Star's Crossing

57: A Quiet Dreamer

Alison Watt was a quiet dreamer. Raised in the shadow of three male cousins, this was only to be expected, despite the breeding, intelligence, and estate of both herself and her mother.

When Alison was young, she had realized her first love was solitude. Like Mare she loved books and art; like her mother she loved travel; like Teddy she was a secret scholar, like Geoffrey she craved wildness and the just off-color, like Camden she thought it best if she hid her true desires and lived behind a mask. Hers was not one of cruelty or confidence, but kindness and soft words, and it was forged from truth of her character, and softened for the demure but rigid bidding of society.

Alison felt that she was crafted of other parts, few or none her own. She took her cues from others, like a marionette awaiting the tug of the string. She spoke second or third, and answered when asked.

She was unsure if she'd have lived this way under different circumstances. If her compass had pointed north and not south, would she be a strong-spoken woman of conviction and pride? Had her unselected predilections defined her path? Her very soul?

She touched her feathered mask the afternoon of the ball, and decided so much could not be considered alone. She'd been teaching children at the schoolhouse most days this summer, both to keep from under father's feet and to avoid the inevitable questions after her postponing courtship, and had a crate of books to deliver for the store.

Alison considered the pale dress in the corner, then stood and tied on her boots.

The woods were heartbreakingly fine in early autumn, rendered in lavish strokes of gold and umber and brass, and though the sun had already begun its low pitch, it gilded every blade of grass and falling leaf as it went. Alison was alone on the path and deeply grateful for it, and she hoisted her crate on one hip and traced the trees with her fingers.

Alison did not dread society in general, but as she'd grown the parlor meetings and sandwiches and teas had become so predictable and dreary she thought she'd go mad. It was lucky, then, she'd grown smiling and gentle-spirited, and was not expected to lead the party but for rare occasions, on which she rose to the occasion. If only to dispel unwanted attention, of course.

It was as she became a woman in the societal sense of the word that she realized she quite loathed it. Attention and eyes, business shared over hedges and penned letters and imported brandy. Everyone knew everyone's everything, and Alison wanted nothing but silence, a view through a window, and perhaps a bit of rain.

And her.

Alison closed her eyes as she walked, unsurprised but terrified all the same as heat coursed over every inch of her skin. There was no universe in which Alison lived a moment without thinking of her. The cold blue flame of her presence, the warm press of her lips, the light in her amethyst eyes.

Lilith Gilbert was the impossible reality, like a dream come to life with waking. She was everything, and could only be nothing.

Alison considered Mare's writing. She'd read her letters in the paper with an insatiable appetite. Sometimes the exchanges were demure, childish even, and sweet as blossom honey. Others were deep anguished wells, and later, thinly-veiled laments of desire. Those were the words that stirred Alison at the party, in the garden, when her white-haired angel had appeared amongst the roses.

Angel—no. That wasn't right. Lilith was not white silk and pale feathers; she was steel armor, a knight and knife. She was hard ice and the spring petal as it fell, fathom after fathom, to where the rest of the world walked.