(Untitled)

[vestalstone]

For days now Pierrette had felt a tremor, a stirring of restlessness that settled low in her belly and left her squirming in anxiety and confusion. The days trickled by like grains of sand in an hourglass; one became six and weeks became months. She felt sick some days, walking the same paths she had found in her first days, but the familiar steps

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[madeofstories]

The bookshelf is being cruel again today, giving Grace the play that she's certain it knows she'd rather not read. Not that Grace doesn't absolutely love Twelfth Night, but having it thrown in her face every day is almost more than she can stand.

She's decided to instead reread something that she already has at her hut-- perhaps Great Expectations-- when she comes across the girl in the hallway, looking, to Grace's eyes at least, a bit lost.

"Hi," she says, the greeting accompanied by a polite wave, "Are you lost?"

Maybe the girl is new. It's an awful feeling, being new on the island.

[vestalstone]

There is a brief and somewhat incredulous moment where Pierrette hardly recognizes that the girl is speaking to her. She had tuned out near everything but sight and touch, relying on the rough friction against her fingertips and her feet as they padded gently across the floor. There is a hesitation, then realization, and soon she has come to startled recognition and looks up to the stranger.

"No." Her words are firm and her tone sharp if not soft spoken. "I --," and there she flounders, her thoughts wandering. "Simply said, I do not often stray inside." Or really at all if she were being honest. But she held no fear for the place, just reservation and humbled curiosity. The walls were harsh and strong, reminding her of a prison or a nunnery. Either way, it inspired no thoughts of comfort. It was enough to lead her to wonder how it was so many people came and went from it with seeming ease.

[madeofstories]

"Well, I could show you around, if you'd like. I don't live here, but I know the way around well enough" she offers. Of course, nearly everyone starts off in the compound, it seems, but Grace hadn't' stayed long at all, determined not to stray far from the stage, just in case it happened to provide her with a way back home.

"I'm Grace."

[vestalstone]

As a rule Pierrette did not avoid people, she merely preferred to be in places where they were not. Citharista had been a great teacher for learning her favorite past time. On market day back in her village she could sit and sell pots of slippery oil and watch the gens as they bustled and talked. People were more forthcoming when they didn't know you were listening, but as soon as a dialogue was engaged a wall was raised. She had learned this lesson well from her childhood as Piers the boy.

But still. She may have held a certain amount of trepidation, but Pierrette managed a small smile for the girl and nodded her head to her. "That is quite kind," she murmured thankfully. "My name is Pierrette. You must forgive me, my place is with the sky, not swallowed by stone."

[mdidiusfalco]

The girl didn't want to be seen. Unfortunately for her, she had crossed paths with a certain ex-informer. A large part of my previous profession had relied heavily on noticing the things other people ignored, and that included ignored people themselves. I watched her as she moved down the hall, clinging to the edges, as out of place in her own way as I probably was in my tunic.

"It's usually easier to be ignored if you actually put some effort into blending in, sweetheart."

[vestalstone]

When Pierrette saw him after his words washed over her, her first thought was Jerome. Her heart seized with cold anger and her spine straightened, but while his Roman nose and tunic were reminiscent enough, he bore no true resemblance to the Burgundian who had raped her sister. Still though, he reminded her enough of the gens of Citharista to leave her thoughtful and uneasy.

"Who is it to say my goal is to blend?" She inquired and her voice was smooth and strong despite her reluctance to further engage the man. "It is possible to be a part of the scenery without being swallowed within it. If you were to look within a grove and see an apple tree surrounded by olive trees, would you see the apples or would you see trees?"

Somehow, even saying the words didn't quite mean it was true. Mere moments ago she had been wishing she had been wearing better than the tattered homespun dress she had arrived in, an over worn hand me down from her taller, more womanly sister.

[mdidiusfalco]

"I think I'd be wondering what I was doing in a forest, not thinking about the types of trees." She looked nervous. Slightly Gallic too. No wonder she was nervous. The wonders of the modern world were sometimes too much for me, and I was the one from Rome, not some mud hut in Gaul. "If you didn't want to blend in you probably wouldn't be clinging to the wall like that."

[vestalstone]

Pierrette's mouth fell and tightened into a thin line, but she refrained from arguing as much as she desired to do so. Piers the boy could have done as he wished, he could have been as loud or as dismissive as he pleased. But she was no longer Piers. She was Pierrette and she was a girl speaking to a man. It was her place to swallow her pride and be polite.

Sometimes she wondered why she had wanted to be a girl so badly at all.

"This is not my place." She finally said, after seconds ticked by. "But time is not going to slow just so I may rest in my own comfort. It is time to change. To learn and to see what my place is to become."

[lastof_five]

Of all places Helen expected to find Pierette on the island, the Compound wasn't it. She seemed to enjoy the out of doors much more and had a kinship with nature that those with more modern sensibilities (Helen among them) seemed to lack.

"Finally decided to see if there was anything worth your while, then? Or were you looking for something in particular. I could help, either way."

[vestalstone]

There was a beat of silence, but after a moment of stillness had passed Pierette raised her head and managed a small smile for the older woman. "Miss Helen," she welcomed agreeably, even as her fingers clung to the edge of the room.

"I feel as though the tides have changed." Pierrette said next, and her voice seemed to float above her own head when she turned to look down the corridor. "My spirit is unsettled. I feel trapped in a labyrinth time, it is now my time to learn and change."

It was time to find her way into the community, rather than to cling to the edge the way she did to the wall and to her life in Provence. Somehow, that thought depressed her.

[lastof_five]

"There's nothing to say you're not allowed to dip your toes in versus jumping straight in. I say take all the time you need to become acclimated and learn the place."

Helen was no psychiatrist but she hoped she made out all right at putting the girl at ease. She was fond of Pierette and, furthermore, sort of liked to watch out for her.

"Is there anything you have questions about?"

[vestalstone]

"I fear there are too many questions for me to voice." Pierrette admitted, shoulders raising and falling in a helpless gesture. She felt overwhelmed at times, looking at some peculiar landmark or object with no concept of its construction or purpose. Others may not even blink as they walk past it, or even used it with an easy familiarity. Pierrette felt blind and dumb, as though she had missed out on some basic teaching that even babies had grasped before her. She felt an idiot, and this was a feeling she had never really known.

"I fear myself to be barbaric in this place." She murmured softly, fingers digging into the tattered fabric of her skirt. "A foolish creature as I stand in the threshold of a new age. I have never felt this way before, not truly so."

[curiously_cora]

Coraline reached for her hand, threading their fingers together as she came up from Pierrette from behind. Coraline grinned at her, nudging her gently with her hip.

"You're exploring," Coraline said accusingly. "You're exploring without me. You should never do that, I mean what are friends for but for keeping each other company. Come on, there's loads you need to see. Like really brilliant things. Where do you want to start the clothes box or the kitchen or the bookshelf?"

[vestalstone]

Coraline was in so many ways what Pierrette was not. She was a strong ball of spinning light, enthused and loud where Pierrette was studious and cautious. Their sense to roam was a shared trait, and their impending womanhood was a shared curse, but even with the tentative affection she felt for the girl, Pierrette knew that she and the golden girl were as far apart from each other as a hermit crab and a meadowlark.

Bit that did not stop her from sharing a startled and hesitant smile with the girl, even as her heart pinched painfully from how familiar the hand in her own was. For that short moment, Pierrette wondered about her sister Marie, and how she fared.

"I would never know." She admitted, scraping the grit of the wall with her fingernail. "I feel myself a mole, lost in the brightness of a field."

[curiously_cora]

"Well, don't worry you've got me. And I'm not nearly as terrible as Mister Toad." Coraline said smiling, though she realised after that Pierette probably wouldn't understand the reference. "It's a story. A kids story. Well, how about we start down with the clothes box? It's pretty cool though it does have very bad taste in clothes most of the time."

Coraline tugged Pierette's hand gently, leading her further in to the compound.

[vestalstone]

"Clothes?" She was curious despite her agitation, and Pierrette found herself feeling piqued. Clothing was a simple luxury, one she had not been afforded most of her life. Tunics and trousers had been her childhood and only in the privacy of Anselm's keep had she played as a woman, dressing in silks and linen that were far too fine for her calloused hands.

Now she only had Marie's dress, a faded off white with a brown sash about her waist. it was tattered and stained, but she kept in clean by washing it in the pools of the waterfalls.

"I suppose a new dress would be a welcome change." She admitted then, color kissing high on her cheeks as she considered the potential with a girlish hope.

[just_hormones]

Aphrodite has been windsurfing all morning, enjoying the bodacious waves, and it hadn't been until she couldn't ignore her hunger anymore that she finally went in, back to the compound to shower and change into one of her typical pink and lacy ensembles.

Clean and refreshed, her masses of blond hair blow dried to curled perfection and falling down her back, Aphrodite's on her way into the kitchen to grab the smallest amount of food she can manage to quiet her stupid mortal body when she sees Pierrette, tiny and wandering. "Hey, sweet pea," she says, giving the girl a bright smile. "You looking for something?"

[vestalstone]

While Aphrodite may have not been Pierrette's patron goddess, she was a goddess of grace, beauty and confounding peculiarity. The island may have stripped her of her godhood as thoroughly and cruelly as it had robbed Pierrette of her sorcery, but that did not mean anything had changed. Pierrette knew this as surely as she knew that the sky was blue and that the sun would rise each morning.

So as soon as she registered that the pink clad goddess had addressed her, Pierrette stopped her exploration and dipped her head to the woman properly. "Goddess," she greeted, eyes fluttering shut until her head raised. "Forgive me, Lady. These walls are unknown to me, I have been seeking their secrets."

[just_hormones]

"You know, I totally didn't think about it before, but I really don't see you inside much, now that you mention it," Aphrodite says, regarding Pierrette thoughtfully. "Not that the outdoors aren't bitchin' and all, especially the beach, but what gives, Pixie? Any particular reason why you don't come in here?"

[vestalstone]

Pierrette's mouth flapped open and closed thoughtlessly and her face warmed. She hated to humiliate herself in front of the goddess, but her reasoning now seemed so small. So cowardly. Surely even after pulling her strength together to settle the tremble that unsettled her, she must appear so childish and wan.

"These walls are as strange as an abbey to me, Lady. I feel I belong here no more than I belong amongst Christian nuns." Her head bowed, her fingers fidgeted. "But I am learning now. It is better to see and fall, to yearn for insight, rather than to hide in comforting arms."