Ava and the Glass Wish | Updated Fridays

Chapter Two

Being pinched, prodded, nagged, and nitpicked had never been one of Ava's favorite activities, but here she was anyway. She'd been standing for at least an hour, or at least it felt like an hour, as the seamstress directed her to turn this way and that, as she pulled fabric in and out, to better suit Ava's shape.

If it could be done, it would hide also how Ava's frame had gone in and out and back again in interesting ways in the past year.

Her mother, ever the optimist, had Ava stand for fitting a year ago, thinking that Ava would at least have a ball to go to, or a tea with a suitor, a promenade, anything really. This would've in turn led to more fittings and more dresses because she surely would've caught someone's eye at a ball or charmed someone at tea, or accidentally tripped into a nobleman at market. This would've required more dresses, more fittings, not just because Ava could never fall without a stain but also because wouldn't a nobleman want a pretty lady on his arm? Except, of course, none of that happened.

Ava attended no balls. She attended no teas, except for the ones hosted by elderly ladies or ladies who had little interest in men, let alone finding a husband. She remained mostly steady on her feet. She tripped in the market plenty, but she was always wearing sensible shoes and sensible trousers, and Ava had half a mind to think that her mother might have even wished that she really ruined a dress or two. At least then that would mean Ava tried and failed to get someone's attention rather than having never tried and therefore failed.

And so, the seamstress had last year's measurements. Which wouldn't be a problem for most girls of nearly twenty, if Ava was not her father's daughter.

She'd grown three inches over the winter, and built muscle on her forearms and shoulders, mainly from helping lift ingredient boxes and from sparring with her younger brother and father. Her hips widened and her face slimmed, and she was now half-worker, half-woman. Outwardly, if you draped her in enough fine cloth, Ava could make play at being a lady, but once you got close to her, with her callused hands and the sureness of her footwork, she seemed less lady than her mother would like.

To be fair, there was plenty in the world that her mother didn't like, and she found lots of them in Ava. Some part of Ava couldn't blame her, but the part of her that was no longer a child, no longer her mother's shadow and shame, fought back.

"I think the pale lavender would go lovely with her hair," Ava's mother was saying for the hundredth time. The seamstress shook her head.

"She is not a pale lavender. She is not a broody winter or a gentle spring. She is an autumn! Look at her! Born in summer, tanned like summer, but a complexion of autumn! She needs something bolder, with more punch, like the falling of leaves or a dramatic sunset to go with her dramatic features." The seamstress spread her hands for emphasis. Gods she hoped that wasn't in reference to her hips.

Ava's mother curled her lip and Ava turned back to staring off into the middle distance through the shop window. They'd been having some variation of this argument for the entire fitting. The seamstress wanted Ava in red, orange, or "meadow" green to pull out her olive tones, darkened eyes, and natural tan. Ava's mother wanted her in something more feminine and gentle. Light pinks, purples, and blues were mentioned. 

Secretly, Ava thought the seamstress may be more on her side than her mother was. There was something to be said for contrast, and if the contrast of red blood on white fabric, or yellow stars at midnight were anything to go by, then a pale pink would not hide her skin nor the stain of her red, full lips.

Really though, Ava did not care a fig for either option. If anyone cared to ask, her favorite color was yellow, like the golden hue of her father's spectacles, or the sun dipping into the ocean by the pier. Yellow was summer and sunshine. It was hope. It was dawn. It warmed her skin and made her yearn for laying in a green-filled meadow, to listen to the buzz of insects, to read until it was time to go home. Yellow also would not look good on her. Or maybe it would?