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While each of the girls have their similarities, they are also completely different– as is everyone. Daniela loves reading, as does Bela, but she loves the prospect of imagining as she does it.
She goes to the library to seek the idea of companionship, the idea of what could be if she were to find the right person. Her books of romance allow her to imagine a life that cannot be hers. The weakness to the cold she shares with her sisters prevents them from doing over half of what is presented within her books: no cold autumn night going to the movie theaters, not that they have any, no spending time pretending to be trick or treating dressed up in couple costumes, no making snow angels, no snow ball fights, no anything when it gets cold. She can dream, imagine, and fantasize all she wants but she can never do those things no matter how much she wants to. That’s only problem one, problem two: she never had a person who would even want to do that with her. While her mother and sisters always comfort her when a maid says that they’re monsters, terrible people, and the like, and says that they’re not those things and that the maids will never understand, she can’t help but let the maids get into her head. Between Bela and Daniela, who love the library and spend most of their time in their safe haven for different reasons, Cassandra is completely different.
Her safe haven is the armory: handgun ammo and pipe bomb shells galore, she could never imagine another place she could love more. The ability to fix, tinker, and learn all in one room is what makes her come back. She constantly wants to make sure she has the ability to protect the ones she loves. Never once skipping a day to make sure her knowledge doesn’t falter when she needs it most. With the amount of break-ins they have on a monthly basis, one would think the people that break in would realize they will not make it far, she has to make sure she is at the top of her game. However, she craves the companion of another. The want to protect within her is too much for just her family alone. She will always protect her family no matter what but she wants to be able to protect someone else: someone she can love, cherish, but one that can take care of themselves. She wants someone who has the same need of being the protector but will allow her to do the protecting sometimes. With Cassandra, Bela seeks the same goal but in a different form. She wishes to make sure she can take her mothers place should she ever need to, she hopes she never has to.
She spends her time in the library seeking knowledge, imagining someone she can share it with but that’s not the point! She seeks new information that she hasn’t already packed into her full, storage garage like brain. Like her mother, she wants to know the way everything works, to have the answer to any question someone may ask her, especially her sisters, to give her a reason to teach them. She wants to be sure she can be the heiress she knows her mother expects her to be, to live up to her expectations no matter what. The possibility that she may not be enough compels her to continue searching for new questions and then answers to said questions. Like Daniela and Cassandra, she feels the need to have someone to teach. Not in the sense of a baby or child, but someone who wants to learn just like she does, someone who won’t bore of sitting in the library and learning, someone who craves being taught, but can teach themselves, and is competent enough to learn at the pace she does. It is a very good thing that you’re here to not only reassure her but also to provide everything each of the sisters need– each thing they’ve craved for years.
Both you and Bela are in the library in Castle Dimitrescu, you’re sitting in the very back of the library– directly in view of the entrance– in a chair while she sits at the foot of said chair on the ground. Usually it is unlike a lady of the castle to ever be caught on the floor with a maid above them, as it gives the maid more power and opens up more room for the ladies to be vulnerable, with you though, it allows the ladies to relax and get the peace they deserve.
When you first saw the library, the day you first started working here and was assigned one of the hardest tasks to get you to mess up so you will no longer be around, you were starstruck. The tall, spacious room, the still but moving, calm atmosphere, the skylight, just everything about the room is fulfilling and one of the best home libraries you’ve ever seen. While assigning you the chore was intended to get you to mess up, seeing how vast and amazing it was, you couldn’t allow it to be in any disarray. Thus, it became your favorite chore and place to spend your free time.
Anyway, to help you better understand the brain and the way it functions, Bela offered to teach you. One of her teaching methods is to make sure you’re able to apply what you’re learning, “If you can’t apply it, you don’t really know how it works, thus, you didn’t learn anything.”
Bela had told you that when you expressed your want to learn about the brain. So, here you are, Bela at the foot of your chair with her hood off and her chin– and nose– resting in between your semi-closed thighs. Her head is almost hovering just above your thighs, as in, you can feel that she’s there but you cannot feel the full weight of her head on you. Her shoulders appear tense, which you’re planning to fix in your own way, and her hands are barely touching the ground.
While you would assume it would be easier to talk and tell you if you made a mistake somewhere if she was facing away from you, she claims that it would be easier if you were looking at her head-on instead of having to do everything backwards. You think that is just an excuse to lay her head in your lap, her subtle purring giving her away, but there are no complaints coming from you– it’s actually very cute.
“Starting with your lobes, my Lady, which you have five of and two are connected, however, your frontal is right here,” you exclaim as you lift her head by gripping the hair around the nape of her neck and begin massaging her forehead with both your thumbs.
“It controls your reasoning, any social understanding, voluntary movements, and– one of the many things you love dearly– your learning capabilities! My Lady, can you lift up your head a little bit more?”
With a grunt and a few protests, she barely lifts her head up. You can now slightly see her eyes, and a little bit of her nose, when before you had no such ability. She looks so cute, her face is clean of any makeup she had on beforehand– she went to clean up the blood on her face before she came to meet you in the library and thought why not take everything off her face– and now the only things that completely stand out to you are her eyes and her tattoo.
The same tattoo that each of the sisters have, the same one that when you got closer to them gave you the courage to show them yours, the same tattoo that you trace to help each of them go to sleep when they’re having a particularly hard time and they are scared to tell you why, the same tattoo that you’re rubbing into right now.
Then there’s those eyes, the second brightest you’ve ever seen, the ones that constantly lure you in every time you so much as glance at one of the ladies of the castle. If you had a choice, you would choose to always look into their eyes as opposed to anyone else’s. Bela’s, in particular, are a pretty bright yellow but they almost have a hint of grey on the outskirts– it reminds you of her mothers. The grey looks like it is trying to take over the gold entirely but the gold isn’t letting it– instead it’s only allowing the grey a sliver of control by the way there are longer lines in what looks like four different places between both of her eyes. They remind you of your relationship– trying to become something more than it actually is in this moment– if only in the sense you wanted it to be in; maybe some day, but that day is certainly not now, right?
“Yes, like that! Your frontal lobe controlled the ability to lift your head,” you said, following it with a stroke of your pointer finger down the span of her nose.
That beautiful nose scrunched ever so slightly and you giggled, which made her scrunch it more noticeably this time and her purring ceased– you missed hearing it already.
“It also controlled that, thank you for another demonstration, my Lady,” you expressed with a suppressed smile– kind of suppressed.
“Yes, it did. Well done, mǎduvǎ.”
“You still haven’t told me what that means, my Lady.”
“You’ll figure it out, you’re smarter than you may think, mǎduvǎ,” she calmly stated, lowering her head back in between your thighs with what sounded like a muffled, “keep going” and her purring coming back.
“Of course, my Lady. Your temporal lobe is here,” you said, combing through the sideburn-baby hairs by her ears, ensuring your nails rub behind them. “It is both underneath and between the Frontal and Parietal lobes– more underneath than between though.”
“Mh. . .”
“Is that a ‘that’s correct’ or a ‘that’s incorrect’ sound, my Lady?”
“It’s a–”
“Or are you enjoying what I’m doing to your hair, hm?”
Your tone in the question is teasing and it’s either your words, how you said them, or the feeling of your nails lightly scratching behind her ears that cause that slight rise of her head again, her eyes and nose visible once more. While her eyes aren’t showing anger, they could come across that way if you didn’t know her. Instead, you take it as shock to the admission– exposing the way she feels– or rejection to the idea in and of itself; you would be scared and upset if it was the latter. The arch of her eyebrow being down making a ‘u’ and tip of her eyebrow being up instead of its usually downward position gives her away, along with the fact that somehow she’s purring louder, she’s pouting.
“It’s a sound of approval. You’re not right unless you can tell me–”
“It helps use your senses: you listening to me, store and retrieve memories: which I’m sure it’s going to make sure it store this one, understand language: you understanding me right now and how I can understand some the ladies Romanian, and process emotions: like how I can tell you want to come off as angry with your gaze but your eyebrows tell a different story.” You explain with a growing smirk, “now, am I right, my Lady?”
“. . . Mmh, good job, mǎduvǎ.” She said, closing her eyes and putting her head back in the place it should be, your lap.
You smiled at her compliance, but even more at the fact that you impressed her and she’s enjoying herself.
“Your hair is so soft, my Lady,” You say as your fingers scratch their way to where the crown of her head would be and moving them just slightly beyond that point, making sure your nails rub into her scalp once more. After you did that, you noticed two flies separate from her form; one flies to your upper arm hiding just under the sleeve of your uniform, you think to gather warmth, and the other goes to rest on your collarbone, in the center of it directly above the point of your V-neck– they both circle over your skin like they are unsure what to do, they’re not the only ones. While the ladies of the castle have shown you their flies, and what they can do, on multiple occasions, having them on you and circling you makes you nervous– a good nervous. Choosing to ignore them, which seems like the best option, you continue to the next lobe.
“Your Parietal lobe– which processes sensory information, self-perception, learned movements, and spatial awareness– is right here.”
In the middle of your sentence, you notice Bela relax even more than she already was. Her face is more pushed into your thighs, making you wonder if she can even breathe, her shoulders are slumped to the point where more than her hands are on the floor, and her flies cease their movement.
By the end of your sentence, you’re not even sure if she’s listening anymore– she looks more asleep than anything else.
“My Lady? That was right, wasn’t it?” You tease, scratching into her scalp more than you were before.
She gives a quiet ‘mhm’ that sounds suspiciously close to a moan without any other feedback which makes you believe that’s the key to move on. Your fingers go on their last travel for the night– you hope you can continue even after you’ve named almost all the lobes– dipping beneath her crown and moving towards the very back of her head, making sure to scratch on their way down. When your fingers reach the back of it, you make sure to give slight tugs at the baby hairs that lay there before going back to the light scratching you did behind her ears that seems to greatly please her.
“This right here,” you emphasize with a light pull and a rough scratch that really seems to grind her gears by the muffled, pleased, purr that you pretend not to hear, “is your Occipital lobe.”
“It is your brain's visual process center. That means it allows you to recognize, understand, and perceive what you see, which I don’t think is happening right now because your temporal lobe is doing most of the work, also because of the fact that you’re not actually seeing anything right now.”
You waited a moment to say anything more, lightly stroking the back of her head and letting your fingers travel to her neck to do the same thing. You scratch her neck for a minute in silence, letting her temporal lobe catch up.
After that minute passed, you started getting a little nervous.
“My Lady? Are you ok?” You asked as you slowly removed your hands from her head, worried you had upset her or maybe she was uncomfortable or maybe–
“Bela? Are you in here, draga?”
You watch as Lady Dimitrescu bent her way into the library, pausing as she stood back up to her full height. You saw her glance around the library for a few seconds, she appears to be mostly listening to see if she can hear flies, before she spotted Bela on the floor before you.
You watch as she takes slow, cautious steps toward the both of you, anger extremely visible in her gaze and how the tail of her eyebrow is now shot up. You tense slightly, which greatly displeases the lady at the foot of your chair because when you did so her face had moved a quarter of an inch; she makes a fast, aggressive buzz that stops even her mother from moving– which makes you tense more. Her flies sense your unease and both fly to the backs of your ears and give make-shift rubs there, like you were doing to hers.
Lady Dimitrescu doesn’t move from where she stopped, watching the entire interaction. Her eyebrows change their stance, the tails are one longer up but one of her eyebrows are.
“What is going on here,” She asked? It sounded more like a demand but for your sake you hope it is a question.
“Hello, Lady Dimitrescu.” You say less tense than you were before now that there’s no anger littering her brows or gaze which caused the flies to move to the tips of your ears and rest there. “Lady Bela was teaching me different parts of the brain and what they do. We were working on the lobes today, making sure that I am able to know where they are and able to apply the information based on the ladies' bodily reactions.”
“That’s why she’s not responding to my calls, because you’re distracting her,” she asked with a hint of amusement in her tone.
“Yes, my Lady? I’m sorry, I didn’t even hear you calling otherwise I would’ve stopped. Honestly, I’m not quite sure what happened. She was responding a few minutes ago but she suddenly grew quiet and she hasn’t moved or made a sound since, besides when you walked in, my Lady.”
“You’re telling me that I am the reason my daughter made an irritated sound,” she asked crossing her arms and adjusting one of her legs to where one is stuck out, pointing to the side and the other is still straight facing you, her stance and tone defense but if you would’ve looked more into her expression, you’d see she was interested in you and her daughters relationship.
“No! No, my Lady. I . . . moved slightly when you came in and I think the movement upset Lady Bela,” you said, glancing away when you mentioned moving because of wondering what she would make of that.
“Hm.”
Just as she made that noise, Bela adjusted her position. Instead of her head being in between your thighs, she moved to where you and her mother could clearly see her expression; she turned her head to your left and rested her left cheek on your left thigh. Her expression was one of bliss and peacefulness. There was none of the tension that she usually wears on her face: her eyebrows were steady, eyes were lightly closed, her full lips were smushed by the pressure of her cheek resting on your thigh but that didn’t stop them from having a gap between them, light snores coming out of her pretty lips.
While both you and the lady observed her initial move, only you were still looking at her, analyzing her expression. This made the lady really question your relationship with her daughter. Soft crush, or was it something more, something dangerous perhaps?
“Oh,” you were shocked, the possibility she could’ve been asleep didn’t even come to mind. “My Lady? What would you like me to do?”
She was looking at you analyzing her daughter for at least a good minute or two, but you only now look up at her, finding her already looking at you. She smiled, glancing down at her daughter, changing her expression to fondness and then looking back at you. Her expression never changes, not even when she speaks.
“I did want to talk to her about something, however, it seems she is in no state to do so,” she says as she walks closer to you both until she is within arm's reach of Bela, “I will take her to bed and allow you to get some rest as well.”
After she’s finished speaking to you, she reaches down and grabs Bela’s waist and lifts her up into a bridal position, with some protests.
Bela, for the second time tonight, makes an angry buzzing noise: sharp, purposeful, and quick to really bring the point home– she’s not happy about moving. The flies that were resting on the tips of your ears after comforting you attempted to comfort you again after being settled in her mother’s arms, rubbing the backs of your ears to make you stop moving– if only she knew. Now that her flies were awake, they noticed that you weren’t the reason she was moved which made her stir. She moved her arms to adjust her position and then opened her eyes, but only a little bit; her flies now resting on the tips of your ears once more, unmoving.
“Why– mamǎ?”
“Hello, draga. It seems you feel asleep on your friend here; I’m going to take you upstairs so you both can go to sleep comfortably."
Bela smiles as her mother walks away from the chair you reside in, moving her head so it hangs off to the side giving her the ability to look back at you. She smiles brighter, wider and lifts her arm to give you a little wave– one you happily return– and then she moves the arm to her lips and blows you a kiss. You smile at her as you look down and then look back up at her to catch it with your hand and hold on to it. She smiles and looks away, embarrassed; she looks so cute when she's embarrassed.
Even after her mother takes her away to her room you stay sat in the chair, smiling so hard you fear your face may crack. Unbeknownst to you, the moment she’s settled in her bed is when she makes one of her flies return back, only one. The other continues to rest on your ear, waiting to see when you’ll leave.
After sitting in your peaceful, happy place for a few moments more, you stand and walk to the door, looking back knowing you’ll be back tomorrow. Like hers, you know your Occipital lobe is working hard to store this memory, at least you hope hers is. NREM-1 is coming easy tonight– hopefully you will be too. You hope you’ll see her in REM; either way, your body will be ready to see her again.