Delulu realms

While I initially laughed the whole matter off, it soon became painfully apparent that Morena was, in fact, entirely serious about her demand. Resigned to the prospect and unwilling to jeopardize the fragile peace we had only just established through considerable effort and goodwill, I conceded—right up until she revealed the dress she had chosen for me.

To this day, I struggle to describe the particular shade of purple without feeling personally offended by the color.

It was an amalgamation of fabrics in several variations of it, none of them flattering, assembled with the specific confidence of someone who has never once been told their taste is questionable. Enormous puffy sleeves. A collar so high and so thoroughly closed that Morena cheerfully informed me it would provide a modest frame for the painting, as though modesty were the quality I was most urgently in need of and as though the collar's architectural ambitions were a point in its favor rather than a reason for immediate concern.

I remember staring at her in growing disbelief, the dismissal already forming on my tongue, before turning instinctively towards Gale.

He said nothing.

He did not need to. His eyes performed the entire argument on his behalf—a single eloquent plea for me to endure this particular indignity for the sake of domestic harmony, delivered with the specific expression of a man who understood he was asking a great deal and was asking anyway.

I rolled my eyes and surrendered.

Eleven hours later, I was still sitting upright on that miserable stool, attempting not to move while the paintress worked with an unhurried thoroughness I might have admired under any other circumstances. Gale's hand rested on my shoulder throughout, steady and reassuring in the way his presence always was, his family crest ring catching the light whenever he shifted his weight. His wedding band sat beside it on his middle finger and for all my complaints about the collar and the sleeves and the precise shade of purple that had been inflicted upon me, that small detail remained oddly comforting—a fixed point in an otherwise deeply undignified day.

Eventually, the paintress stepped back, declared herself satisfied with a finality that brooked no discussion and announced that she was finished.

The abomination of purple sartorial severity now hangs in our hallway.

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