forgotten

[mute_pen]

It's past dark, but when you need the outhouse, you need the outhouse.

Isabel picks her way across the yard of her father's house in the moonlight, hoping to sneak back into bed without waking him.

Comments

[pythbox]

The front door of the castle is enormous, forbidding, and closed.

There are other doors.

[mute_pen]

Etty... considers the value of information very high right now.

She tries a side door.

[pythbox]

The side door creaks rustily open.

[mute_pen]

Etty slips in with as little creaking as she can manage, judges the wind gentle enough not to slam the door shut if she declines to re-close it, and proceeds into the castle cautiously.

[growcrooked]

In the distance, someone is crying.

[mute_pen]

...

Etty follows that sound.

[growcrooked]

It leads her, with a few acoustic detours, to a room at the top of a tower. It's a beautiful room, containing beautiful furniture and a beautiful canopied bed, and in the bed is a girl who may or may not be beautiful under normal circumstances but is currently red-eyed and tear-streaked and cocooned in a tangle of beautiful sheets.

[mute_pen]

"...Hello," breathes Etty.

[growcrooked]

She blinks and sniffs and looks at Etty.

"Oh," she says, her voice wavering. "You must be the new one."

[mute_pen]

"...I guess."

[growcrooked]

The girl wipes her face distractedly with one hand and swings her legs over the edge of the bed, not particularly bothered that her sheet cocoon is gradually sliding off.

"Did he bring you just now?"

[mute_pen]

"Tonight. I don't know how many minutes. I walked around the lake first."

[growcrooked]

She nods.

"Why'd you come up here?"

[mute_pen]

"I was - exploring - and I heard you."

[growcrooked]

"Nobody else ever did that."

[mute_pen]

"They can't have all been so - despairing as to not even look for tools to get away in the obvious places. Can they? Whatever they are now." A shudder of fear goes through her. "Will that happen to me?"

[growcrooked]

"It takes years," says the stranger. "Years and years. I don't know how many. And then when you're too far gone he'll find another one."

[mute_pen]

"What are we for?"

And -

"They all look my age."

[growcrooked]

"So do I," she snorts. "It doesn't mean anything. You're for the Baron. I don't know what he does with you; I've never looked."

[mute_pen]

"Who are you, why are you here?"

[growcrooked]

"The Baron is my father."

[mute_pen]

"Oh."

[growcrooked]

"I hate him," she adds. "I want to kill him. But we're both immortal, as long as there's a flock..."

[mute_pen]

"He told me how to break the curse, for some reason, but even if I assume he's telling the truth..."

[growcrooked]

"Of course he did. He's not going to let you do it. The last time a man fell in love with Odette, he wrapped me in spells and made me go seduce him."