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There’s something pleasingly blasphemous about the idea of the saint mask. You’re no saint, of course, but nobody else needs to know that. Taking the mask from the pile, you turn it over in your hands for a moment. The more you look at it, the more curious it seems – what you first took to be a gentle, benevolent smile has a more cynical edge to it, more akin to a mocking sneer.
“This will do me perfectly,” you decide, holding the mask up, “It suits me, wouldn’t you say?”
“Uh, sure. Whatever you say,” Sarah says with a dubious shrug, “Alicia, you need one too. Hurry up and pick something, so I can share the rest of these out with the others. Hurry!”
With a soft yelp, Alicia rummages through the bag before emerging with a delicate mask shaped like a rabbit’s face. She studies it for a moment before holding it up to her face and turning to you.
“It suits you,” you tell her, picturing some quivering prey animal. Alicia grins, taking your compliment at face value, and hurries out with Sarah. As soon as the door clicks shut behind them, you sit back down with a sigh. Sometimes you wonder why the two girls are still willing to accompany you. Perhaps they sense some vague kinship with you, all of you outcasts in your own way.
Sarah Teilhard, from a distant branch of the family, is the worst of all things – a mediocrity. With no particular talents to lift her above the rest of her expansive family, she faces a vague, directionless future. Even worse, she’s already been overshadowed by her younger brother, Erwin, already regarded as something of a prodigy. Little wonder that she seethes with a self-destructive frustration, well hidden beneath her carefree smile.
Though she doesn’t hail from one of the great houses, Alicia Rosenbaum has very much the same trouble. While her family has raised generations of talented oracles, Alicia herself has never shown even the slightest hint of prophecy. No doubt her family sees her as an embarrassment, something to be married off to a suitable husband and forgotten about as soon as possible.
You’ve already spent countless hours pretending that their petty troubles mean anything compared with the noble struggles of your fading family. One more evening won’t matter.
-
You’re no stranger to these dreary outings, mindless voyages into the town below the twin schools that make up Coral House. Usually you spend a few hours with a glass of wine, coldly rebuffing anyone who approaches you as you watch the crowd. You’ve always had the secret hope that you’ll find HIM here, his descent from the gentlemen’s school mirroring your own. You know in your heart, though, that it won’t happen. You’re fated to meet again, but not like this. Not here, surrounded by the noise and filth of humanity. You’ll meet in a place like your home, a purer world beyond all this.
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