The First Fall

It was intended to be a distinguished meeting; the Lord Grosvenor had been watching the maids groom his large-eyed and cherub-like daughter all morning. An important connection had to be made, and in the vacancy of either house having a son, an established female friendship would have to be the next best link. The House of Vorserkeine, though rumoured eccentric, was a suitable connection for the Grosvenors; close to the crown, politically sharp and charismatic. Good alliances to make.

Violet Grosvenor’s small, seven year old form had been pampered into perfection for hours. Clad in a suitable lavender dress, her glossy blonde hair over both shoulders in plaits, she presented the perfect example of Aryan youth. She stood in front of her father, with a small, prophetically dark red haired doll hanging from her hands by its arm, with her wide, blue eyes on the door. She had to make an impression; she’d had it ingrained into her that ensuring the daughter of the Vorserkeines considered her a friend was to be her only pursuit.

The Lord Vorserkeine was a tall man, sharp-featured and dark haired. He glanced over his shoulder impatiently. His darling child was late. In actual fact, the maids had been chasing her around all morning, attempting to stuff her into the red dress her father had selected for her. At present, they were calling for her at the fringe of the woods, reasoning she must have run off to hide there.

Eventually, after a long, awkward silence, the tall-for-her-age, scrawny, angular faced child of the house emerged. Or rather, was dragged into her father’s presence.

Violet stared. She’d expected a similarly perfect child, in a similarly perfect dress, with similarly perfect poise. What she got, was an image of rebellion. Dressed in boys’ hose, a common doublet she’d stolen from the chicken boy, with dark, wild mahogany curls half-arsedly tied up with rogue strands all over the place, and mud all over her. Her leather shoes were positively caked with the stuff, and by the defiant glare in her eyes, she didn’t much care either.

The Lord Vorserkeine promptly thwacked his miscreant daughter around the earhole, and gestured to Violet with one of his pale hands. “Greet Miss Grosvenor as you have been taught, Mereavus,” he commanded her.

She shot him a dark glare, one glove covered hand rising to put one of those rogue curls behind her ear. She worked the mud-caked glove off her hand, turned her fingertips and hand palm up, and offered it surprisingly mildly towards Violet, her knees bending in a curtsey so innately regal that it cast her in the most obscure, contradictory light.

Violet’s hand gravitated outwards to touch that offered, and she suddenly felt very scrutinised in her own responding curtsey. She couldn’t help but flush at the terrible irony that this gangly, boyish creature could do it better than she could; but at the same time, it was one of those things she instantly liked.

“I apologise for the mud,” the Vorserkeine child grinned impishly. “The maids seem to have the damnedest time catching up with me.”

Violet smiled brightly, glancing down at her own clothing, and then back up. “Why do you not want to wear a dress?” she enquired curiously. She, after all, very much liked dresses.

“I don’t much care for them,” she answered, replacing the glove onto her acceptably clean hand. “Tents are to be slept in, not worn.”

Violet stared at her. Tents? Why on earth would anyone but a homeless Pleb sleep in a tent? What sort of serf-sympathiser was this creature?

“Perhaps you could show Miss Grosvenor the grounds, Mereavus,” the Vorserkeine father commanded, in no uncertain tones – a mildly phrased command was one of those things his daughter eventually picked up on rather well.

And so the Vorserkeine child did. She showed her all the best parts of the manor – where the best place to hide was, where the maids never looked, where the safest spot to jump in the river was. Violet followed her with a sort of ever-deepening curiosity, stepping cautiously over muddy spots and lifting her skirt in places, so to not dirty herself. Mereavus seemed to feel no such desire, and seemed to delight in puddles and taking muddy short cuts.

There could never be any doubt as to how fascinated the Grosvenor child was with that of the Vorserkeine blood; but she was well aware that she no doubt came across as just another girl to the spirited gremlin, and she couldn’t have that. So, she stopped, and pointed to the top of a sheer rock ridge. A small violet poked over the edge.

“Eave!” she called instantly – that being the first ever shortening of the Vorserkeine child’s name so. “Fetch it for me. I want it.”

She anticipated a scoffed ‘no’ – why would Mereavus do anything anyone wanted her to do? She seemed to delight in the opposite. Instead, she was given a long, weighing look, and then the taller of the two promptly began to climb. A nimble creature, uninhibited by tent-clothing, and remarkably strong in her youthful pursuits of enjoyables that required a little exertion, it didn’t take her very long to reach a particularly convex part of the face.

She thought she ought to give up out of safety, but a single glance down at the anticipating blonde told her otherwise. ‘I want it’. She looked back up at the hint of blue above her, and hauled herself around the difficult rock face, to reach for it.

A slipped stone and a sharp crack later, the Vorserkeine child landed with force on top of a collection of smaller stones beneath the face itself. Violet screamed, both hands going to her cheeks, and she stared incredulously at the fallen girl. Oh God, her father was going to kill her; befriend the Vorserkeine, not kill her!

But, the gremlin hadn’t quite been killed. She withdrew one hand from touching her damaged back, looking at the blood that stared back at her with an almost amused expression. She could hear their fathers coming.

She turned on her side to offer out the violet to her, smiling in spite of her injury. “I got it.”