Chapter Text
Aulea was a resourceful girl.
When she was six, she learned how to pick apart the threads of her old blue dress to let down the hem another two inches, how to hide the string that tied up her hair, and how to wash her face in the West Park fountain in the early morning before the guards came. She would walk three miles to the closest public school, where she smiled and laughed and ate her free dining hall lunches with careful slowness. She raced off by Ruby Street on her way out, where she would slip in the back door of Penwell’s Fine Cloth & Tailors and spend hours untangling ribbons, listening to Mr. Penwell teach his fidgety assistant how to tailor clothes for the nobility. Then she would collect a few credits and run to the tunnels.
Trains used to run there, once upon a time. Now, the alcove where passengers used to stand in wait to be ferried off to the Citadel belonged to Aulea and her mother.
She would clean the worst of the mess, first. Then she’d urge her mother to eat, or drink, or open her eyes, and when that was done, she’d climb up into the light of the tunnel steps and do her homework on the open-air platform.
When she was six-and-a-half, Aulea borrowed a shovel from the gardener in West Park, and she learned how to dig.
She was fine, after. She knew she was fine. Her mother had told her, over and over, “You are a clever girl, Aulea. A resourceful girl. You don’t bow your head to no one.” So she kept her chin high, and her eyes bright, and her voice rang out in the gardens above her home clear and true.
When Aulea was seven, Mr. Penwell allowed her to come into the shop and stitch lines in working class women’s dresses. Aulea was a hand with a needle, and she found the work comforting. Only she could control how small the stitches were, how straight the lines, how the folds of the cloth draped over each other to sweep the floor like ripples on the park fountain. She would sing, sometimes, little songs from her mother’s home beyond Insomnia, and Mr. Penwell’s assistant, Siobhan, would lend a low voice to hers on quiet afternoons.
She dreamed of one day learning how to make cloth this fine, create her own clothes that even the King and Queen would stumble over themselves to buy. It was a silly dream, but it did help to pass the long, quiet hours before sunset.
The day the monster boy came, however, was hardly quiet at all.
“I don’t know why I have to be here!” The voice in the waiting room was young, like Aulea, but plaintive, with the hint of a drawl that she was starting to associate with the upper class. She could hear soothing noises coming from the other room, and then the mortifying thump of a foot slamming onto the floor.
“I don’t care!” the voice cried again. “He said he would come with me, and he didn’t. I can be fitted at home just as well as here.”
Siobhan sighed and got to her feet, giving Aulea a familiar grimace. “Little princeling,” she whispered. Aulea smiled.
“Children,” she said, shrugging. The assistant grinned at her and disappeared round the corner, cooing in her best customer service voice.
It didn’t go well. Five minutes later, Siobhan stormed in, hands flapping like the feathers of a ruffled bird.
“Little princeling, indeed!” she hissed, and flounced into the back room.
Aulea set down the gown she was working on, curious. She’d only heard children make such a fuss on the first day of school, when the little ones were too scared of leaving their parents to appreciate what they were there to learn. Despite Mr. Penwell’s warnings not to disrupt noble customers, Aulea inched her way to the door and peered into the waiting room.
The voice belonged to a boy standing alone in the room with a face like a stormcloud. He was about Aulea’s age, with fine, dark hair and skin so pale she was certain he had to walk around under a parasol all day. His clothes were exquisitely made in black silk, and his expression was so dour that she had to laugh.
He looked up sharply, and caught her eye. For a moment, he looked like he was about to be angry, but then his brows knit in something more like curiosity.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“That’s a way to say hello,” Aulea said. The boy flushed pink and looked away. “Aw, don’t you be cross, boy.” Aulea couldn’t help but smile. How funny, that a child so well off could look so grim! “I ain’t your mother. You can learn how to talk respectable on your own time.”
“Don’t call me a boy,” the boy said, archly. “You’re my age. And you don’t have to teach me anything, you’re common.”
“Common?” Aulea bridled. Resourceful and clever as she was, she didn't take kindly to insult. “I ain’t common. Common is stamping your foot when good folks want to make you look nice. Common is being a child long past the time you’re meant to be a man. You’re common as rainwater, little boy. I’m common as the moon.”
The boy stared, slackjawed, twin spots of fury high on his cheeks. She half expected him to fly at her, but instead, he closed his mouth and grinned.
“Goodness,” he said, sounding much less like a brat than he did half a minute ago. “You’re something else.”
“I’ve a right to be, don’t I?” Aulea said, still angry. “Don’t you laugh at me.”
“I’m not, I’m not!” The boy raised his hands in surrender, and stepped forward. “I’m sorry. I was rude. My name’s… my name’s Regis. What’s yours?” He extended a hand to her. Aulea looked at it warily as though it were a snake about to strike.
“Aulea, if it please you,” she said, and sank into a wobbly curtsy. Regis giggled, and she took his hand.
“It’s very good to meet you, Aulea,” he said.
“There,” she told him, smiling once more. “Don’t it feel nice to treat people like people?”
Regis opened his mouth again, and Aulea laughed in his face.