Lux [h.s]

three

Cora opened her eyes to the dark wood of the ceiling, faintly enlightened by the timid sunlight peeking through the blue curtains.

She let out a whine and rolled over, checking the time on the antique clock against the wall and widening her eyes when she realised she was late. Her aunt preferred to have breakfast before half past seven to catch up and plan ahead for the day, and it was already well past seven.

She got up and entered the bathroom she shared with her aunt. Her grey eyes stared at her tiredly from the mirror, the start of a headache pounding against her temples. A fog was spreading through her memories from the night before, undoubtedly due to the few hours of sleep she'd had.

She pinned up her hair and sunk in the bathtub her aunt had prepared for her. The water had been warm half an hour ago, but now it was freezing cold. She pushed through it, teeth clattering, trembling so hard her muscles hurt. From the corner of the room, a fireplace stared at her silently. Cora couldn't remember the last time she'd seen it active. Her aunt had sacrificed their own heating in favour of the guests' when Cora was little, since money was tight and the hostel was big. It was uncomfortable, but not dangerous—the winters of Beilyn were never too cold. The air was humid, though, and Cora's joints often ached. They were particularly painful today, so Cora washed her body as fast as possible, eager to join her aunt in their living room, that was the only room of their quarters with a working fireplace.

She got out of the bathtub and dried herself off. With a muttered curse, she realised she'd forgotten to bring her clothes. She combed her hair and tied it in a braid, before pinching her cheeks to bring some colour back to her ashen face and walking inside her bedroom. She slalomed between the clothes she'd left on the floor the night before to get to the wardrobe. She put on the first dress she found, straight and dark grey, and tied the string behind her back to give it some shape. It didn't flatter her figure, but the shade of the dress matched the one of her eyes, which made it one of her favourites. Dresses were uncomfortable to wear in the cold season, but it was considered inappropriate for a girl to wear trousers, so she owned no pairs. She did envy all the lucky people that walked on the street with draped legs, though.

Cora finished getting dressed and gathered her clothes from the night before. The stairs creaked again as she walked down with one hand on the handrail and the other pressing the clothes against the wall, trying not to fall down the consumed and slanted steps of the menial staircase. Her aunt had closed off the servant quarters and their two bedrooms from the rest of the hostel with a wall a couple of years before Cora's birth. There were doors on each floor that allowed them to access the hostel with ease, but they were always locked unless they needed to use them.

Cora liked their private quarters. They were old, small and cold, but they were the only place where she didn't risk encountering a guest. When she was there, she ceased to be a worker of the hostel and went back to being just Cora. Just Cora was a peculiar concept, to her. Her identity had been so deeply interwoven with the hostel that at times she struggled to remember who she was, without it. Beyond it. Despite it. Her place was in the hostel, and the hostel was her life. The hostel was all that mattered, everything the future had in store for her. It was her world and her clock, the lens through which she saw life and her job. Beyond it, just Cora was little more than an echo or a shadow. Still, sometimes she enjoyed stripping off her mask and lingering in the corners of non-being to remind herself she had a heart and a mind of her own.

Cora arrived downstairs and entered the living room. It was a small place, only big enough to fit two armchairs on one side and a square wooden table covered in scratches on the other. Near the door that brought to the entrance of the hostel there was a wardrobe, and on the other end of the room there was a fireplace that at times crackled so loudly Cora nearly believed it was trying to establish a conversation with them. Today, it was gnawing at a piece of oak especially noisily, and the scent of burning wood mixed with the sugary one coming from the kitchen. The curtains of the windows to the inner gardens were spread wide, giving Cora an eyeful of the three apple trees and two pear trees that were braving the cold morning outside. The inner garden also contained her aunt's small vegetable garden and was closed off from the main garden of the hostel as well to protect their goods from being stolen.