Moonwater Perfume/Written during Lisou's Fourth Passing

There’s a busy afternoon ahead of me. It’s already been a hectic morning. I barely had enough time to eat breakfast before I had to run into the city for the first fitting of my inauguration reception dress. Standing around for two hours being poked and prodded by two seamstresses trying to fit my breasts and waist into a corset is not the way I want to spend some of my time. And I don’t need a corset, for the sake of Amhrita. If my waist got much smaller, it wouldn’t exist anymore. But that’s not the worst part. No, the heinous aspect comes under the heading of traditional attire. The proscribed costumes for evening functions are based upon centuries of precisely recorded patterns and endless minutiae for such petty things as trimmings and yards of material permitted for underclothes. It even gets down into the pointless details of who gets to wear what color.

Thankfully, indigo is not on the list of colors forbidden to courtesans. So I will put up with trying to move around a ballroom with an overstuffed skirt floating around my ankles...and there is the matter of that dreadful corset which will be encasing my upper torso...plus the awful five-layer hairstyle someone once considered fashionable, and for some reason our society still insists women wear on formal occasions. Among their many other faults, the aristocracy is also style challenged.

Yet this is all for a good cause. In less than two weeks, Josym shall be inducted as a Paladin in the Most Ancient and Holy Order of Chatos. The following night, I shall initiate him into something less holy, not pure, but still esteemed. Time is moving along so quickly! Wasn’t it only three weeks ago that our first meeting took place in the garden? Since then, we’ve had five encounters in total, with the last three in locations much less bizarre than the wardrobe room. On two occasions, we met under the cover of night, in the garden by the fountain. The day before yesterday was our most recent meeting, in the solarium (blessedly, this took place with the sun in full bloom, peeking through the windows. Oh, gorgeous!). Each time we’ve been together, our words have come fast and free; there are no divisions of class that we like to acknowledge. Let the aristos be damned!

Josym, if he ever decides to accept his inheritance, will make an interesting Prestat: one who is egalitarian, not afraid of change, and truly values learning and art (I’m beginning to persuade him of the beauty in poetry, and he is slowly convincing me there are some dramatic works which are equal to my favorite works of verse). If he doesn’t get a chance to grow older in this place, then these qualities that are best in him shall remain intact.

But that can only happen if he doesn’t remain on Deiu. I don’t know why this feeling exists. It isn’t a sense of foreboding...I’m not in touch with the Force, so perhaps it’s wrong of me to say whether or not he might face danger by staying here. Yet there isn’t fear tied with the feeling. It’s more of...an understanding that his future isn’t what he was born into. That makes no sense. What other kind of future can he have other than inheriting the Lordship?

 Part VII