silk / elena & lucy

by **lindarkness** Wed May 13, 2015 7:19 pm

Long, delicate fingers lifted the brush from the table, her knuckles whitening with the strength of her grip.

Though she was standing right behind her, Lucy could see her cousin's pale blue eyes staring right into her through the mirror in front of them. Elena might have tried to appear distracted, simply looking straight ahead because there was nothing else to look at, the girl knew better than to trust such appearances. She could feel her gaze upon her like needles in her skin, could feel it pushing against her every movement like an invisible pool of quicksand, dragging her down.

Her heart was racing more and more the closer she came to touching the young woman sitting in front of her, but, still, in her mind she was aware that there was no reason for any such anxiety; the action she was performing was mundane more than anything in this setting, the occasion they were preparing for a happy one.

Her cousin was getting married.

Dear Victoire, so unlike her, had been giddy with excitement for the last few weeks. Everyone who met her in that time was bound to be awestruck by that development. It was as though the woman had grown even more beautiful - if that was even possible.

Victoire outshined everyone, in a very real sense. Every room she entered, every mile she walked, she painted yellow like happiness. Everything about her was as warm and illuminated as could be, put her in the centre, and demanded all attention.

It was of no question that people loved being around her, Lucy herself included. She marvelled at how easy it was to move next to her. All you had to do was smile, and nobody there would look at you too closely, nobody would think to judge you. Victoire's presence was mesmerizing enough to keep a whole crowd occupied, so bright, shiny, and beautiful it almost hurt your eyes and yet, it left you unable to take your eyes off her.

People thought it must have been her Veela roots, but they forgot how neither Dominique not their mother had quite the same effect to them. Though maybe, she mused, it was only herself who was more attuned to these things than others might have been.

There was something contagious about Victoire. Her warmth, the shining light that emerged from her even when she was being angry or sarcastic. It made Lucy feel like she, too, could transform herself, that her heart could become a gentle place once more.

See! See, just the way she thought about her - as though they were at all close, like they had ever exchanged more than just a few easy, polite conversations. The two barely knew each other, they were friendly acquaintances at best, apart from being related - and yet, the impression she had made on her was much greater.

Lucy was the evening star, a soft light in the depth of the fresh night sky, a subtle chill, far away and barely noticeable in her gentle beauty, just the way she liked it. Victoire was the sun on a hot summer's day, fiery and bright and all-consuming.

Of course, she was also gorgeous. Her tall, slim figure, je natural blush of her cheeks, her hair, flowing down her head like waves, yellow as the corn in late September.

A stark contrast to the hair she was tending to right now.

Her back was stiff.

With her thoughts back toward the reality of the situation, Lucy found it difficult to breathe the same air as the girl, as she moved the brush through her long, golden hair, yet nothing about the action felt soothing or natural to her at all. Instead, with every touch it was as though she was being repelled with small static shocks, telling her to back off and leave the room.

Doing Elena's hair had created a new kind of uneasiness in the bottom of her stomach, like vertigo. It unsettled her to think of what an intimate connection she had with that action, how cold and dark and stiff this event had turned it - just as Elena herself unsettled her, though she could not quite get a hold of why she felt that way.

She was struck with a memory of sitting in the grass of the garden behind their home. Still now, she could imagine the sunlight on her skin, and the smell of daisies surrounding them as she sat there for hours, braiding her sister's hair, and decorating it with ribbons and flower. They had only been children, but even then Lucy had felt there was a certain significance to the action, a certain warmth, a certain affection, a certain kind of intimacy that she didn't want to share with anyone else in the world - not like that at least. And the girl had took a great delight in doing her sisters hair as often as she could.

Until Molly had cut it all off, and never spoke to her again.

Lucy swallowed, and put the brush away again. She didn't need to be thinking about this right now, less she accidentally drop her neutral expression. If too much of her uneasiness became noticeable, she would have regretted it. With great care, she looked back down at her fingers and began styling Elena's hair. It was soft, and shiny, yet cold to the touch, and Lucy had to suppress a shiver as she started to put her full attention toward it.

The atmosphere was oppressive. So much of it just did not sit right with her, and it was more than just the lack of intimacy that was missing in this situation. It was the silence that hung in the air, sitting heavily on her shoulders, almost daring her to break it. It was the way that Elena had sat there, perfectly still, not even moving the slightest muscle since she had started with her, like a porcelain figurine in the cabinet. It was her unyielding gaze in the mirror, her cold blue eyes watching her, unblinking.

She felt like her whole being was put on display.

Still, she could not help but admire Elena's hair. It was long, yet barely tangled at all, instead flowing down her shoulders in a neat river, never once rebelling against the brush. Its natural blonde colouring neither too bright nor too dull to be pretty. There was a gentle shimmer to it, only noticeable in a certain light. And it was soft and smooth to the touch.

Like silk.

In China, they bred a peculiar species of moth. At first sight, it didn't seem like anything special at all, in fact, she had heard it was quite ugly and a frightening and bothersome creature to find in our household. And yet, the people treasured it and bred it in large farms for it had the unique ability to form a very precious kind of fabric: silk, a few inches of it for every single moth. But of course, that came with a price, for the threads they formed came with very different purposes for the moth itself than for the human who sought to use it. In order to obtain an undamaged thread of silk, you needed to kill the creature living inside of it.

Thousands of them must have been slaughtered, to get hair like that.

"You have lovely hair", she said with a small smile.