St. Văduva's School for Prestigious Girls

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝕿𝖍𝖗𝖊𝖊

The next month dragged on like a snail across a leaf, daunting and uneventful. Temperance continued to get her affairs in order, paying off as many bills as she could without dipping too much into her savings, and working as much as humanly possible. Although, more often than not, she could be found in the employee bathroom either popping Ibuprofen like they were Tic-Tacs or vomiting up bile. Her coworkers were nice enough to look the other way, some going as far as to ask if she was pregnant. Of course, she always denied it, but they still kept eyeing her belly whenever she bent down to pick up a heavy box. She did not bother to correct them after they insisted on carrying out the tougher, more laborious jobs. Less hard work, the less taxing on her body. And she was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

All of her exhaustion and pain seemed to flee the moment the gilt-edged letter arrived in the mail, stamped with red wax with an ornate seal in the center. She had been sound asleep, laying on her stomach with her tangled hair sprawled across the pillow, one leg kicked out from under the torrent of blankets that piled so high that a human form was scarce to see. A shriek woke her up, her senses immediately on alert. She sprang from bed, eyes blurry and blood pumping as her brain took a moment to reboot, categorizing the scream as Constance's. Before she could act, Constance came barrelling through the door, letter in hand.

"It's here, it's here!" she screamed, waving the letter around.

Temperance gaped at her younger sister for a moment before she locked eyes on the letter, and the thought of the scholarship forced her to fully wake up. She snatched the envelope and stared at the front. Handwritten font, in sleek black ink, curled her name into something that looked precious.

"It's here... Oh..." She sunk onto the edge of the bed, eyes wide.

This was her deciding factor — if she got in, she would go to St. Văduva's; if not, she would tell Constance about the diagnosis and let whatever sadness and lifelong trauma make its way into the MacKenzie household.

Constance squirmed with excitement. "Jesus, Tempe, open it already! I'm dying over here!"

Temperance wet her lips with a quick jut of her tongue and stabbed her thumbnail into the space where the wax met the paper—

And lopped it off.

Her future was determined in the letter that was to be unveiled by shaking hands.

☽☼☾

She got to cross off flying from her bucket list, and she now knew that she hated it more than anything. Flying overseas for twenty-five-plus hours with a massive migraine, intense nausea, two flight changes, and an infant screaming on every plane right behind her is a combination that would make anyone want to leap from the itty-bitty window that overlooked the sea. But she refrained, beyond grateful when she was given a bag of earplugs and an eye mask on the last flight. She was also grateful that her nausea subsided for a glorious moment, allowing her to eat a rather large meal on the plane before she landed and departed the skies. Props to St. Văduva's for providing first-class plane tickets with their scholarship.

The goodbye send-off was emotional, to say the least. Constance was a crybaby on her best day, so this was not any better. Tears and snot and blubbered words that barely made any sense being absorbed into the crook of her shoulder. Temperance just smiled, patting her little sister on the top of her head and giving her promises of visiting as soon as the semester was over. Her stomach ached with the guilt of lying to her. Truth be told — something that she put off thinking about until she was sitting on the plane where she could sob in semi-private — this was likely the last time she would see Constance again. At the very least, it was the last time she would see her with a semi-coherent mind.