Chapter Text
What, was the name of the Head of the Fisalias?
Who, was the person that bore the mantle, as the Fisalia Matriarch?
These were questions that were never answered in Ragunna. These were questions where if one so knew the answer, everything could change in just an instant. What riches you could fathom, what luxuries you desired, what graces you previously had to grovel for, you would have it all if you were smart enough to evade the mark on your back by the Fisalias, if you were right.
They were questions that every Montelli sought to know the answers to, day and night, working tirelessly in search.
The woman's name was Cantarella.
The woman who Carlotta witnessed falling overboard the vessel returning back from, according to the people who followed that vessel, Mingting.
The woman had stood by the railings, with her eyes on the horizon and her back to the crowd. A parasol nocked on the hook of her arm, and her skirts hitched by design, the trains of satin barely avoiding the salt-washed deck of her vessel. It was a vessel that by no means suited the extravagance of her appearance, the stature at which she carried herself in proper etiquette and elegance, even when someone had clearly pulled a dagger out into the open.
A man she had humiliated, apparently. The woman had said that much. A man she had humiliated, had come find her in grievance of his destroyed dignity, and sought to kill her in quelling his bitter, ridiculous anger. The woman had said that much, after having clearly well parried the dagger into the sea, after having slapped the man so hard until he'd walked straight into the mast right after, after having had the man rush at her in his last ditch attempt at salvaging the nothingness left of his dignity.
Carlotta wasn't sure what to make of it, wasn't sure what role within this play she was meant to be assigned, when everyone simultaneously looked the other way, amidst the man's satisfied raucous shouts, and the woman's fading silhouette as she sank beneath the water.
She only knew her role after she jumped right overboard, grabbed the woman's thin arm firmly, and hoisted back onto her own vessel returning from the New Federations.
She only knew her role when she caught herself in the rude moment of having lost all her manners, staring in poor taste at the curvature of the body that wet silk and satin did little to hide, from the woman sopping wet in her arms, coughing up mouthfuls of water delicately while Carlotta failed to conceal just how much she'd taken in, like a fool ogling a handful of gold fallen from the sky.
She only knew her role when she hastily tossed the woman a towel, and later offered her compensation by attempting to offer her garment to wear, even if the best that could fit her was no better than the woman's dress itself.
“And you are from Ragunna, you say?” The woman had asked her, taking a careful sip of warm tea. “I have family on the Riccioli Islands that I am here to visit; Ragunna is lovely, isn't it?”
Ragunna is lovely, Carlotta had wanted to say, and its people even more so.
And yet instead what had she said?
Let me make it up to you, in true Ragunnesi hospitality.
It was the moment all went wrong.