Chapter Text
Essie was born by the sea.
Her father had been a fisherman, her mother a school teacher, and they had resided far far away from the forest. Muttonville, before the industrial companies set their eyes onto the brick-laded streets, and the weather beaten houses, was where she had grown up. The first two years of her life were blurry, only patches of smells and sounds, a vague, sqibble of an image here and there.
She remembered the smoke. Steamships would rest on their docks, towering over the small, cobbled together wooden boats that the fishers used, passengers using Muttonville as only a dock before moving onto the bigger cities. When the businessmen came, the boats disappeared, and not long after that the illness came. Lungs clouded by the ash, people were dropping left and right, her parents included.
Her memories of the town stopped there.
Few people lived here now, the ash-filled air from when the factories set up their smokestacks clouding the air, the deaths, and the declining economy driving many out.
Only the train station, a hotel, and a pier remained operated. The houses misery-filled eyes glanced at the returning resident as she pulled her jacket closer around her (Fox-fur, she mournfully thought, bought secretly by her during their honeymoon. She wondered if Braeden ever knew, and a bitter feeling filled her gut), shame clouding her brain.
Here she returned, after twenty-something odd years, wearing strange perfume and a mask that didn't suit her. Essie wasn't the Esther the town knew.
Her guilt built up even more as she gazed out the window, catching glimpses of shacks with laundry outside, rats scurrying around, the ash coating everything in a grey parlor. Where did sweet Esther go?, the buildings rasped, Who is this imposter?
A lipstick-laced mouth and teary red eyes, the hands of strange, otherworldly beings pressed onto her like bruises on a peach. No, no she was not Esther anymore.
What even was she?
Essie was an outsider everywhere, even in her own town. Her parents bodies were stirring in their graves, as Essie took a tentative step onto the rickety platform. She was the last person, on the last stop, the gas lamps unlit, and the boards of which she stood rotten. All alone, it seemed.
When she had left the sun had started lowering into the sky, the festivities from the wedding still happening, Serafina latched onto her husband's arm like a leech to a sheep. The tables down in the garden had been overloaded with food, faeries, faeran, and the like gathered around them, the sweet perfume from the flowers releasing into the air. Every maid, ever manservant, even the scullery girls and chimney sweepers all mingled with them.
A couple days prior Serafina had advised her against going, as the festivities were not meant for human eyes, and she just wanted to keep Essie safe.
"It pains me to do this.", she had said, pulling away from a kiss on the cheek, "But you know I must do this."
Now, her fingers turning blue at the tips, Essie bitterly rocked on her feet. Was she ashamed? What was there to be ashamed of? Serafina had everything Essie wanted, and still gave her nothing. She wouldn't even act like...that during the reception, Essie wasn't a child for gods sake, she was seven months older than Serafina and had been in the cutthroat upper class world longer than she had.
She deserved respect.
Even the thought itself brought thick, wet tears down her face, which she angrily brushed off. Time and Time again she gave chance after chance, door after door was opened, but she would always be the one hidden, always be the one uninvited, always be the one who was trapped in a spiderweb with the black widow's jaws near her head.
The mist hung on her, and everywhere she looked it was gloomy and grew. Moss, grass, and bushes grew like unsightly bumps here, and the paint chipped off of the door as Essie knocked on it. She took a deep breath, the salty air stinging. Her fingers reached out to brush the brass, no-
She couldn't bring herself to do it.
Serafina would still be asleep now. Essie could get back by noon if she caught the next train. She'd never notice her absence, and maybe that would be a good thing.
Essie was a coward. A moment, a lifetime even, without her pained her too much.
Weakling
Essie was born by the sea. Her people naturally had a toughness to them that nobody else had. Yet- as she boarded the next train home (?), it was like a cord was being cut.
Essie was born by the sea. She grew up in the mountains. She worked in the forest.
But somehow, she belonged nowhere, to nobody, and the world so vast, it seemed so...so empty.
She got back before noon. Stepping over the bodies of the sleeping guests (Essie didn't want to think what they'd do to her if they woke up), she crept into the house, silent like a mouse waiting for the steps of the cat. The groom was curled up on the end of one of the manors many loveseats, his bride nowhere to be found. Bags underneath his eyes, he barely stirred as Essie walked past.
They had probably fought the night before, and the thought of that brought a twisted sense of satisfaction into Essie's gut. It burned away into shame as she continued her trek up the stairs, they would probably make up by the morning..nothing but a lovers quarrel, and at least they had each other. She had nobody.
The lady of the houses bedroom was on the other wing, far apart from Essie's little hole, so there was a small chance they would meet. Essie didn't even know what she would say if she happened by chance to walking around, perhaps still in nightclothes in the fresh daylight.
Maybe that was a good thing.
But as she finally got to the last stretch of her miserable walk back, she ran into the second worst person to see. The lady of the houses husband, and by default, her boss, Braeden Vanderbilt.
Unfortunately, unlike his wife, he would care.