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Tales of Vesperia, "Room With A View" (Estelle)
"A rainy day seen from high above."
All Estelle. Mostly introspection, completely and utterly safe. Written for my own prompt at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fic_promptly, to the theme "umbrella".
.room with a view.
Estelle spent every afternoon reading in front of her bedroom window. She had done so for a long time, ever since she was a little girl bereft of any other family or friends; but as the years went by the rapt attention that she paid to the old bound books and dog-eared trade novels in front of her had slowly waned.
After all, she had read a thousand books like these -- ten thousand, a hundred thousand. Which wasn't to say that they were not wonderful books!
But slowly she had come to realize that while she read about adventures and intrigue and romances in books, other people were living them, right outside the very window where she sat.
She couldn't hear them at all; tiny pinprick people several stories below her lofty perch in the castle. But she could see them well enough to watch them meeting in the street, talking together, sometimes embracing or seeming to argue -- to watch the knights chase miscreants and troublemakers from the Royal Quarter -- to see what seemed to be furtive, secretive meetings, filled with unease and hesitation.
Her imagination filled in all the blanks. Those two who had talked and hugged and argued were lovers, and she felt betrayed that he wasn't willing to come to Heliord with her even though her family was planning to move her away. Those troublemakers were part of a secret cabal that wanted to cause unrest among the nobility by wrecking their manors while they were away during the day, but they had been caught when someone with a guilty conscience made a mistake! And those two men meeting secretively were partners who had conned noblewomen into funding an imaginary business venture but couldn't be seen together because of the alleged falling-out that was the reason why those investments would never pan out.
Estelle meant to read, but inevitably her attention would drift out the window. Even the Tale of the Jade Planet couldn't hold her interest. There was a real world out there, one that she had never seen.
But her favorite was on rainy days.
She couldn't see the people then, hidden by the canopy of their umbrellas, but it didn't matter. The umbrellas themselves were the attraction: colorful shapes, spinning and weaving through the silvered, shimmering streets. They met and spun apart as if in an elaborate dance, and Estelle could hardly keep her eyes off them.
"Princess Estellise?" she heard disapprovingly from behind her, and Estelle straightened reflexively.
"Oh-- Lord Hauzer. I wasn't expecting you until this evening." But she was still watching the umbrellas. A knot was passing by now, all bright colors pressed close together, several green and yellow and blue, one that was striped and one that was paisley.
"I wanted to check up on you, since I thought you might have been distracted from your studies by the poor weather... What are you looking at, precisely, Your Highness?"
Estelle finally looked up, smiling brightly at him. "Oh, just... Everything."
All Estelle. Mostly introspection, completely and utterly safe. Written for my own prompt at
fic_promptly, to the theme "umbrella"..room with a view.
Estelle spent every afternoon reading in front of her bedroom window. She had done so for a long time, ever since she was a little girl bereft of any other family or friends; but as the years went by the rapt attention that she paid to the old bound books and dog-eared trade novels in front of her had slowly waned.
After all, she had read a thousand books like these -- ten thousand, a hundred thousand. Which wasn't to say that they were not wonderful books!
But slowly she had come to realize that while she read about adventures and intrigue and romances in books, other people were living them, right outside the very window where she sat.
She couldn't hear them at all; tiny pinprick people several stories below her lofty perch in the castle. But she could see them well enough to watch them meeting in the street, talking together, sometimes embracing or seeming to argue -- to watch the knights chase miscreants and troublemakers from the Royal Quarter -- to see what seemed to be furtive, secretive meetings, filled with unease and hesitation.
Her imagination filled in all the blanks. Those two who had talked and hugged and argued were lovers, and she felt betrayed that he wasn't willing to come to Heliord with her even though her family was planning to move her away. Those troublemakers were part of a secret cabal that wanted to cause unrest among the nobility by wrecking their manors while they were away during the day, but they had been caught when someone with a guilty conscience made a mistake! And those two men meeting secretively were partners who had conned noblewomen into funding an imaginary business venture but couldn't be seen together because of the alleged falling-out that was the reason why those investments would never pan out.
Estelle meant to read, but inevitably her attention would drift out the window. Even the Tale of the Jade Planet couldn't hold her interest. There was a real world out there, one that she had never seen.
But her favorite was on rainy days.
She couldn't see the people then, hidden by the canopy of their umbrellas, but it didn't matter. The umbrellas themselves were the attraction: colorful shapes, spinning and weaving through the silvered, shimmering streets. They met and spun apart as if in an elaborate dance, and Estelle could hardly keep her eyes off them.
"Princess Estellise?" she heard disapprovingly from behind her, and Estelle straightened reflexively.
"Oh-- Lord Hauzer. I wasn't expecting you until this evening." But she was still watching the umbrellas. A knot was passing by now, all bright colors pressed close together, several green and yellow and blue, one that was striped and one that was paisley.
"I wanted to check up on you, since I thought you might have been distracted from your studies by the poor weather... What are you looking at, precisely, Your Highness?"
Estelle finally looked up, smiling brightly at him. "Oh, just... Everything."