08: L’Importance du Temps

Alexandrie dug a hand into her pocket and took a step back into the trees to distance herself from Edgewater’s sons and shake the feeling that she was being watched. She couldn’t help but think that this kind of foolish behaviour didn’t happen when one had enough sleep, and it certainly didn’t happen when one took the appropriate amount of time to comport oneself. 

The hand slipped out of her pocket and she found herself examining it, critically.

“Take care of your hands,” Maman had once said, “and they will take care of you. We wash our faces and apply makeup to be seen for who we are and who we wish to be. Think of your hands the same way, but for touch. A gentleman will be able to read the story you tell with your hands.” 

‘But how, Maman?’ She lamented internally, frowning at chipped nail colour, ‘when Lucas keeps waking me at ridiculous hours and we never stay anywhere with appropriate facilities?’ 

She could almost hear Marie Donadieu’s no nonsense tone behind her. ‘Make time then, Alexa. Pull your head from the clouds and look at the world around you. There are things to be learned and things to be seen, and you won’t learn to see them if you don’t gain access to the right circles.’

At the time, Alexa had known she would need to leave eventually: La Chanson was becoming more insistent, and it had taken everything she had as the Song grew louder not to bite her nails to the quick with worry - if she had, Maman would have been able to pull a story from her mouth as deftly as Aquideon had from her fingers. She’d worried that social circles in Shining Capital would be just as important (if not more important) outside the city, worried that she wouldn’t be able to maintain her courtly style…that one had only somewhat come true. For all her complaining, her clothes were well tailored and ensured she could move easily. The single dress she’d carefully folded and placed in her pack was basic, a summer gown more than anything. Yes, it had been cold when they left, but it couldn’t be cold forever, and Alexa knew she would miss gowns (or need one) eventually.

And now they would be staying in a house befitting the Sinrou, perhaps she would get to wear it…feel at home, just for a little while. That Aquideon had known from a hand that she was Sinrou suggested a few things: he hadn’t been certain before (or he had and wanted to show off)… Either his movements were telling the truth about his own social circles, or he had a great deal of experience with hers. Both those thoughts begged more questions than they answered, especially with the way others treated him. Frankly, it was almost enough to bite her nails in thought.

She hadn’t bitten her nails since she was twelve. Six months before her first appearance in court, Maman had been firm but kind: No more roughspun breeches, no more adventures in the mud, no more biting nails or loose shifts, no more sneaking away from bodyguards. No, now it was fitted bodices in the colours of the house and silk gowns that broken nails would pull. Just to make a point, Maman would often hold a palm out to her much the way Aquideon had that morning, and check her hands for softness, nail shape and shine.

The worst part was that Alexandrie knew she’d become complacent in her time away from home. She hadn’t needed to follow courtly rules, and she had been beginning to enjoy the return to her childhood. Then the Ebon elf had caught her off guard, and Lucas had embarrassed her further. She glared at him and looked at the flower in her hands, an attempt at distraction. It was his fault she didn’t have time to do what she needed to, and he wasn’t worth the concern.

Taking a healthy step away from the wall, she spun the rose between her fingers, eyeing it suspiciously. She’d never seen one like it - but Grandmère had. Despite the morning sun, it almost glittered with darkness, stars on velveteen petals glinting at her. Almost magical. Certainly alive. Most definitely beautiful. A rare gift. 

La Chanson du Monde. 

Thinking of it felt…it felt fuller. Rounder. More whole. A little more complete. Not just La Chanson, but she herself. Despite how early it was, despite how she felt about her nails…

La Chanson du Monde filled her. 

Like a flower drinking sunlight, she tilted her face back and let the sun warm her. Two flowers they were. Did the rose between her fingers bloom by moonlight? Would it wilt in the sun? She opened her eyes regretfully and stared at the wall. What she could see of it stared back. For a girl so used to being watched, it made her very uncomfortable. As though she needed to justify her existence. Not something she was used to. Not really.

La Chanson du Monde. Why was Lucas suddenly so interested in it - in Chevalier’s abilities? Questions she’d never asked of him, or at least, not in that way. And certainly questions she’d never asked La Chanson. She was not in the habit of questioning the music she heard…though perhaps she should a little more.

The last few months had been so much about learning - learning how to do things, learning her own limits, learning about friendship, justice, equality - she hadn’t questioned things that were much closer to home. Like Chevalier. And Grandmère. And La Chanson. She had always been so grateful to hear it - to have the chance to finish what Grandmère could not - that she hadn’t questioned its origin, or its life cycle, or whether it was good, or even the idea that music was guiding her. It seemed obvious now, but when she’d first heard La Chanson it had not felt obvious at all. Maman knew Grandmère had heard a song. But it was one thing to know something was true and quite another to experience sentient music and simply accept that what it told you must be true.

Was La Chanson the same song as the feeling of the sun on her face? Was it what made this rose bloom? Was it the smiles on faces and the sound of rain on cobblestones or the smell of fresh bread or the last exhale of the dying? It was certainly entrancing and distracting and filling.

For everything she knew of La Chanson, she also knew she hadn’t heard all of it. It drove her to distraction - she knew more about it now, but not enough. Never enough. Was it possible to know the song of the whole world? And what did it need of someone as small as her?