THE SICKNESS.

The seed.

Conversation became easier once Lucille and Nilou came to terms with the fact that they were stuck together. Where words had been barbed between the two girls before, they now gently crossed the fence and met first one then the other's ear. After Lucille's sudden brush with death and the whispered promises between the two girls when she awoke, it went unspoken but understood that though they were standing at different heights  on the ladder of society,  they were unmistakeably tied to each other even with the distance between the rungs. In the time it took Lucille to fully recover her strength and leave her rooms, they'd learned more about each other than either one of them had ever hoped to reveal. Lucille learned that Nilou enjoyed the different scented oils she applied n her skin and she was especially fond of the mellow lavender one in the lacquered green glass bottle on Lucille's dresser. It was the one that she picked each time Lucille refused to pick an oil for herself. She'd massage the scent into Lucille's supple skin and then raise one hand to her own face and breathe it in deeply. Then, a little smile would grace her lips and soften every feature of her face until she looked someone Lucille did not quite know. On the days Lucille wore a cloud of lavender essence on her skin, Nilou stood just a little closer to her bed and her fingers lingered imperceptibly on Lucille's own. Lucille, if she had received a different upbringing from her own, would have offered Nilou all the lavender in the world if she would only smile at her with the same softness the lavender evoked.

Nilou learned that Lucille enjoyed sitting on the wooden floor of her rooms in the same singular spot where the sun gave its delicate gift of warmth everyday. At first Nilou had tried to stop her from doing so, citing the current fragility of her  health and the meagreness of the warmth the winter sun gave.
"Wouldn't you rather sit by the fire young miss? Surely you'll be warmer there."
But the look in Lucille's eyes put a swift stop to any such suggestions. It wasn't the haughty imperiousness of a princess or the strange cruelty of a privileged young mistress, which where the two expressions Nilou most associated with Lucille. No, it was that subtle melancholy that Nilou had first seen while watching Lucille interact with her mother that first day she had arrived at house D'avencourt. A strange expression of such intense longing that always disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, a shadow of someone or something else lurking in the abyss of her persona. Nilou felt a strange movement in the pit of her chest whenever she saw Lucille's eyes turn that glassy, unseeing gray. She didn't bother replying to Nilou's offer to sit by the fire and simply turned back to face the window and the cheerless view of her home's bleak surroundings. Winter had taken any inkling of life that the horizon usually offered it's sole observer and left her a seemingly endless white wasteland to gaze upon.
Nilou thought Lucille seemed so different in those moments, as though there was another Lucille that temporarily took over her body and emptied it of its usual vitriol. She seemed softer and not all together there in the way she usually was. The rays of fleeting sun  that found their way into the room always turned her hair into a halo of vermilion light, as though a dying flame was gently meeting its bitter end on Lucille's scalp. Sometimes the urge to bury her face in the other girls throat and breathe in the cinnamon scent of her misery where her blood turned the hollow of her neck pink descended forcefully upon Nilou. She held herself back with the knowledge of the absurdity of the thought and the gallows that awaited any servant that acted on such impulse. That was the problem it seemed, the more she learned about Lucille, the more difficult she found it to stop herself from feeling things she wasn't supposed to feel.  She learned that like the older D'avencourt, Lucille's outward persona was an act of self defense against a reality she believed would surely consume her, she learned that Lucille preferred her tea to be as sweet as it could possibly be without stopping her heart, she learned that the young mistress did not just enjoy walking through those awful gardens but knew the names of all the plants and trees and kept extensive diaries of all her findings with beautifully illustrated pages detailing her favourite bits of knowledge. These discoveries were relatively tame compared to the ones that often kept Nilou awake at night. It disturbed her to learn that Lucille's skin always warmed and took on the texture of smooth caramel when she was in the bath. That her porcelain complexion took on pinkish hues when the rooms temperatures dropped with the setting sun. In the candlelight by which Nilou prepared her for bed, Lucille's  eyes glimmered and her hair shone like that of some bewitching winter spirit. In her sleep, which was never sound or peaceful, Lucille always let out soft pleading sounds that tortured Nilou in ways she did not know how to address. In those moments, she'd sneak closer to Lucille's body as it twisted and turned amongst the covers as though attempting to escape whatever dreams plagued her sleep, and pat the sleeping girl on her head. She whispered words of meaningless comfort until Lucille settled once more against her pillows. Those stolen moments of vulnerability she witnessed nearly every night and the other tidbits she'd managed to pick up and fit into the tapestry of who her young mistress was, were starting to evolve into a heady need beneath her skin. It both terrified her and exhilarated her.