#frances

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　𓏲𝄢　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

In the unspoken war of dehumanization, Frances didn’t anticipate the non-human breaking first.

It had been about a month since the two of them had settled into their fragile routine. Every day, in the late hours of morning, she would show up at the cottage like clockwork. Her arms would be laden with a basket of leftover goods from the morning’s baking and the weight of her mother’s disapproving stare as she slipped out and left her to mind the bakery again. Every day, the White Lady—‘Eirys,’ she called herself, like the flowers with which she shared an aspect of strange beauty—would meet her at the door without Frances announcing herself.

She would be led inside, welcomed into a space furnished so normally yet decorated with such alien paraphernalia that her heart fluttered at the thought of bumping against the wrong shelf and setting off a chain reaction beyond fathom. The basket would end up in the corner of the cottage holding the kitchen, and the two of them would end up at the round and rough-hewn table a few feet over that served as sole demarcation of ‘dining and study area’.

The White Lady would skim through tomes and scrolls at record speed, fiddling with arcane artifacts with such carelessness that Frances’ abdominal muscles were nearly back to their knightly prime purely from clenching with anxiety. She would move through texts at a much slower speed and take notes of what she thought was relevant, citing sources as best she could. It was hard to know what was relevant—even now, the White Lady hadn’t let her in on what exactly her schemes were, and Frances hadn’t asked.

(Truly, she hadn’t expected her actions to lead to this. She had only meant to take a look at the White Lady’s work to scan for nefarious plots, and had expected to be barred from it with a shout, or a shove, or a spell. But none of that happened, and Frances kept reading, intrigued by the subject matter, and she started to write things down honestly to just wrap her own head around it, but its not like they were going to do her any good, and now… Now she supposed she was a research assistant. Paid in knowledge, complimentary lunch, and the opportunity to keep an eye on… whatever was happening here. She only knew it had to do with finding… something. And she wasn’t sure how much more than that she wanted to know.)

They were just starting to reach the point of a routine morning where the White Lady would remember that humans had needs involving food and drink when Frances realized the woman was no longer sitting across from her as she had been a moment ago. At that same time a thoughtful, “Hmm,” came right by her ear, and it took all of her willpower to not startle violently.

The White Lady was standing right over her shoulder, peering down at her chicken-scratch for notes. Standing so close that Frances could smell her—sweet and dark, the nectar of a poisonous blossom.

“Why, Frances, I believe you’ve found something,” the woman murmured, and that time she did jolt in her seat.

Frances.

She’d said her name—Frances hadn’t thought she’d known it. In their clockwork dance, they tended to find little reason to refer to eachother. It wasn’t like there was anyone else around to get confused with. And sure, she’d introduced herself that first day, but…

Whatever moment Frances was having over this, the White Lady wasn’t in on it—she had taken her notes along to the kitchen, humming and murmuring to herself as she absentmindedly pulled out the makings of lunch.

Frances watched her. She had her notes, for one. And for the other… well. She said she wanted to keep an eye on things.

Eirys hadn’t heard her name on another’s lips in… well. Quite a long time.

It was the cost of her Connection, an innate ability that fit her neatly into a role every place she visited. Sometimes she was the hero, sometimes the villain, the soldier, the dragon. Every place she went, she was a title. And even in the places she stayed long enough to share her name, it fell silently from the lips of others, a cruel reminder of her otherness.

The sleepy plane of Thornsweet where she’d set up camp had seemed different, sure. For one, not one of her abilities were barred from her, the way they were on other planes. (It was a weird feeling, for instance, to know you should survive a fall from any height, except for when you couldn’t). And it didn’t seem like she’d had a ‘role’ here, if how long it had taken for someone to go out of their way to interact with her was any indication: that was typically a matter of weeks, not months—nevermind just under a decade. But that lack of interaction was also lack of reassurance, and even now Eirys wondered if Frances was only here because she was supposed to be—

“Eirys.”

Eirys froze, nearly dropping the kettle she’d been setting up to brew, actually dropping Frances’ page of notes. She snatched it from the air before it could meander its way into illegibility by water, praying she wouldn’t poke holes anywhere important as her clawed fingers found purchase. She turned to where Frances still sat at the table, ears perked.

“Um. Thanks,” Frances was muttering. Her cheeks had gone rose-colored, and her initially-firm eye-contact had shattered in favor of the table before her. “For, well—”

“Say it again,” Eirys breathed. Her heart thrummed in her ears, heat singing from horns to hooves to the tip of her tail.

Frances’ expression went deadpan. “Is this about your god-complex? If you want me to thank you again—”

Eirys shook her head, hard enough for wisps of vapor to break off in an arc around her. “Not that. My name.” She was whispering, like Frances would say it again and she wouldn’t hear it over her own stupid voice.

The other woman’s frown, rarely absent, did soften slightly, as if she could sense that this meant more than she understood. “Eirys,” she said again, and suddenly it didn’t matter if the surly ex-knight was frowning or not, because Eirys had no hope of seeing her past the tears welling hot in her eyes.

Eirys.