#snowspring

Oli grinned that grin he had; the kind that got him what he wanted, especially from girls, and Cole thought about throwing up on his faded leather boots simply to prove a point. She rolled her eyes instead, stood straight, and finished her cigarette in silence. Her stomach relaxed, as did her nerves. But that wasn’t the reves. That was Oli. 

He jogged to a doorway down the hall, summoned by a butler, and Cole watched as they had a quiet conversation that left them both smiling and laughing in a subdued way as to not draw attention. 

“Cole? Do you mind coming here a second?”

Cole twitched hard, embarrassingly so, as Mistress Sumatri’s voice rang out from behind her. The question frayed her nerves all over again. Her skin crawled as she forced one leg in front of the other, down to the dressing room she’d left earlier, after completing the job. After Oli got paid. They should have departed already, but their neighborhood had been dry of edesvet all week, and Cole held ridiculous hope that someone in Sumatri’s staff was a degenerate too.

Cole peered in from the doorway, reluctant and afraid. “What?" She asked, eyeing Sumatri’s styled silver curls, and her freshly-done and rouge-heavy face paint that sat upon her soft brown skin like a mask.

Elderly Sumatri's even more elderly paramour sat up with a self-righteous gasp, the high collar of his dinner jacket hugging the round, sagging shape of his face. (Cole could have tailored that if given the time.) "How dare you. Suma is not only your client, but your elder. You will address her with—"

"Shush, Adam. Cole's just like that." Sumatri waved him off with a satin-gloved hand, standing upon a pedestal before an ornate wood-framed mirror. “Right here, dear.”

Thick curtains hung all around the perimeter of the dressing room, hiding her existing wardrobe, and bags, and shoes. Cole had peeked at them before, with permission. Sumatri was the kind of rich that had taste; the kind of rich that remained rich despite a century of snowfall.

And even among her extensive collection, this new dress Sumatri wore now was unmatched. It was some of Cole’s best work. “I think I snapped a thread. Can you take a look?"

Cole met Sumatri’s smiling brown eyes in the reflection of her mirror, and then her own. Her face looked like Oli’s, like always. Her black eyes were his black eyes. Her pale skin was his, too. As was their roundish twin noses and lips and chins; the only difference was in their wavy wheat-colored hair, which Cole wore short and Oli wore long. 

They even had the same ears. Just round enough to be convincing.

Inexplicably, there was an ache from somewhere deep within her soul, far-reaching. This Curse had followed Cole her entire life, but it stood especially evident when she saw her brother in her own face, and missed him. But that was nonsense. Oli was standing on the other side of the wall, gossiping with Sumatri’s butler like he liked to do. It seemed as if she borrowed grief from a future she would not let pass. But Cole didn’t want to have borrowed such a thing, and hadn’t the ability to return it to where it belonged. No, the Cursed grief sat inside her gut, followed her always, and she had to pretend she wasn’t sick with it—or anything else. 

Though nothing had yet happened to her, or to her brother, she felt as if a poet told her story in the past tense, and nothing would change any word that came next: it had already been written.

Veil take her; she needed to get her hands on edesvet and soon, so that it may suffocate this oracle-damned magic, which teetered on the brink of exposing her and Oli both. 

Cole circled Sumatri’s skirts, chasing the offending loose thread. Indeed, one of her beautiful stone rings had snagged a piece of embroidery on the banded waist. Cole snipped away the offending thread with her small sewing-kit scissors, and used a pearl-tipped pin to fasten the design into place again. "Be careful with your rings," she said. She'd spent weeks on the gown, crafting each stitch with graceful precision, careful to smoke her edesvet outside as to not smoke-stain the gauzy layers. If she had a sewing machine—that is, if she were able to join the Portnoytiska, the seamstress guild, that had a singular monopoly on them—it would have taken half the time. But Cole enjoyed sewing by hand; the repetitive, careful process of it was one of the only other things that made her feel nearly human. Even now, her shaking had settled, and her stomach felt empty again. She might even be able to eat the persimmon Oli stashed for late lunch.

Cole took a step back from Sumatri to appreciate her work one final time. The skirts were layered gold and white, each made from a material that allowed light to filter through and sparkle against the white beaded bustle. The beads, made from ivory sourced by poachers on an expensive illegal hunt out in The Burn, matched the beads also sewn onto the white bodice. Custom green and yellow embroidery of birds and trees lined every hem, framing the whole dress with Cole's specific, talented touch that more than doubled the gown's overall cost. No one had, as of yet, invented a sewing machine that could embroider. That fact alone meant she and Oli were only a few more ball gowns away from the kind of financial stability they’d only ever seen through the open windows of the towering homes of Siniy Avenue, or Risiyk Place, or any of the other well-restored wealthy districts in town. To think that Cole had begun in the crumbling gutter of this place at age ten—

A gutter she’d climb back into if one of the Neerdowil, illegal edesvet chemists, tempted her with a fresh paper roll. Oli was as grown as she was; he could figure out life on his own while she got what she wanted—no, needed—down below. She may wind up in the street, but at least she’d feel human.

That odd and painful guilt-grief made her fingers twitch once again. Cole gave Sumatri one tight nod before departing the room, and she stopped just outside the door to listen to the loudly-whispered conversation that happened in her wake. Oli strode up, smiling and oblivious. “Wondered where you got off to—” Cole held up a finger to signal his silence, and his teeth clicked as he shut up.

Adam’s raspy voice griped and groaned with every word. “I don’t understand why you tolerate the help speaking to you in such a way.” 

“She's not the help, Adam. She's the best seamstress in the whole of Ojor City. Look at this gown."

“Surely not the best. She’s scarcely twenty winters old.”

“I think she’s twenty-one, actually.”

“She’s not even Portnoytiska.”

Sumatri’s twinkling laugh was unmistakably condescending. “Oh, please. Leave the fashion to me, my love. If she was Portnoytiska, any average Rubrish would be able to wear her designs. This one is mine alone. Wait until I arrive at the Osprey Ball tonight. You’ll see.” Then she paused, gasped, and said, “LaVeil bless that girl. Look, it has pockets!”

Oli couldn’t contain himself, it seemed, because he snatched Cole around the middle, off her feet, and spun her around and around as he marched down the hall, towards the entry parlor.

She groaned and said, “I really will be sick if you don’t stop.” That got him to put her back on her feet, at least, but his shiny, happy grin was utterly unwavering.

“Best seamstress in all of Ojor!” Oli cried, too loud for comfort. “My sister, everyone! Come to me to get on her books now, before you miss out!”

There was no one around to clap at Oli’s proclamation but the doorman; a middle-aged man with pale skin and pale blue eyes. He raised one graying brow in response, and opened the door as Cole and Oli approached.

Cole all but sprinted out of the home. “Humiliating,” she hissed, but there was no fire in her words, or in her heart. Because, for now, everyone thought she was simply a girl—a human girl. She wasn’t Colette Black, the half-elven orphan waif. She was Cole, the best human seamstress in Ojor.

But with every click of her boot heels upon the cobbles, Cole could see it; feel it; smell it upon the wind. A sigil that belonged to the Godking impressed upon hardwood floors. A roaring fire. A long, imposing desk elevated upon a dais, with a dozen seated in judgment of her. And Cole, shackled, upon her knees. 

Oli slammed a hand around her shoulders in another generous hug, marching them both forward, to the river train that they could now afford, whisking them from Siniy Avenue to The Garment District. Their home. “Let’s return to our coffers, get changed, and venture out to find you some edesvet.”

“Yes. Let’s.”