look out to the sea. Oh, Raleigh. Were your new worlds ever so treacherous as this one?
[NDPD and item post combined! Hey, efficiency. If you haven't seen the movie, a picture here.]
