Stars-3

STARS (written without hesitation!)

 

She had not been sure what she had expected of the automaton until she had so decidedly not gotten it. At first it had only been the disappointment of injured rationality; then, as her sisters collected ILL HEALTH, OLD AGE, CHILDBIRTH, the feeling gave way to a sharper disappointment, that their town could not even be visited by a talented charlatan.

 

It was said that Napoleon had drawn VICTORY, to great fanfare. She thought it said more of him that he had drawn a card at all. At least there was this: he was not immortal. No more than she was, with her wried "STARS." It was worse than the disappointment, that Catherine would not give her peace about it. If there were anything to it, why could it not be so honest with her as it was with sickly Alice? Or so straightforwardly impossible, as with Anna, who may have been plain and forty but did not deserve the cruelty of her WEDDING NIGHT?

 

"Perhaps," she siad to TOby, asleep at her feet, "it was being literary."

 

She pushed open the gate, the mud wetting her feet as she stepped down to the river. She was wearing her best shoes for the occasion, which meant her most useless. Well, it did not signify, any more than the tale she would make of the innocent footpath.

 

"If it were being literary," she said sofly, and thought of Cassius. Oh, damn, damn, damn the thing. It was right, it would have all the satisfaction. Even though she would be the only one to know it. The fault was in the stars that she was an underling. And in herself, of course, running as deep as the current before her, but that mattered even less than the shoes. She really swore, then, at the thought of its metal certainty, and of the thought perhaps of Anna's being right as well.

 

It was almost enough to stop her.

Done