Work Text
I got an eye-full of her the moment she teetered into the room on those stiletto heels of hers. Anyone looks tall when you’re the person on her hands and knees wiping the floor, but even standing, this girl would have come off like an Amazon. She was a head taller than most of the men there, though her body was elegant and slender. Her powder blue coat hung well on her frame. Massive white feathers were gathered at her collar and sleeves; a great grey ostrich feather curled up from her hat. She surveyed the joint like a great bird of prey.My stomach went arctic the moment those eyes met mine. People don’t normally bother looking at me, not just because there isn’t much to look at but because I’m just the help. I scrub floors and put chairs on tables once the last drunk stumbles home. But from beneath those blue-black eyelashes, she peered at me with a look I couldn’t quite place. Like I was a mouse in the parlor. Giving me one last look-over, she redirected her attention to a suit at a table. Her date.Ten minutes of conversation. At the end of it, I was still scrubbing those stains off the floor, wondering why people who can’t hold drink try their luck time and again. She and her friend walked by arm-in-arm. But as she walked past, a little slip of paper fell beside me, accompanied by some stray feathers. I picked it up the moment I no longer heard her heels clacking against the floor. When I unfurled it, I was greeted with a time and place written in a blood-red scrawl.Trouble. That’s what she was. I knew it then. I could sense the heartache on the horizon.I stuffed the paper in my pocket.