Promises Unkept

Midnight kisses.

I am well, thank you, those who worried actually. But things are not so well. You know what I mean, don't you?

-----

That night, Eden woke up after a long while of combating the horrid dreams, sitting in an unfamiliar room with a familiar feeling of defeat, of loss trouncing at her heart.

She remembered nothing.

She recognized nothing.

Not in the blankets and the huge canopied bed on which she rested. Not in the lace curtains and the mauve wallpaper. Not in the vintage furniture and the sepia velvet couch. Not in the dynamics of this chamber and the lethargy of the hour of night that it was.

Not even in the sleeves of her own nightdress.

Only her exhaustion was recognizable. And that knowledge_ of Magpies bereavement was raw. Fresh.

The spring in the barrens was past. The oasis in the wasteland had dried up.

Her spring_ her oasis was dead.

In a grave, alone somewhere, in these hills and the woods.

She blinked rapidly.

Slowly, as the weariness passed out and languid energy filled her brain, she realized where she was.

It was a grand room, in the living heart of the manor, the Ashleyton. Away from the servants quarter. Away from the kitchens and laundry rooms and the supply quarter. Away from the vivacious chores and the never ending hum.

Nearer to Lord Adelwoods chamber.

Nearer to him.

Very near, in fact. He was not two doors away. Or hardly.

He had insisted for her to stay away from that room in the servant quarter. She did not protest. It would have been foolish enough, to lie upon the cot of that chamber and hope for the sleep to attain her. It would have been impossible.

It was a room with memories. Good from better to bad till worst.

She rubbed her hand on the white silk fabric of the quilt and wondered why she could not sleep peacefully even with all this luxury.

They all knew by now, the maids and those footmen, cleaners and the gardeners, the truth of her identity. Of who she really was.

Not a maid, at least. Not a no one.

They had expressed nothing but every pair of eyes that met Edens asked her the same question that she had no vigor to answer.

Midst all this, Lord Adelwood had ushered her upstairs, allotted her this room and Mrs. Hopkins had helped her bathe and change into her nightgown. Pie, she had been informed, was in Lord Adelwoods keeping. To be cleansed and fed.

Hence, here she remained, alone, as naturally alone, as night is in the lack of moon.

Her moon was gone, afterall.

She was out of the bed before she knew and near to the window. Her heart slashed in her bosom when on relieving the curtains, she saw the sky to be cloudless and starlit.

Moonlit.

Glee-lit, as if.

What was it celebrating? This sky? What was it so happy for? What hilarity was making the stars twinkle such?

A saddened heart often resents all that is genial around it and so did hers.

When she had asked Maggie to stop living in fantasies, she had never realized Maggie would stop living altogether.