#untilted

April 1886

She felt so small under the vast celling of the private salon. Big, bulgy flowers bouquets decorated the tables and commodes of the room. All Easter flowers in all shades of yellow and white with only some touch of light pink, daffodils,tulips and lilies, their perfume was almost overpowering for her fragile lungs. Even months after her “unfortunate ordeal”, like her well-intentioned family liked to call it, the young girl hadn’t fully recovered from the harsh, such an euphemism, conditions of her “misadventure”. She always had a fragile health, just like her mother, and now even with all the rest and the diligent (if frankly unadapted) care of Sebastian, Celeste was more than usual prone to coughing feats and breaks of fever. She just was able to hide them better than before with a newfound spite and the help of her butler. Not that stopped her aunts from worrying at the first occasion “You’re pushing yourself way too far, Letty”. She could almost hear them, the soft and warm concern of Aunt Angela and Lizzy, the more stern and almost admonishing tone of Aunt Francis. Anyway, she didn’t had a choice in the matter. Not now, rest wasn’t an option and it was not as if she was promised to a long life anyway. She was to die young, she knew it with every fiber of her being and she tough with a bitter delight I will rest when I’m dead. Not that she was sure of it, she hadn’t asked her demon of what was to be of her soul once he had eaten it. It wasn’t much of her concern, she just vaguely hoped for a vast and formless Void.

Now, as she waited on the big Chersterfield sofa covered in taffetas, her feet dangling from it without touching the ground, under that so tall ceiling, among these bouquets larger than her frame, their sweet and powerful perfume the only hing she could smell, dressed in a formal adult dress in miniature format. She looked like a stupid silly girl playin the grown up lady. She knew it as much as everyone that had see her in that black dress.

She looked like a doll, a baby-like figure dressed as an adult. Like one of these french dollall dressed-up in velvet ribbons and fine laces, with their unmistakable childish bodies but in full women’s attire. Celeste had several of them, none as liked and played with than her animal plushes and the other toys she shared with Ciel. They were beautiful, cold and fragile things. To b played with carefully and with the upmost care, because they could be so effortlessly broken. And onc they were, even with only the smallest crack, they lost all their value. Damaged goods. How much was she like one of these marred dolls?

Little thing pretending to be all grown up in her dark silk dress, her hands gloved and all theses cracks and broken parts desperately hidden under the crinoline and lace. What a joke she was. But she had to play the part. To convince the Queen she was able to bear the title of Countess and the charge of the Queen’s Watchdog.

After all, even if she looked like a child pretending to be a full fledged lady, her childhood had died months ago along side with her innocence and her happiness; All of it reduced to ashes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Not even bones to be buried.

If she stayed a little girl, a beautiful porcelain dolls her cracks and damages concealed under the frills and lace as she was safely tucked on a shelve, she wouldn’t be able to take revenge. To make them pay, every last one of them. To make them burn to ashes until they wasn’t even bones left of them. Better a deadly damaged good than a dead perfect and meek little lady.

She was lost in her thoughts, her head starting to painfully pulse under the overpowering flower's perfume, she could almost feel like a thick layr of pollen coating her throat and nose’s walls, when finally the Queen entered. She small old woman was dressed all in black, forever in mourning since her husband death fifteen years earlier, followed by her butler dressed in all immaculate white. Like a crow and a dove. Promptly, the young girl stood up to execute a flawless curtsy. She had painfully mastered it under Sebastian’s tutelage. That bastard was merciless under his sickly sweet demeanour, but she must admit that his methods were efficient. “Your Majesty, I am truly honoured by your invitation”. They were facing each other, the old queen and the little lady, one at the winter of her life and the other in her spring, each of them wearing an immense grief in dark threads and laces. “No need for all of this, dear child. Stand, that we can see you.” Celeste executed herself, and the green eyes of the Queen scanned her as she was looking at one very fragile precious thing. A pained light in her eyes as she detailed Celeste face. A face the girl knew was almost identical to her father and brother’s. “You look so much like your dear father and grand-mother, God have their souls. We are truly distressed by the numerous losses in so little time of our esteemed Phantomhives. Certainly not as much as you must be, sweet girl. The Crown and myself present our deepest condolences.” It was strange to receive such words in a so joyful décor full of pastel flowers meant to evoke rebirth and resurrection. Celeste could have laughed at the irony, but it wouldn’t have been a clever move. *

As she spoke, the old woman gently stroke the girl’s cheek, in a almost tender manner. “But blessed be the Almighty, in his Great Mercy He bring you back to us”. The Allmighty had nothing to do with Celeste's survival. The old bastard had do nothing but idly watched as her world burned and she was stripped of all her dignity and humanity. If someone was to be thanked it would be The Enemy. Not that the girl intended to correct the Queen, or thanks in anyway her devil.

Art is a gift.

Autechre