❛ Are you done ? ❜ Her tone was filled with annoyance. Twisted words cross her lips ( muttering them to herself ), patience slipping from her fingertips, as the young Stark paced across the room.Balled up fists press against her hips , loosing herself within demon’s grip. She never quite understood the need to spend so much time on one’s appearance.Time is gone in these loathsome acts, when it’s nothing but a false pretense for her.
Though she offered no biting retort to filial impatience a careful observer might note how the elder girl’s hands tightened nigh imperceptibly about brush’s handle, how her jaw squared more firmly, mouth set in a determined line to hear such puerile moaning. Mayhaps one’s hair matter little when an afternoon ride turned into a careening gallop through the woods, as Arya was often wont to do, but Sansa conducted herself with more decorum. “I told you — just a minute longer! Perhaps if you brushed your hair more often it would come back full of brambles and tangles less often, hm?”
Some time had passed since Ella had first arrived in King’s Landing, but she had yet to fully engrave every custom and tradition into the root of her being. She was still odd Ella no matter where she went, c a p a b l e enough in all her duties yet a soul firmly unattached to worldly laws and ideals. She went about the usual, preparing Sansa’s room for the lady’s slumber before she would arrive – yet tonight the handmaiden was feeling particularly daring, nearly indulgent. So imagining she had enough time, she placed the one salvaged piece from her first life on the table besides the candlelight. The broken glass heel the Grand Duke had coldly tossed to her lit up the room with slivers of rainbow when it was positioned just right, making her chores seem much less tedious. She felt cheered enough to sing ( softly ) a foreign ditty of nightingales while she prepared Sansa’s nightgown. But perhaps if she had not sung, she would have heard the girl arrive at the door from behind.
❝ Oh , My Lady. Forgive me, I did not expect you back so soon … ❞ Ella severed the song immediately, bowing her head before she went to retrieve the glass piece.
Shy handmaidens amounted to very little of the Lady Sansa’s concerns, least of all one so unobtrusive as the newcomer with hair spun from pale gold. Unlike all the others Ella worked truly as a shadow; though not unkind, she made none of the overtures towards camaraderie that many others had. When pondered alongside Cersei’s venom, Joffrey’s intransigent cruelty, and the saccharine sweetness of attendants who would otherwise never speak to a child so attainted, one girl’s quietude seemed almost a blessing by compare. That evening had seen Sansa as yet again a guest at queenly supper, scraping forks and clattering goblets insufficient to mask what tension rippled ‘neath every course. Returning to her chambers the girl hoped only for a hot bath, a moment’s rest before visiting once again that most terribly realm of dreams. She noticed not a lilting tune, but its cessation, silence echoing loud as any battle cry through the room.
“ —— No, no. You needn’t apologize.” Were they all so frightened of her? Though Sansa desired no friendship with women more loyal to their queen than their lady, still the girl possessed no aspirations towards a chill intimidation wielded with such success by royal lioness. “Your voice is quite lovely; I might have asked to hear it long ago had I known.” Crystalline glint caught her eye, momentary fears of theft banished when she could not recognize the clear shard cupped in slender fingers. “Does it remind you of home?” Swift glance towards hidden treasure suggested she meant more than hummed lullaby. “You must miss it very much.”
“Hey, you!” Harry nudged aside the bouncer, shades terribly out of place for indoors at ten o’clock at night. He gave the girl at the door a once over. “How old are you? You’ve gotta be 21 to get in these doors. No exceptions.” With a glance at the line behind her, he lowered his voice and leaned forward. “Alright, there is one exception. A small fee, generously small really. I don’t make the rules in this city. You’ve gotta know by now that money talks.”
Sansa nearly bolted right then, despite the expectant pair of hazel eyes staring out from beyond the hazy doorway. Even though Margaery warned her this might happen, told her not to worry, that it always worked out. An unlikely outcome, she thought, dozens of eyes boring into her, pressuring her to just get out of the way; those mirrored lenses, however, kept the girl rooted awkwardly along the threshold. “Fee?” When last someone offered up a generous solution, the bruises took over a week to fade. Blue eyes veering black in darkness narrowed. “I suppose we could work something out. My friend…she’s already inside, see? It would be shame to come all this way, so dressed up, with only a cab driver and doorman to appreciate it.”
should an exclusive partner go inactive for 1+ month, then i will become tentatively open to interactions with duplicates. when/if they return then exclusivity may resume.
