Satine [ONGOING]

GABRIELLE (VI)

Thursday June 20th, the equally dreaded and anticipated day of one of the many annual celebrations in Servoz. This marked the end of the lambing season, each farmer would – if they could — bring down their preferred lamp with their mother. There would be a competition: Who had the best one? Then there would be music sung by the church choir and the makeshift band they could make up out of the villagers. Gabrielle's mother was a pianist, she was always a part of it. She was also a regular church-goer and enthusiast, so she was also very much a part of it, this meant that by extension, Gabrielle was used to lending a hand to her parents in the preparations of this event. In light of recent events she was expected to carry a heavier load than usual. They presented it as the last thing she had to do for them to make up for her small-scale school scandal.

"Chérie, help Monsieur Decroz with the tables will you?" Her mother asked as she passed by her daughter with a box of decorations from last year. Gabrielle was trying to set up the small boxes for every single lamb and sheep that was expected to arrive. She sighed deeply.
"Can I at least finish this?"
"Oh you better finish this." Her mother informed her, turning back around with a determined heel in the ground. Gabrielle rolled her eyes. Until four o'clock this day would be akin to the fiery pits of hell. Her friends were up getting their lamb in the Alpage, she would not see them until the late afternoon, and there was not a soul she wanted to talk to in the entire field. Not to mention that every time she passed by a group of people they were either whispering about her, or about war. The fact her little school project was mentioned in the same breath as imminent german invasion just showed just how odd the priorities of a rural town such as this one could be. Gabrielle never understood the fascination people had with gossip. She used it to her advantage regularly because she wasn't completely daft, however, the appeal of it in of itself was utterly incomprehensible to her. She didn't care what people thought about her, and she certainly did not care what Madame Moulin had or had not done the night before. Seeing as it made her upset too, to the point of locking herself within the walls of her home, the young girl did not understand it and she was happy not to contribute to other people's misery. Perhaps this was a symptom of being Satine Dumont's little sister, the runaway of the century had given her the sour taste of gossip too early. It sometimes felt like a disease showing its face again and again to make Gabrielle's life complicated. As for the war, she avoided the topic as it made her physically sick to hear the details of all those exiles from Paris, apparently being attacked by the germans, running out of food and water, digging ditches for each other on the side of the road. There was no way for her to check any of it was true, which allowed her imagination to run rampant. A light breeze caught in her brown hair and she shivered.She reached for her hammer again and got back to work, knocking some wooden spikes into the ground. There were still marks from the autumn celebrations, she thought back to the divine taste of apple cider, bubbling in her mouth. At this lambing party there would be none of it, as they had no apples to make it with yet, or as Monsieur Frank — the butcher would have said: it would have a bitter taste to it, wouldn't it? Instead they would have berry pies lining the tables of the wooden stalls around the fields, as well as freshly baked bread, all burnt in the same oven across the village just a few hours before. Though she hated the preparation of each and every one of their village traditions, the young woman was still looking forward to one, or maybe two things: Music and dancing. Paul, despite his young age, was a brilliant singer and dancer, and it was Gabrielle's pleasure to give him a dance every single year. Clémentine often told her that she deserved the sister of the year award for how incredibly lovely she had always been to him. Gabrielle didn't know how else she could treat him. They shared, parents, a home, a room, blood and they always had. She did not remember a world where he was not present. Between wiping a few old wooden counters and pulling up decorations all around the wide field by the church she thought of a few things, particularly her sister. There was a strange feeling in the back of her head as if she was closer than she ever had been. She boiled it down to nostalgia, Satine had been a dancer, a singer and this would have been her day to thrive. She would have accompanied her mother on the Piano and used her perfectly trained voice to sing a few songs, but sometimes this feeling overstepped its usual boundaries, she would feel a light breeze and suddenly turn around thinking she would see those blue eyes staring back at her. Of course, other than grass, lamb and mountains there was nothing. After a few hours, the frustration brought by this feeling tingled in her fingers. It was unbearable to feel like she was here.