#allc.m

“oh, darling!” she unfolds like a mathematician’s right angles in disarray, a musical silver triangle breaking apart at the corners into a mess of sleek limbs. “listen, we need you -” she leads by example towards the colourful cardboard square resting on a red velvet automan. “we’re playing strip poker -- well, really it’s strip life, because we couldn’t find any cards, but anyway --” 

in the course of hours, marguerite had folded herself into the shape of a lady. over the past few months, she had made attempts to fill in the meat of her with salt and fat that matched that sketch. but despite all these hours of improvement and half-made efforts, the instant she spotted delfina from across the room, she was a young girl wobbling out from a mangled red convertible, vomiting on the side of the round looking at an unmoving body.

peter pan didn’t have the monopoly on not growing up. there were other ways about it.

it’s a funny thing, how grief and rage can be an anaesthetic or a driving force. like how marguerite could walk deliberately and quickly across the room towards a girl she’d once adored, then reviled, and feel next to nothing at all. she stops short, quick, like the point of a match dragged along the floor.

“delfina.”

marguerite had long hated the phrase what a small world. even from the time she was a child, she had grown upset at the idea that the earth -- the only thing they had -- was tiny enough to warrant such an expression. she wanted grandeur, she wanted largesse, she wanted unexplored places and nooks to hide when she felt like it. and yet if you stood in genovia’s grand ballroom right at this moment and time, perhaps the phrase would have been excusable, even to her. in the least, science could concede that the epicentre of the world had shifted. and naturally, with it, marguerite grimaldi and madeline baek had once more slid -- like marbles, like magnets -- to the centre of the board. both gravitating to the princess in a crown at the top of the staircase.

she hadn’t known her ex -- ex-lover, ex-girlfriend, ex-something -- had been in the palace confines, but hearing her name announced by the staff upon arrival had been like dropping something down marguerite’s dress: no matter how she moved, she was aware it was there. and she had such a need to pull it out and take a look.

“well.” her hand slides up madeline’s back as she rounds from behind her, having made her way from across the room. old familiarities die hard. “i always knew we had similar taste.”

growth after adulthood, it would seem, was less like stretching taller and a great deal more like little fists pushing at the inside of ones ribcage: at times painful, at others merely an annoyance. the resistance of old vices and patterns since arriving at genovia hadn’t been entirely seamless, but for all the things she’d resisted, she allowed herself indulgence in the boutiques. shopping, surely, no political advisor or peer could fault her for. returning to the nondescript black town car parked on the side of the street, marguerite instructs the shop attendants to place the bags in the trunk before removing her phone from her pocket. the screen prevents her from early recognition -- it isn’t until she’s slid inside and had the door closed after her that the princess realizes she’s joined a man rather than solitude. “oh --”

even with the yards of her feather cape taken off after grand entry, marguerite had been unable to shake off the feeling and slight discomfort that this was the most fabric she had worn since youthful teenage years. even with the exposed décolletage and high slit, she was used to a great deal less silk. she thumbs the pearl at the base of her necklace and wonders, absently, what mignonette had thought of her -- and the rest of the room. her reverie is only broken when she spots princess olivia, who she drops her wistfulness for in an instant to approach. “olivia!” mags exclaims once close enough, leaning in to faux-kiss each of her cheeks before taking her wrists and spreading the younger woman’s arms outwards in a gesture of observation. “you are an absolute doll.”