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InsectEmbroidery. ISOLDE POTTER circa '75
Sometimes, you just want / something so hard you have to lie about it, / so you can hold it in your mouth for a minute, / how real hunger has a real taste.
Ada Limón 𓅻 Bright Dead Things.
𝕴nside the ornate celebration hall, located in the London Borough of Islington, the aftermath of a wedding has taken place. It's the start of summer, the air heavy and dry enough to kindle any flame it touches. Isolde Potter sits at the dais of honor, utterly silent. She picks at a raw, red strip of skin. Though anyone can see the flesh of her ivory cheeks are flushed, it has no connection to the moment. Her cuticles are bloodied, all cut up—the result of being picked at for days. The cream dress she was wearing is notably not her mother's but is 'borrowed' nonetheless. Isolde finds herself staring up at the ceiling for long stretches of time and makes plenty of wishes. They unconsciously bubble from her mind—one standing out in particular—is that every crystal detailing the grandiose chandelier hanging above her head turns into raindrops. Something magical, something like her. Her gaze floats over the chandelier to the stained-glass window across her. Isolde begs for rain the way she won't beg for a savior. It's too warm she feels her lungs will shrivel up and she will rot like her father has been rotting.
Everything decent for Isolde comes when it rains.
It doesn't look like it will this day, though...
Her husband's family flutters around her. It's grating. It also is not lost on her how everyone does their best work to never touch her skin, lest they want their deepest secrets stolen. Her malediction since infancy that's labeled her peculiar. It's a known thing amongst those closest to the Dark Lord: no one can lie to Isolde and if she says so, then it is. It makes the inner circle wary of her. Good. Isolde has no charity for them. Still, the guests revelry make her believe perhaps someone has found some joy in this union. Enduring the cold stare from her mother-in-law across the room, perhaps they have not. Regardless, no one will see her as Isolde Potter anymore. Isolde is the noble Lady Black now, not Walburga, but far younger. More strange. More miserable. She is certain that this is how the Dark Lord wants her. At least, the self-important part of her head tells her this. The truth is much simpler but not less cruel... Marry Regulus Black and solidify her brothers' loyalty to the Dark Lord / Marry no one and doom them all...
