cafe_coimbra | [Fic] On a Morning Spent at the Windowsill

Beaunvoliant fic.
Val and Perri, in the morning.
Warning for: Lots and lots and LOTS of FLOWERY TEXT. Blame my Lit class, we took up those flowery victorian classics and the one I was assigned (Woman in White) is one of the most flowery of them all. Thus, this.

Yay eclectic-ness!
Val's POV.

On a Morning Spent at the Windowsill

The morning mist was outside our windows and the chill that ghosted its way under our doors was gradually alleviating from the slow ascend of the sun towards the visible sky. I am not, by all means, a person who regularly saw fit to rouse himself from sleep at the early hours of the day, and the hazy recognition with which the world seemed to regard itself in my eyes was only a testament to this altogether unremarkable yet uncommon occurrence. The sun would not stop ascending, and so I surrendered myself to the unmistakable truth that it was the morning and I was already awake, with no hope to ever tumble back to sleep anytime soon.

There were no larks that sung a chorale piece this morning, nor were there any sparrows who decided to chirp their greetings to each other at the time. Who was I to blame them, after all? At this time in the morning, with the sun still in the process of going up the steep, invisible incline in that sky, I would suppose that no matter what kind of creature one was, the blissful ignorance that comes with sleep was just that. Bliss. I forced myself to pull the curtains back and let those damn rays of light enter my window. I didn’t know the time. I didn’t care- most mornings were the same to me. Were I a philosopher’s son, I could have possibly learned to love the mornings just that little bit more, as it was some sort of interesting new development that I was allowed to live for one more day like this. On the other hand, I could have just as well spouted off several different trains of thought pertaining to my perpetual dislike of mornings- but as it is, my father is not a philosopher, and I justify my dislike of mornings by saying they simply annoyed me, which they did.

It was on a morning like any other where I found my sister, the elder, comfortably seated on a chair next to one of the larger windows in the sala, fully dressed and resting her chin on one hand, facing the glass that separated us from the outside. Her hair was messily bound up with a single white ribbon. She was scrutinizing the sky.
I asked her if she always woke this early even if I already knew the answer. She was always completely awake and dressed hours before either me or my younger sister would even think of leaving the sanctuary of our rooms, and more often than not she had a knife hidden in her boot or a needle tucked in her sleeve. She, not passing up the rare chance to have an early morning conversation with her decidedly petulant younger brother, replied that yes, she did. It was hard to search through my mind for a reply. It was, after all, early morning, and not twenty minutes had passed since I woke.

I asked her where her mask was. She gestured to the low windowsill, and the dull butterfly-shaped metal replied in her stead. She asked me where my violin was. I simply said that it was not in the room. Not once did she take her eyes off the image painted on the outside of a day about to be born. The gleaming white ribbon entangled in her hair mocked me with its purity. The conversation was awkward. I ran my eyes around the room for a sparse minute. The atmosphere in the room was stifling- a mixture of tension and withheld words, in addition to a strange sort of serenity that I supposed only the hours of the day I hated could spread onto an area. The sun was still in the process of rising.

She had shifted slightly to cross her legs and leaned back in her seat. She still did not turn to face me. I asked her what time she went to bed the previous night, she stated that she hadn’t slept at all. I presumed that her gaze was averted to hide the tiredness in her eyes. She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t expect her to. Such was the life of a younger sibling- forever knowing the full details yet still feeling repressed from finding out the truth.

Had she been a philosopher’s daughter, maybe she would have swayed the conversation toward the direction of the nature of living and feeling, and dreaming while awake. But my sister was not a philosopher’s daughter, as I was not a philosopher’s son. Most of all, I knew that my sister was not a dreamer, just as she was not the type to leave herself idle staring at a sunrise, but maybe it was because it was morning and the day has its ways of toying with your mind at its hour of birth.

We stayed in silence for a while, my sister in her chair, me standing looking silly in the middle of the room, the violin in its case somewhere else in the house, and the metal butterfly at the windowsill.

And suddenly she stood, her whole body shifting its weight to stand and face the unattainable view outside the windowsill, and she tilted her head a bit to see well. It was only then that I realized that enough time had passed for the climbing sun to paint the horizon in an array of shades of red. The white ribbon was still out of place, doing nothing for her blonde hair.

I was pondering telling her exactly what I thought, and questioning where she obtained the ribbon in the first place, when she laid her hand on the window and watched the molten sky get ever brighter, and she still did not turn to face me- me, still with my feet on the floor, standing in the same spot as where I begun the conversation, still caught up in the drowsiness of the vanishing morning mist.

And she allowed a small sound of not-dissent escape her lips before she let out a soft, barely-there laugh, hand still resting against the glass, mask still resting on the windowsill, ribbon still resting in her hair, sun now burning the clouds in a brilliant display of art, and maybe her eyes were shining.