Parrlay
9 years of age
The dressing chamber was vast enough to swallow her whole. Walls panelled in dark wood, polished until they reflected the lamplight. High windows veiled with gauze draperies, faint evening sun seeping through in pale ribbons. The smell of beeswax and starched linen mingled with the faint aroma of old wine. In the centre of it all, a resplendent dais no larger than a hearthrug, where she was meant to stand as if on display.
Thessaly’s slippers sank into the plush carpet, but she held herself rigid. Her chubby chin was lifted, hands folded just so in front of her skirts. The seamstress circled, pins clenched between her teeth, tugging and smoothing. She muttered, probably about the girl's chubby face. Now and then a sharp sting pricked against Thessaly’s arm or waist, but she didn’t flinch. To move was to fail. And failure was not accepted.
Remus Veruna sat across the room, a broad-backed chair angled toward the mirror. He didn’t face his daughter. Instead, his gaze lingered instead on his own reflection, as though the evening’s preparation were his alone. A half-empty glass of red rested on the arm of the chair, catching the glow of the candelabras. He was speaking, not to Thessaly, but over her, around her, as though she were a mannequin brought in for the seamstress’ hands.
"Too pale," he observed lightly, and the seamstress made a low sound of agreement, "the jaw is weak. She has none of her mother’s symmetry. A pity. We will have to put her in deeper tones, something to divert the eye. Rubies, perhaps. Or a darker emerald. The cut must draw attention downward, away from the face."
The seamstress bobbed her head, quick and eager. She murmured something about fabrics from Theed, the possibility of concealing the line of the chin with clever collars.
Remus went on, as if cataloguing a ledger. "And the hair…limp. It will never hold a crown properly. No matter. There are ways of compensating. A clever braid, a jeweled comb." He sipped his wine and waved vaguely in Thessaly’s direction. "She must not embarrass us."
Not me, but us. Yet he had not once looked at her.
The words fell like pebbles in a pond. Ripples of emotion spreading and circling inside her chest. Thessaly’s nine-year-old eyes fixed on the sharp-edged mirror before her, on the small figure reflected there. Pale skin. Wide eyes. A mouth pressed into a thin line, bloodless from how firmly she clamped it shut. She told herself she would not cry. Not here. Not now. Tears were a waste of energy, he said.
So, she locked her knees, even when they ached. She straightened her spine, even as the pins bit into her skin. She forced herself to grow taller, if only by a fraction, as if an inch more height might tip the scales of judgment.
The seamstress fussed. The governess whispered reminders. Remus’ voice drifted through the air like smoke. His words curling, insubstantial, but suffocating all the same. He did not notice the way she steadied her breath, the way she counted each exhale to keep the sting in her eyes from breaking loose. He did not see the child struggling to become the statue he seemed to want.
Later, when she thought back to that night, she would not remember the dress they chose, nor the event itself. Only the critical hush of the chamber and the scrape of pins. And his voice, never once meant for her, carving its verdicts as though she were absent even when she stood before him.
It was then, without realising, that she began to learn. Men like Remus Veruna got what they wanted because they made what they wanted out of the dross they were handed.
And somewhere beneath the surface, the wound became a scar.
When she grew...she would never be...invisible.
