"Harri," Vespidine says, casual in tone, some days later; "if you're not doing anything, on the closest weekend to your birthday, there's a relatively quiet society event to which I've been invited. I'd enjoy it if I were able to take you."
Harri is seated at her desk, paperwork pushed away to make space for a seated elf and a hot lunch in the form of a fresh-baked meat and vegetable pie. She gives the pie a newly narrow look at its treachery, in turning out to be gentle bribery, and bites off another morsel.
"What kind of event?" she says suspiciously, with her mouth full, trying to pull a report closer and continue reading. Vespidine puts a hand on the paperwork, and slides it away again.
"It's work-adjacent, really," she says. "For me, that is; various of the Mayor's backers and those who'd like access to them, in an ostensibly social setting. Introductions, and conversations of deniable import. Wine. Some dancing."
"At the Ostermann?" Harri hazards; the number of establishments available to rent for functions, with a dance floor, are limited.
"That's right."
Harri has not precisely attended these things before. Cosimisa is not precisely invited to them, because Cosimisa is something of a deliberate liability; but that's the same quality that makes her difficult to prevent, and there persists an understanding that as long as she doesn't cause sufficient trouble to necessitate bodily removal, she can therefore enjoy the hospitality of such events, maintaining a flimsy façade of family unity.
And so Harri has been present at one or two. One, really; Cos arrived with her at the second, demanded stress relief in the Ostermann's cloakroom, and then coldly informed her she could go home.
If Vespidine has no specific memory of those things, Harri isn't minded to bring attention to them.
"Are you sure," she says instead, "that my presence will be an asset to you?"
Vespidine moves another piece of paperwork beyond her reach. "Harri," she says mildly, "There will be dancing. I'd like to take you," and Harri slowly looks up at her.
"Oh," she says dryly. "It's not a gift, if you have a dress made for me — if I need to be dressed up for an event."
Vespidine has the grace to look abashed. "I was going to ask," she says.
"No, you weren't," Harri says. "You were going to say Oh, Harri — if I'm to take you, if it's quite alright, I shall have to take you to the dressmaker first, you understand—"
"Well," Vespidine says, and pauses for several seconds. "Are you enjoying your lunch, at least?"
Harri rolls her eyes at the elf's pretence of meekness. "Yes, thank you," she says sincerely.
Vespidine turns up with a hot pie on every one of Harri's lunch breaks that week, and doesn't say another word about it, so at the end of it Harri graciously assents.
Having agreed, Harri doesn't think much more of it. Her birthday passes tolerably quietly; Vespidine takes her for a walk in a public garden after work, and reads to her, sitting together on the grass.
"The family library was nobody's priority in the End, but some books were saved; this is an old work which — at the time of writing — my family were quite angry about. It's historical fictionalisation; concerning the later life and death of a certain general, a korvu by-Tenstone korvu Overmore kanru Tjenwater. He was away from home for many years on campaign, and returned to waned support for war, shifting politics, and an unhappy family. In his absence, his wife and indecorosa had merged their households, living under a single roof; on his return, he ordered them separated once more." Vespidine turns the pages of the book's front matter with gentle fingers. "His death was under mysterious circumstances; the family made accusations of political assassination. This poet wrote a dramatisation, some century or so after, on the idea that his wife and indecorosa, lonely in his absence, had fallen in love, and parted by his returning jealousy, poisoned him."
Harri raises an eyebrow. "Your family kept a copy?"
"Eventually," Vespidine says. "The scandal did wonders for the work's popularity; the indecorosa's family did well from the notoriety. The poet married into the wife's family, in the end; it became politic to treat the thing as amusing instead of a slight to the family."
"Couldn't someone have simply asked his wife what happened?"
Vesidine shrugs. "She preferred to live in peace and not comment," she says. "...With the indecorosa," and clears her throat, ready to read.
"Vespidine," Harri says, when the elf first pauses to turn the page. "Will you marry?"
"My promissori — and most of that family — were lost in the End," Vespidine says quietly. "The remnants are just sufficiently prominent, and elven families now few enough, that promising me again elsewhere would be...socially problematic." She's silent a moment. "I've quietly aided them in bolstering their position, to keep it that way," she adds. "We are living in the End of the World, Harri; it's absurd that we carry on this way. I work to change what I can, but things are — slow."
"Everyone lost so much already," Harri says. "Letting things change must feel like losing more."
"That's a very forgiving view," Vespidine says, and Harri smiles and lies down on her side, cheek cushioned on Vespidine's thigh. The elf takes a deep breath, and then cautiously strokes Harri's hair.
"Carry on reading," Harri says sleepily, and dozes in the grass to the sound of Vespidine's voice.
"This dress," Harri says, the full delayed weight of regret falling on her, "is...I can't wear this, Vespidine."
"Why not?" Vespidine says mildly, sitting at her dressing-table and fastening her cufflinks. Her eyes, in the mirror, caress Harri's reflection.
"It's—" Harri says. "I'm—"
I'm too on show. I look too expensive. You're doing too much, Vespidine. I feel exposed.
"Everybody can see my shoulders?" she tries, glancing down at the pale, and currently hunched, expanse of her own unaccustomed skin.
"You might accessorise with a scarf or a shawl," Vespidine says, impeturbable.
"Vespidine," Harri says, a touch desperately.
"Come here," Vespidine says quietly, and holds out her hand, and Harri drifts reluctantly over.
Vespidine takes her hand, and puts her other hand on Harri's hip, and gently but firmly sits her on the elf's knee.
"Harika," she says, "if you don't want to go, I will say you're indisposed. If you don't like the dress, I will find you something else. If you're worried about dancing — I have seen you, at other events, I know you can—"
"Vespidine," Harri says, and clutches at the elf's shoulder. "I've never — you do realise that the number of dresses I've ever owned, that I bought myself, is. Perhaps three? Ever? And they weren't—"
She huddles into herself, perched on Vespidine's leg, and touches her own bared shoulder.
"They were more practical," Vespidine suggests kindly, after a pause.
"They had sleeves," Harri says, blinking back the beginnings of overwhelmed tears, and Vespidine puts a hand on her back, lightly rubbing in a soothing motion.
"Harri," she says, "if you'd rather change into — even those things you wear to the office, I would gladly take you with me dressed like that."
"Really?"
"Riven skies, I'd argue with you about the brown outfit," Vespidine says promptly, "it makes you look like a music hall cigarette-seller — Harri, I promise you, you can wear whatever you like, but that dress is fine. Our dressmaker knows what she's about. It's neither scandalous, nor will it slip in any way to become scandalous."
Harri takes a deep breath, and puffs it out again.
"Harri," Vespidine says softly, "do you remember asking me what my lawyer would think of signing an apartment over to you? It's not what you were truly worried about, you were just worried, and it was something you could put a name to. Are you so worried about wearing a strapless dress?"
Harri wants to make a huffy noise, but Vespidine's soothing hand is helping. "Someone from City Hall might recognise me," she says.
"You can't wear that dress," Vespidine says, "because you might be seen?"
Harri does make the huffy noise.
"I am not Cosimisa," the elf murmurs. "I do not make you visible as an instrument of shame. Not against yourself, nor to use you against anyone else. I asked for a dress that shows your shoulders, Harri; there's something I noticed that put me in mind of an ancient fashion in the Court of Tulips — might I show you?"
She waits, as if she has all the time in world to wait. Harri finally, stiffly, nods; is lifted to her feet, and then as Vespidine rises, is deposited in the chair herself. The elf busies herself on the dressing-table for a moment, then turns with a small jar and a fine paintbrush in hand, seats herself on the edge of the dressing-table with her legs stretched out to either side of Harri's, and smiles reassuringly.
Harri scowls back, doing her best to relax.
The stuff in the jar is clear, faintly smells like cold and crushed greenery, and dries rapidly on the skin. Vesidine painstakingly dips and wipes the brush against the jar's rim, and sprinkles Harri's face, feather-light, with a scatter of dots. It's only when the elf moves on to Harri's shoulder that she realises; Vespidine's strolls and idle amusements in the outdoors have woken faint freckles on Harri's long-hours indoor pallor, and the elf is touching the wet point of the brush to each one.
"What are you doing," she complains, and Vespidine smiles afresh, puts aside the brush, and hands the jar to Harri.
"Watch," she says, and crosses the room to turn down the lights.
In the dimness, the stuff gently glows, like far-off stars. Harri cranes to survey the constellations of her shoulders, makes the mistake of staring into the dressing-table mirror, and wrenches her eyes away again. Vespidine has made of her some kind of numinous creature.
"I could look at you every hour of the day," Vespidine says, leaning against the wall, hands in her pockets. "Forgive me for the dress, Harika; people should see you. You're worth seeing."
"We tell our children stories, down in the downtown gutters," Harri says. "About what happens when we get seen."
"Cautionary tales?" Vespidine says, eyes hooded, tone almost diffident.
"They're all stories about what happens to girls like me," Harri says. "And the elves in them are always like your sister."
She forces herself to look into the mirror again, softly glowing.
"And what's the moral?"
"Oh, you know." Harri primps her hair, feeling absurd and theatrical. "Virtue despoiled at the end of the night. Pretty dresses, nothing to long for. Know your place: it's safe."
There's a hurt in her chest that feels suspiciously like wanting something.
