>>5976632>>5976629>>5976478>>5976451>>5976432You smile and nod, and Costella’s own smile broadens and brightens. Whatever your concerns or misgivings, this isn’t the time or place for them—not when Costella Fanucci is looking at you with such giddy, girlish love.
Honestly, It's difficult not to feel that same excitement when you look at her. She is lovely to behold: with heart-shaped face and cascading curls, with sun-kissed freckles on rosy cheeks. The way she talks, and moves, and laughs… Well, this might not be EXACTLY how you envisioned things going, and this might not be an IMMINENT marriage, but there’s a reason you want to marry her EVENTUALLY.
Just… Izirina, too.
“Sounds complicated,” says Testa.
“It is!” you lament. “Costella sort of spring this on me, and now Izzy’s being all, well, WEIRD about it…”
“It’s your own fault, of course,” Testa adds matter-of-factly.
The two of you are alone for the moment, discussing some alterations to the initial designs and going over some materials and colour-swatches for your clothing… Or at least, that was the intention. Costella is currently elsewhere in the tower, serving as a living mannequin for a half-dozen swarthy halfling women. Last you saw her, the little folk were pinning fabric around your fiancé, and snapping at its hanging ends with scissors—scissors which slice keenly and neatly, with never a stray thread, and which, drawn across a cut—can mend two pieces back to one. Costella has less PRACTCIAL need of enchanted fabrics, magically-made, but it’s what Margot Gartner’s Tower has, so it’s what she’ll get.
“My fault?” you recoil. “What do you mean?”
“Well you’re the one trying to balance two women at once, you cad,” Testa points out, tone still bland and without venom.
“I’m not a CAD,” you argue.
“I’m just saying, when you have a girl on each arm and you give your hand in holy matrimony to one, the other’s going to feel weird about it. And Izzy’s CUTE, but it’s in a dorky kind of bookworm way, like you, whereas Costella is… Well...”
“I get it,” you say. “You think she’s feeling insecure?”
“Wouldn’t YOU?” Testa retorts.
It’s true enough… Even a blind (elf)man or a boy-crazy woman like Testa can recognize that Costella is, almost objectively, gorgeous, and in that way which has widespread appeal: tall, fair, buxom, broad-of-hip, athletic without being too muscular. Izirina’s rich, tan complexion, her brilliant eyes and half-mad smile, her smaller chest and squeezable… Well, she had physical appeal as well, but especially clad all in black and with only sparing use of (Nicolette Testa-approved) make-up, izirina’s default aesthetic leaned more towards the intimidating and utilitarian than towards ‘feminine beauty’.
“It’s not like Izzy doesn’t ALSO like her,” you say. “It’s not just about what -I- want.”