It is no bad thing, Guenneth believes, that she is now regarded as too dowdy and dull for men of high rank or wealth to acknowledge.
In her younger days, she was sometimes pursued by the wealthy sons of those who visited or worked with her employers, but she found herself becoming more and more invisible to them as she aged. This suited her down to the ground.
In all of her years, only one man ever truly claimed her heart, and while she occasionally enjoys a flirtation or brief romance with men whose social standing is akin to hers, she has always known that a dalliance between a peroi – a member of the manual classes, bound to serve or die – and a scion of nobility will lead to nothing but grief, with the peroi bearing all of the consequences for it.
If only Josliehn had had the good sense to understand that.
Guenneth glances at her now. They are seated across from one another in a vast public aircraft that will carry them away from the patrician districts of Orsthai, back to their run-down but dearly loved home of Plaithses. She has arranged for Josliehn to be absent from the Pallias home tomorrow, while the wedding is taking place, and as she herself is not scheduled to work either, she will be able to keep a close eye on her.
Josliehn’s normally warm sallow skin is ashen, her hair limp, her eyes repeatedly filling with tears that she doesn’t seem to have the strength to wipe away. Guenneth sympathises with the girl, yet she can’t help being irked by her foolishness. How could she ever have believed that the son of Orsthai’s most powerful family would make her his bride, whatever he might have said to her in the throes of passion?
A response to @mariannewest’s freewrite prompt, old lady, this piece forms part of a project I’m working on at the moment. I’ve given this project the title of “The Ballroom Project” for now, until a better one falls into place.
"The Ballroom Project" works for me as a permanent title. An old editor I know would purge "The" from every title of every short story, to the chagrin of all Perhelion Science Fiction contributors, but I'm ok with letting "the" remain.
Guenneth, now seen as dowdy and dull, still has a flame in her heart for a man beneath her station (thus, unable to marry) - so she actually likes becoming invisible. What a great opening hook!
It's not clear to me who is the bride of (a son of Orsthai's most powerful family) - but Joslien apparently was hoping to be that bride. Another great hook.
Instead of searching for scattered stories, I will wait until I can read them all in one place. This is how I operated at an online fiction workshop, years ago. A chapter a week? Uh, no. If you have the whole thing, sub the whole thing to me offlist, and I will read it all at once, not week by week. My memory and attention span just don't work well enough for serial fiction.
Keep going...! You have a great start here.
Thank you, Carol! I agree it’s probably not ideal from a readability perspective to post little bits of the story at a time, but I also didn’t want to just plump everything I have into one post. 🤣 The major plot points of the story are in place, but I’m in the process of refining everything, getting character nuances down, filling in parts of the story that don’t fully make sense yet. In a way, posting these little extracts is about holding myself accountable to finishing the story, even if no one else reads them. Putting them out into the world in some small way, rather than waiting until the entire novel seems ‘perfect’ (an ideal that might never be reached 😅) helps me to commit to the project as a whole. Thank you so much for your kind feedback!
Oh, you are doing a great thing, posting these stories as they come!
I was only explaining that for me it's hard to follow, but serializing as-we-write is a trend.
The image of the pink flower, I thought, would tip me off to a Ballroom post, but I was finding it tricky to navigate. I love your characters. Keep going!!! I won't hold out for the complete novel (and no novel is "perfect" or "finished"). Love your commitment to being "accountable" to yourself with these stories.