this one's for the faithless. they're only where they are now regardless of their fight. Who: Elvira Treveil. What: A delivery, twice. Where: The Thornton residence. When: Today, and ten years ago. Rating: PG. Status: Complete narrative.
Elvira is seventeen. At her age, peers begin advance to first tier class, but she has not. She congratulates them, no visible bitterness in her smiles. These are knights who have never known her as Nettie. In fact, one boy asks to call her V. She laughs and shakes her head and corrects them hastily: no, that is someone else.
They invite her to celebratory dinners in their honor. But for today she turns them down.
Small feet take her to across the boundary between personal and professional. Her pockets are emptied, allowance spent on the present she bears today. Her arms wrap around a basket carrying teas and pastries bought with meticulously saved gil. One bow, soft pink, droops over the basket. Another in scarlet ties back Elvira's hair. The card reads Happy Birthday in her clean, crisp script.
She knocks twice, straightening her back as she awaits an answer.
♦
Elvira has seen parents grieve their child's death before and she learns from observation.
She is thirteen when her own deliver the news of her sister's passing. She watches them, crumpled heaps that do not bother to call themselves people. They pull their remaining daughter to their chests in a tight embrace; she lifts her arms to their backs to reciprocate. Only she holds them too softly.
They begin to weep. And she copies this, as well. Only she sobs too loudly.
They call her Elvia by accident the next day. She smiles stiffly and bites her lip and tells them: no, that was someone else.
♦
Elvira is twenty-seven. Her peers have settled into their second tier years ago, and so has she. Fighters and civilians alike greet her as Sir Treveil. The voices in her teeth, in her skull call her by something else.
She strides to the residence of her former mentor with a purpose not evident in her swaying gait, her detour from the week's routine.
Her hands cling tightly to a wicker basket, organic fibers seeming to have come from bridges burnt in her wake. Inside rests pastries—store bought—and homemade dinner. Enough for two. Its ribbon, white, matches the one in her hair. The card still reads Happy Birthday.
Elvira leaves the basket at the doorstep. She knocks twice, hesitating for the briefest of moments before taking her leave.