. (mareas) wrote in repose, @ 2016-05-28 15:06:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, ella gainsborough, helena montgomery |
[Lux: Ella & Helena]
[Ella was quite delighted to find Helena in town. The world, Ella knew, was small enough to fit itself within a thimble, and yet she was always surprised when things pleased her. Perhaps it was a life built upon hunger that did that. She was never one to expect the gifts beneath the tree, but she could always be counted upon to smile brightest when said gifts appeared. Ella never did question the appearance of crinkling paper and bright silver bows, and perhaps that, too, was upbringing. But, simply, she thought it was the bee's knees that Helena was here. She'd always liked the other woman, who was so elegant and proper. Ella had never been prim nor proper, and a gilded cage hadn't taught her to sing any better songs. Helena was quality, and Ella was a handout on a dirt road, and yet they understood each other.
This night, Ella dressed like frumpery, and she arrived at Lux every inch the lady of the flower shop. The role of spinster, she'd learned decades earlier, made it easier to learn things about a place. Vacuous smiles and freckles bright against alabaster, and no one suspected a thing. So long as her curves were hid beneath loose fabric, and so long as she laughed and smiled and sang, as a proper canary should.
But Helena knew better. In Helena, Ella had a confidant who knew her to be more than this frumpy seller of carnations. Helena knew, if only in the telling, that Ella had tippled her way through the roaring twenties with gin juice in her belly, and with the echoing woods of speakeasies beneath her feet. Tonight, however, Ella walked in and looked around before approaching the bar with all its shine and luster. Uncertain, and deliberately so, she asked the bartender to choose for her, and she fully expected him to return with something featuring an umbrella. Music played, and her pump wanted to dance, but she needed to be tipsy first. Or, so was the expectation of a spinster flower-marm upon the town.]