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Post by Rosalind on Jun 24, 2009 14:06:05 GMT -5
Rosalind and Alex had gone the rest of the way down the streets on foot, talking idly about whatever came to Rosalind's mind, which Rosalind recognized but was too stressed to really fully appreciate at the time. She knew, and was grateful, for the indulgence, but because it was helping so, she did not quite realize it was happening. Although their arms remained linked, the gesture slowly slid from being something two chaps might jauntily do on a short little sojourn down the street into something more specifically girlish, with Rosalind half-turned towards Alex as though going to bend her head and tell her a secret. It was not, that is to say, overpoweringly feminine, but was not something the usual man, fearful of discovering unmanly qualities in himself, would have done. In that, perhaps, it was fitting. Alex had all the good qualities of a young man without any of the hang-ups over his manhood. A better emblem of strength could not be had, at least in Rosalind's narrow experience. She was glad to have Alex to lean on then.
The hotel was indeed small and cramped, but did not exude poverty or beckon overmuch to the criminal elements of the city, and so plainly did not fright Rosalind in any way. Only once they'd gone in did Rosalind release Alex's arm, spirits clearly having been buoyed up again at the prospect of having a friend over, and she skipped up the stairs breathlessly, unlocked the door, and motioned Alex inside with a rigorous, yet elegant, wave of her arm.
It was a small room, half a wall separating the kitchenette from the bedroom, and as with many French buildings the toilet was down the hall, but having been lived in for even a comparatively short time by the living embodiment of perpetual good weather, it did not feel oppressive. Rosalind asked Alex if she wanted anything to drink, then told her she was going to wash her face before she had managed to get whatever drink Alex did request, and shrugged off her coat onto the bed before heading to the sink.
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Post by Alex on Jun 24, 2009 16:10:43 GMT -5
"If you have something," Alex said, because she never refused a drink. She stood examining the furniture and the view from the window--not that she could see much--and looking the place over. She'd seen worse, and she'd seen better, and it was just a place.
On the trip here, she'd attempted to entertain Rosalind by letting her speak of what she wished and avoiding anything she thought might dim the smile that was returning to her lips. She was not conscious of her suitability any more than their particular manner intruded upon her thoughts; she merely was, and more and more Alex was behaving like Alex without regard to what ought to have kept Alexander and Alexandra apart.
What she was conscious of was pleasure at being invited back to Rosalind's, at having a friend, at being a friend and her need to not inadvertently injure her again with careless words.
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Post by Rosalind on Jun 24, 2009 16:25:57 GMT -5
"There is some - um. Juice. Orange juice," said Rosalind as she splashed water on her face. "I'm going to have some myself, I think," she finished as she took the terry cloth towel draped over a countertop and patted her face with it somewhat gingerly. How quickly the fine Lady Rosalind had gotten used to this kind of mundane everyday life. Rosalind had been wealthy, but not so wealthy that life's necessities had been lost to her. Even so, the way Celia had adapted, it had occurred to Rosalind more than once that poverty - that even more extreme than anything she'd ever experienced - simply did not have that effect on her. And she supposed she'd already known that, too - she'd once aspired to sainthood, and those with a worse lot in life had stirred her from the start.
She was beginning to think she looked to life's rough-and-tumble aspects with a sense of adventure more than because she wanted to bring elegance to everything, however. This, though, was not something that bothered her unduly, for once.
She did not have two glasses, she realized with some surprise, and leaving the glass in, got out two baking utensils that could be used as cups so as to not look selfish or like a martyr.
Rosalind, it would be fairly clear to anyone who knew her, very much liked being in a home sphere. While not overly domestic, perhaps, not overly a lady, her love of a home atmosphere did have elements of her upbringing in it, and she was more at ease and careless there than anywhere else. Perhaps not happier; she did not feel the need to be any particular emotion. It was one place where no one expected anything of her.
Rosalind could not possibly know that that was to change.
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Post by Alex on Jun 26, 2009 1:03:02 GMT -5
Alex turned her attention to the window to watch Rosalind. Not minutely, not as if she were studying, but casually. Noting the way her movements seemed less self-conscious. She took the offered juice with thanks, only wishing it had something stronger in it out of habit. She did not truly wish to be drunk right now.
"It's nice," she said, gesturing to the room. "Cozy." She meant it, too, because despite her own upbringing Alex had adapted remarkably well to living within her means. She even preferred it, because to make a space her own had been something long denied her. And she recognized that here; that Rosalind had made it for herself.
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Post by Rosalind on Jun 29, 2009 14:17:24 GMT -5
Rosalind beamed at her, half-tossing a smile like a maid might toss an eyelash at a stablehand - as opposed to the more calculated fashion in which a girl would peer out from beneath them at a young man at court. "Gramercy, Alex," she said, eyes twinkling. "But - well. 'Tis still in a hotel. Even though I'd be doing the rent much the same there is something cozier about an apartment, or the thought of one."
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Post by Alex on Jul 8, 2009 10:35:19 GMT -5
Alex, it must be said, was rather more susceptible to the maid than the girl, but such a response was currently subconscious if it was there at all. She merely smiled back, broadly, certainly not a young man at court but perhaps not quite a stablehand, either. Her eyes still smiled as she sipped her juice.
"Of course," she said. "An apartment is that much more your own, but the importance of a space to oneself is never to be dismissed lightly."
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Post by Rosalind on Jul 8, 2009 12:54:29 GMT -5
"It isn't," agreed Rosalind, ponderingly, "although I am not entirely certain that's just it. I could be happy enough in a place that was crowded if it were still a place of my own. But a hotel is always - quite - temporary."
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Post by Alex on Jul 8, 2009 13:19:23 GMT -5
Alex nodded in agreement. "You'll find a place," she said, and in her voice and her expression was her hope that it would be close, and of long duration, because while Alex knew and liked a great many people the degree of knowing and liking was usually fairly shallow. It was unusual for her to want anything more than casual--friendship or otherwise--so meeting someone like Rosalind felt significant even amongst all her other acquaintances.
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Post by Rosalind on Jul 8, 2009 13:58:56 GMT -5
Rosalind's expression brightened, and although what precise change had occurred was imperceptible, it was a very great difference. "Yes," she said. She'd known that, but that wasn't really the point - switching from temporary to long-term was obvious to her. But it wasn't really making an impact unless it was making an impact on someone - and she couldn't have told this to Mercutio. She knew that instinctively. And outside of the two of them, Rosalind did not actually know anyone, a dimly disappointing and sad truth for someone who seemed so irrepressibly social and loyal a friend.
"How long have you been acquainted with the fair Lizzie?" asked Rosalind then, posture unconsciously conforming to cozied-up childlike listening, although there was something adult in it, something very mature, in the depths of her ability to listen. She was not asking to mock or fill up the silence, but because she did want to know. She did not suppose Alex would have mentioned Lizzie if they hadn't met her at the opera house, but she did not think that was because Alex was hiding anything.
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Post by Alex on Jul 8, 2009 14:13:25 GMT -5
Alex smiled fondly, part of her smile a little distant. She wasn't hiding anything. It was more that Lizzie occupied a very different place from the Opera, from Rosalind, even if she couldn't articulate quite how. She hadn't expected Lizzie. And integrating her into her life was proving more difficult than she might have thought--had she been thinking at all.
"Ah," she said. "She is lovely, isn't she? I happened upon her quite brazenly attempting to bathe, fully clothed, in a river. Naturally I could not allow such a thing to pass unwatched, and I may have startled her somewhat, but we got on grand after that. The thing about Lizzie, you see, is how shy and how brave she can be, all at once."
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Post by Rosalind on Jul 8, 2009 19:09:52 GMT -5
The corner of Rosalind's mouth twitched, as though she were about to smile, but had then become confused. With one eyebrow raised, her head tilted, she looked at Alex hard, her mouth pressed into a small, nearly-smiling bud.
Finally she burst out with, "Is that true?"
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Post by Alex on Jul 15, 2009 1:45:46 GMT -5
Alex stared at her openly, her own expression amused but delighted mostly with her own ability to perplex the girl into such charming confusion. Alex was no stranger to engendering that particular emotion, and she sometimes prided herself on it--though in this case, it was merely a byproduct and entirely unintentional.
"Which part?" she asked, genuinely confused herself. "Doesn't matter--it's all true. She's from someplace called Texas. I don't know how they live there, but it must be ever so grand. They produce such strange and wonderful people."
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Post by Rosalind on Jul 15, 2009 14:31:42 GMT -5
Rosalind repeated the word "Texas" half-wonderingly. She'd never been, nor even heard of a place with such a name, and even though she prided herself on her recently gained traveler's badge, she knew that wandering around the countryside by the forest of Arden was hardly traveling the world. Nonetheless, most places she had at least heard of; if a woman could be worldly through understanding the habits of people in other places, and in collecting maps, and seating herself at her father's table near the foreigners or those in from foreign lands and listening intently, than Rosalind was a mightly worldly girl, and she was not at all certain of what a Texas was.
"I suppose maybe you and she might visit there together," she ventured, this remark not making her feel bitter or jealous but, on the contrary, quite vicariously enthusiastic. "I do like the sound of other places, and have a habit of collecting companions from them like a cook collects spoons in her apron pockets."
It made her wonder if she and Alex would ever see Dublin together, if Mercutio would ever take them to Verona, if she'd ever convince her friends to go down to Arden. This last one she doubted, though she would enjoy it. Dublin and Verona were grand cities and her friends now lived in Paris, another one. They'd soon get tired of the Audreys and Phebes and long for the red-lipt women of bustling city taverns, and Rosalind would feel sheepish of sharing her love for shepherdesses with them.
And she couldn't imagine taking either to her father's court. Neither at all seemed the type for a lady. It made her wonder what she was doing with them, and if her definition of herself should be so narrow.
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Post by Alex on Jul 20, 2009 13:41:22 GMT -5
"Perhaps we might," Alex said vaguely, not having really thought about it before. But she smiled at Rosalind's next comment. "I do hope I get to be your first Irish-English mongrel," she said. She drummed her fingers gently on the arm of her chair, her manner now not quite wistful though she spoke of courses abandoned, perhaps for good. "I should have liked to introduce you to my country, as you seem to love travel and there's a great deal to be said for it. But I do not think my family would welcome me back, as I am now. What I was then was enough to drive everyone, myself included, to distraction and, eventually, here. Well, myself, anyway. They remained, I think, where and as they were."
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Post by Rosalind on Jul 29, 2009 17:07:13 GMT -5
Rosalind shook her head like a little beast that had gotten something stuck to its ear and was trying like mad to get it off and then folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them, her hair newly mussed and looking as though she were indeed a country maid. One might have inspected it for twigs, suspecting she'd gone for a run in the forest - or hay, assuming she had been very kind to a stable lad recently.
"I can promise you'll be my first, but alas, can't swear you shall be my last," said Rosalind with a little smile and a quirk of the eyebrow. "Lord knows what I would get up to in Dublin with you." She had a feeling Alex would be doing half the prompting, though, and therefore absolved herself of all guilt at the admission.
The conversation had gone somewhere pertinent again; it had a funny way of doing that. Unlike Mercutio, however, tonight speaking of her own family did not distress her. But it did make her curious.
"It is a strange matter, this growing-up business," said Rosalind, frowning in thought. "I wonder how it works? They tell us when we're little more than a thimbleful of adult what we can expect, and then it doesn't happen like that. I always thought leaving the family happened when one was wed. Marriage to a man gives you a new name, a new life, a new role in it. Perhaps I am wed, by definition. To Ganymede. Why not? This marriage does give me a new name. A new part to play."
Her voice got distant as she faded off into distraction, pondering this. "We are not altogether very mature, are we, any of us?"
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