False Apologies
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why does my heart treat this like so much? It’s just a small, arbitrary token.
“Good morning, apprentice.” Mistress Vincenza steps around me to start her opening ceremony.
I bounce off the wall and reach out. “Mistress, could I have your attention for a moment?”
She turns around and searches my face suspiciously. “What’s so urgent?”
“It’s not really urgent. I—“ My makeup feels heavy. Probably is, given that I was half distracted while applying it. “I was out of line yesterday, and that was after I failed to secure a patron. Necromancy is important to you, and I wanted to… I got you this.”
She twists her head… and then discomfort.
I clutch the carnation to my chest and defend, “the florist said she enchanted it to wilt continuously, that it symbolized death. I may have been scammed, but I wanted to show you that I was taking my role seriously. I do want to be a necromancer, even if it wasn’t something that was ever planned out for me. ”
“Can I hold it?” she gently requests.
“It’s yours.” I hand it off.
Her fingers slowly bind around its stem as she cradles it in her arms. “The enchantment’s real.”
I hesitate. “I hope you l-like it, Mistress.”
“I do.” She blinks and looks back at me. “You don’t owe me these tokens. I want you here.”
“I like it when you want me; I thought you’d want me here more, if I…”
She pets the blackening petals. “The dinner at your parent’s, did it go poorly after I left?”
“What? I—My brother was just insensitive.”
“You don’t talk about them often. Do you have a good relationship to your family?”
“I don’t hate them, I don’t think.” I grab my collar. “I guess it’s ‘home’ I hate. The location, and our situation, not… them. That much.”
“If they truly haven’t mistreated you, you should consider trying again to be close to them.”
A petal falls off the carnation, floating to the floor. It can’t be stopped, but I get to watch every step of its slow journey.
I look back at her. “I’ll think about it.”
She wipes her eye, but turns away before I can see what there was. “I’m going to plant this. Could you open the parlour for me, Catarina?”
“If you trust me, yes. I can. Mistress.” I smile—this is the most responsibility she’s given me since I’ve started. I won’t fall short of everything it demands.
“Of course I trust you. Don’t trust me when I act like I don’t.” She steps around me and back into the hallway.
For the first night of all the time I’ve spent here, Mistress Vincenza leaves to her room right as the parlour closes. Coincidentally, that’s also the exact moment I go to mine.
“Goodnight, Catarina,” she says below her breath before slipping into the darkness.
She hasn’t acted the same all day. At no point did she yell. She barely even talked.
But the hole in my chest is content. Happy, even.
Time to rip it back open. I slide over to the phone, dial the operator, and get a connection back to home—their home. I still prefer seeing this place as my home, if for nothing else, than for the fact that I don’t have to share my bedroom.
Reading can be… more… better, when alone—yeah.
“Benetto,“ my mother says in a stiff, harsh, voice.
“It’s not Dad. It’s me.”
“Catie!“ Conciliatory notes flood her tone. “Mercurio said he’s sorry for what he said, and I’m sorry too.”
“It’s fine. It’s fine… I just d-decided to call.”
“I’m so proud of you for getting an apprenticeship. I told your father, and apparently he’s been bragging to all his crewmates. He’ll be home in three weeks, a few days after the Lights Festival. You should come back and have dinner with all of us.”
“Okay,” I force down my tongue.
“He’ll be so excited!”
Strange how excited she gets for a man she hates so much, or… no, she’s just excited for me.
“I’m going to read. Bye.”
“Bye, dear.”
I sling up the phone and sit back onto my bed.
That didn’t feel awful. One dinner isn’t proof that I’m tied down to my home. I live here now, and that will change as little from a dinner at my mother’s as it would a lunch at a diner.
…I forgot to eat yesterday! Fuck. I jump out from my puddle of comforting blankets and flee into the rain to find a meal.