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Language:
English
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1899 Fic Exchange
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Published:
2023-10-15
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1,043
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1/1
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6
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9
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(specimen)

Summary:

A character study of Clémence, in the simulation.

Notes:

Mild warning that this character has negative thoughts about motherhood/children.

Work Text:

Clémence was twelve when her father took her to visit one of his friends. The man lived in a stately manor in a beautiful green valley... but no, that wasn’t entirely accurate. The man owned the manor, but he lived in transit, always on one scientific excursion or another, and it was rare to find him at home.

And so Clémence had never met him before. She had heard his name, when her father read aloud his correspondence on occasion after dinner, but she had never seen his face. In person, he was not quite the man she expected. The man in the letters seemed like he would be tall and whipcord-lean, with a thick head of hair that flowed in the wind and a profile like the prow of a ship.

Instead, a stout, short man greeted them when they were ushered into his receiving room, his medium-brown hair thinning and his face florid and creased from the sun.

That was all she noticed of the man before she was captivated by his house .

There were specimens and sketches and books everywhere, hanging on the walls, standing in jars on plinths, lined up in rows on shelves. Here, a tinted lithograph showing the dissected anatomy of a flightless bird hung in a frame. There, a stuffed crocodile barely three feet long stood in an attitude of coiled ferocity within a glass case, its jaws open to display its teeth. Next to it stood a stack of journals labeled in meticulous hand. She wandered through the rooms as her father and his friend spoke – though what they said, she could not say, her mind filled with the wonders of the world on display around her.

And, tucked away in a dark corner, she found a small shadow-box filled with butterflies.

Their wings were spread like they could still take flight, minute scales on their wings nearly glowing with vivid colors that would put Clémence’s mother’s wardrobe to shame. Blues, violets, golden-yellows, sweet soft greens and deep chocolate browns glimmered in the dark, each insect fixed in place with a gleaming silver pin.

“Yes, aren’t they beautiful?” the collector said, noticing her fascination. “I have to keep them out of the sun or their colors will fade.” Clémence imagined him traveling to some distant jungle and plucking each body from the leaf-litter on the ground, rescuing them in death that he might save and share their beauty. “I even wrap the killing-jars in black paper to preserve them properly.”

Clémence had looked away finally, her eyes wide. “What’s a killing-jar?”

 

* * *

 

When Clémence was fifteen, her sister married, and married well. Marguerite seemed blissfully happy with her handsome husband, and Clémence was wildly jealous.

And then the children came, one after the other. They were beautiful babies. Everyone said so. But Marguerite seemed to diminish somehow with each pregnancy, the bloom in her cheeks fading, the light in her eyes dimming, the line of her spine and shoulders wilting like a cut bloom too long in a vase without water.

And when they visited, everything revolved around the babies – feedings, changings, discussions of their little triumphs and their grand prospects. No sooner would they be asleep than they would wake to fuss, it seemed.

It didn’t take long before Clémence found them tiresome.

Was this what motherhood was? Sacrificing your own vitality for such squirming, insensible little creatures? Her dreams of marriage, of having a large family, started to sour and fade. And yet, it was still expected of her.

She resolved to make the best of it.

 

* * *

 

When Clémence was nineteen, she fell in love with a visiting English baron. He was beautiful and charming and clever, his halting proficiency with French offset by his willingness to laugh. He told her of his travels; his business interests have taken him to Milan and Constantinople and New York, and might continue to send him to other far-flung places.

They spent enough time together that her parents began to make plans. And Clémence began to imagine what her life would be like with him, traveling the globe.

She wants, very badly, to see something of the world.

Then, one day, she finds herself alone with him, and his smile slips from his face. He steals a kiss, and then a second, and his hands wander.

Clémence is overwhelmed, and then shocked. She pushes him away, but it is too late: they’ve been seen by a maid, who tells her mother, who tells her father, and then–

The baron refuses to marry her.

Clémence is ruined. It’s no consolation that all the baron stole were some kisses and fumbling gropes – that she allowed him to go so far speaks to her lack of character. And all her hopes and dreams of seeing the world become flattened beneath the weight of her family’s need to marry her off as soon as possible.

And then, one evening three months later, an officer dances with her despite her reputation, adoration in his eyes. He’s only just returned from a tour of duty, so he knows nothing of her reputation – and when one of the gossips takes him aside for a whispered conversation, the eagerness in him hardens to resolve, and he asks Clémence to dance again.

And so his proposal a month later is accepted.

She does not love him the way she loved the baron. But he seems kind and admiring and she appreciates his bravery – not just as a soldier but in his willingness to dismiss the rumors about her in favor of his own judgment. 

And, perhaps, even a soldier’s wife may travel, too.

 

* * *

 

The ceremony is beautiful, but Clémence will hardly remember much of it. She’ll remember the fuss and bustle just beforehand as she prepared with her mother and sister and lady’s-maids flitting around her, and the quiet that descended afterwards when she retired alone to her rooms.

That evening, Clémence removes her gloves, her jewelry, her shoes. Lucien will arrive in her room shortly, and she must be ready for him. She pulls the flowers from her hair, and winces as the pin pricks her finger.

She stares at the blood that wells up on the pad of her thumb, and thinks of butterflies.