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𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙁𝙊𝙇𝙇𝙊𝙒𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙈𝙊𝙍𝙉𝙄𝙉𝙂, Aurelia would walk through the corridors of the Agriche estate with stark exhaustion coloring her movement and even darker circles painting her under eyes. She halted in front of the double doors of Lady Sierra Agriche's room, mentally composing herself before quietly entering through the crack in the door.
A fleet of maids already occupied the room, crowding around Lady Sierra and getting the delicate female ready for the day. Aurelia crouched down, slinking in line with the other females and hoping to go unnoticed.
Much to her dismay, Lady Sierra was not as unobservant or dismissive as Aurelia desperately wished she would be. The beautiful blond immediately took note of her entrance, perking up from where she sat on her vanity.
"Lia!"
Aurelia turned at her master's call, her sour expression giving way to a small warm smile as she bowed in greeting.
"Lia you're here! I was worried when I did not see you..."
Aurelia could practically see the halo that shone around the woman who called out to her softly, with a nickname she had spent weeks contemplating and several other weeks working up to nerve to use. Lady Sierra, in every sense of the way, is far too kind for this wretched place. She is a woman sentenced to a horrible life in a place where she served as the odd one out among a mob of emotionally malfunctioning individuals. She is a wife who is ignored but still helpless and craves affection. She is a mother forced to see her children broken and rebuilt into a horrifyingly flawed image of perfection. She is also the only holder of the Agriche name that Aurelia dares to feel pity or sympathy for. Nonetheless, and most importantly, she is Aurelia's master; her main master as well.
"I apologize to my lady. I was tasked with helping the kitchen staff fetch water this morning."
And that was the truth, though it felt like an excuse to the guilty maid. The chore of getting water in the mornings was a rotational one; regularly assigned to a different group of maids (as the female staff was divided among the master's of the household) -- or at least it should be. Hierarchy and discrimination existed even among the lowly staff of the Agriche estate, and the rank of the maids often correlated with the status of their direct master. The maids of lady Sierra were at the bottom of the chain, and thus were the ones given this task every time. Due to this (unwanted) responsibility, every morning one of the maids would be absent, but Lady Sierra only seemed to notice when it was Aurelia the other maids noted, their thoughts tinted with disdain and envy.
It was difficult to gain the explicit favor of a master but extremely beneficial. Aurelia had somehow managed to win over almost all the masters of the Agriche estate.
