[Wild Roses]
Title: invisible scars
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Arianhrod
Prompt: 25B "longing"
Word Count: 377
Notes: follows previous, will likely be expanded itself.
She would have remarked, dry as dust, that she hadn't dressed so plainly since she took off her mourning, but the man she would have actually said it to was the reason she'd worn mourning in the first place. Her brothers would have winced, her elder half-sister done nothing but turn quietly to stone, reminded of her own losses.
So she went through the process of fitting herself into a new persona in silence, tried on the soft-brushed grays with satiny bronze contrast along the seams, each piece smaller than the width of her thumb, the herringboned riding gear, the dark silk greens weighted with iron in the hems to hang instead of float, stitched lightly with tarnished silver and emerald greens for contrast.
There were a few ornamental dresses, suitable to show her off as a wealthy member of another Court. One of her greens, the ones that showed off the brightness of her hair and her eyes, instead of the darker colours that made her look wan and even more heavily freckled than summer had decreed already.
The piece that took the longest to fit was a utterly plain gray jacket that wouldn't have looked out of place on either of Brighid's sons. She'd declined elaborate cloaks or coats nearly as long as her skirts, opening the way for rich-toned wraps, and the gray. Because she wasn't meant to merely be an ornament, and she wasn't her mother, who could pull off the effect of an edged jewel.
Getting the jacket to fit correctly, something that was obviously hers instead of borrowed from a much bigger man, took nearly a week. She spent most of the time trying not to dwell on the colour and texture.
Explaining to an intellectually curious audience that her husband had developed a penchant for dressing her in soft wools not long before he died was not exactly her idea of a pleasant afternoon, after all.
Brighid would have told her not to hold so hard, so long to him. But Brighid was dead, too, and longer ago, and she still missed Brighid, thought of what her father's second wife might say in conversation.
She gave up and had them line the gray coat in one of Brighid's blues, eventually.
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Arianhrod
Prompt: 25B "longing"
Word Count: 377
Notes: follows previous, will likely be expanded itself.
She would have remarked, dry as dust, that she hadn't dressed so plainly since she took off her mourning, but the man she would have actually said it to was the reason she'd worn mourning in the first place. Her brothers would have winced, her elder half-sister done nothing but turn quietly to stone, reminded of her own losses.
So she went through the process of fitting herself into a new persona in silence, tried on the soft-brushed grays with satiny bronze contrast along the seams, each piece smaller than the width of her thumb, the herringboned riding gear, the dark silk greens weighted with iron in the hems to hang instead of float, stitched lightly with tarnished silver and emerald greens for contrast.
There were a few ornamental dresses, suitable to show her off as a wealthy member of another Court. One of her greens, the ones that showed off the brightness of her hair and her eyes, instead of the darker colours that made her look wan and even more heavily freckled than summer had decreed already.
The piece that took the longest to fit was a utterly plain gray jacket that wouldn't have looked out of place on either of Brighid's sons. She'd declined elaborate cloaks or coats nearly as long as her skirts, opening the way for rich-toned wraps, and the gray. Because she wasn't meant to merely be an ornament, and she wasn't her mother, who could pull off the effect of an edged jewel.
Getting the jacket to fit correctly, something that was obviously hers instead of borrowed from a much bigger man, took nearly a week. She spent most of the time trying not to dwell on the colour and texture.
Explaining to an intellectually curious audience that her husband had developed a penchant for dressing her in soft wools not long before he died was not exactly her idea of a pleasant afternoon, after all.
Brighid would have told her not to hold so hard, so long to him. But Brighid was dead, too, and longer ago, and she still missed Brighid, thought of what her father's second wife might say in conversation.
She gave up and had them line the gray coat in one of Brighid's blues, eventually.