Chapter Text
1. Houseguests: Civilised Barbarities
“Oh, Kirra. It must be so fascinating, having Senneth Brassenthwaite teach you all those...those Mystic things.”
Kirra knew she shared an age with Mayva Nocklyn. And, by her stepmother’s necessity during a week of socialising and other such civilising barbarities, some space with the other girl. But a fifteen-year-old Mayva, to the fifteen-year-old Danalustrous hoyden, was in all other respects a strange and alien creature: her hands soft for the indoors, and clutching at hers as intimately the etiquette mistress at Nocklyn Towers had allowed.
“She is quite ordinary, you know.” Kirra shifted minutely in her chair, drawing her knees up and settling her skirts as an excuse for disentangling her fingers from the other girl’s. For all her softness, Mayva bit her nails.
Mayva gasped. “Ordinary, and a serramarra! It’s quite shocking, you know. All my aunts say so.”
“I’m perfectly ordinary.” The shiftling shook out her tumble of hair, and enjoyed Mayva’s small, envious sigh. “So are you. “
“Oh, I’m nothing,” Mayva giggled, not seeming to notice as Kirra stared at her. “Not a bit of me’s interesting, or brave, or...or vulgar the way everyone says she is, and compared to you I’m—”
“—Senneth,” Kirra said hotly, “Is nothing like that.” She sniffed. “And if she were vulgar, it’d be because she chose to be so—and she’d be the best at it that ever there was.”
Mayva shrank back a little, but ventured a smile at her enforced houseguest. “I just wish,” she said wistfully, “That I knew what you two did together.”