"Silva, darling—"
"No," she insisted, holding up her hand, collecting herself before she pushed off from the chair. "He's not making me choose.Youare the only one trying to do that. And if I have to choose, you won't be happy with the answer, mother."
"You're going to break your grandmother's heart. Is that what you want?"
"It's not," she choked out, her voice breaking again. "I don't want to hurt anyone, and I don't want to have to choose. If you make me, you're breakingmyheart, and I don't know if I can forgive you for that."
Her mother's voice followed her out the door, calling her name, but she did not look back. She couldn't continue living this half-life, couldn't continue being Silva of the day time, not when he existed in the night.It’s always night in her majesty's forest.His odd words from the fall prickled up her spine as she walked away, pulling away from her childhood home, and leaving childhood behind for good.
♥ ♥ ♥
Lurielle
When the invitationhad arrived, she'd spent nearly a week fretting over it before she told him. She didn't want to go. She didn't want to see her mother, didn't want to be the source of gossip for the evening, which she undoubtedly would be. She didn't want to see the Elvish club peers she'd left behind, nor the relatives amongst whom she had always been an outsider. She did want to go, would have been more than content to grip the invitation up and toss it in the bin without a second thought . . . But it was her great-grandmother's birthday, and she didn't want to miss that.
Khash, of course, had been ecstatic. He thrived in the spotlight, was excited at the opportunity to meet her relatives, to schmooze for a new crowd, confident in his abilities to charm his way through every situation.
"Bluebell, this’ll be as easy as the cake throw at the elder’s Grahlak picnic."
"Yeah, that’s not a reference I understand," she’d grumbled once she’d finally shown him the invitation. His plan, he’d explained, was simple: charm Nana first, flirt the cousins into submission, captivate the room in general with his genial southern charm, and avoid her mother. She was forced to admit that it was likely a good plan. First, though, she had to get through the torturous affair of introducing him to her parents. That had been her main source of conflict — biting the bullet and getting it over with before the big events, or letting her great-grandmother's party be the very first introduction to the orc with whom she was planning on spending the rest of her life.
Dinner with her parents had gone about as well as she had expected, although, as she'd assured him in bed that night, it could have gone much worse. Her mother hadn’t brought an additional date for her, for example, nor had she broken down in noisy sobs over her disappointment in her only daughter’s life choices, as Lurielle had expected. The venue selected was a restaurant in the middle of their respective drives, not her childhood home, which was what her mother pushed for, and not at a swanky Elvish restaurant, which had been the second choice selection.
"No. I'm not meeting you at Loterwatra. It's an Elvish restaurant, mother. Exclusively for elves. Maybe you blocked out my earlier phone call when I let you know I am in a relationship with an orc, but he is still actually an orc, so no. I'm going to say ‘pass’ on the exclusively Elvish restaurant. We can find a multi-species restaurant in the middle, or we don't need to do this at all."
"I don't understand why you don't want to just drive home, it would be so much simpler—"
"It would be simpler for you, not for me. We can meet in the middle, or we don't have to meet at all."
The voice on the phone was firm and steadfast, and she scarcely recognized it as her own. After all, she had felt ground down under her mother's heel her entire life. She was told she was too big, took up too much space, and was therefore of lesser value, and so she tried to be as invisible for most of her adolescence. Simply doing whatever her mother asked was easier than arguing, because arguing meant she would trot out her best shrill voice wounded accusations, the absolute opposite of invisibility, and so simply going along had been her MO for years.
Going back to her childhood home, the site of so many arguments that she never even attempted to win, the guilt trips for simply existing, as if her being born with a bigger bone structure was a personal attack that she carried out on her mother daily . . . Lurielle did not want to risk being back in that environment; didn't trust herself not to slip into that old passive, invisible role. When she’d moved out of the Elvish dorms and in with Tev, in university, her reign of invisibility had continued. She wasn't sure how it was that she managed to find someone who managed to be exactly like her mother, didn't like what it said about herself that that's what she attracted and even less — what she was drawn to. She’d done whatever Tev had asked as well, wanting to be agreeable, to take up as little space as possible, even the air she breathed. But that Lurielle was long gone, she reminded herself, and her current iteration had no desire to see her return.
In the end, a restaurant was found off the highway, nearly at the midway point between their respective drives. Her parents had arrived first, and she watched them as they crossed the restaurant's lobby. There were other species in attendance, she was glad to see, lizardfolk and goblins and trolls, but as she and Khash came through the front doors, her mother's mouth dropped open. Lurielle watched in slow motion as her parent's heads tipped back and back, taking him in — every decadently gorgeous inch of him. He'd worn the same jacket he had that first night he took her to the restaurant in the little resort town, fine blue wool, stretched across his back like the sea, his khaki-colored dress slacks a preppy counterpoint. His heavy watch face gleamed goldenly, and his pocket square had been ivory with small burgundy pin dots, matching the wine-colored dress she'd worn.
It was the first occasion in which she'd seen her mother in some time, and Lurielle was only a little ashamed to admit that she had spent hours getting ready. She fussed with her hair that morning, fussed with it again in the early afternoon, deciding she was done fussing sometime around lunch and stopped for a blowout. Her makeup was soft and natural; her shapewear the opposite of soft and natural, displacing her spleen as she wriggled into it before zipping up the wine-toned dress. She'd worn the opal and diamond earrings he bought her for Heart's Day, and the matching bracelet she'd received for her birthday, just a month earlier. She felt put together and pretty, a sentiment Khash had echoed before they'd left, bending to kiss her cheek gently without messing her makeup. And as she crossed the restaurant’s waiting area to where her parents sat near the hostess stand, she thought to herself with a fucking shame it was that she was internally clenching, prepared to be picked to pieces by the person who should have loved her more than anyone else in the world.
