"Do you ever get sick of it?" Millerna asks. She's sprawled in a most unladylike fashion across Eries' bed—her skirts are riding up, exposing the pale color of her knees. Usually Eries will clear her throat and stare pointedly until Millerna sighs and tugs them back down but today her bookworm sister just hums absently, eyes never straying from her book. "Etiquette this, etiquette that, all day, every day! Doesn't it just make you want to pull your hair out?"
"Not particularly." Eries turns a page and Millerna wants to slap the book out of her hands. Not the most mature of impulses she knows, but since Eries is so dead set on being distinguished and mature one of them should at least act a child, Millerna thinks. "And I ask you refrain from any hair pulling in my presence. The last thing I need is your hair getting all over the carpet."
Millerna sniffs. "As if you would pick them up yourself."
Eries' lips give the barest twitch. "Quite right—I'd make you pick them up. Your hair, your responsibility."
Responsibility. Just hearing the word is enough to make Millerna roll over and groan into one of Eries' pillows. "I've had a lifetime of responsibility, thank you."
"Millerna, you're twelve." Eries' placid voice holds a note of exasperation, a sound all too familiar to Millerna's ears. Nine times out of ten it is caused by her presence after all.
Millerna sits up, fiddling with her ribbon. "Twelve years sick of it all," she grumbles, threading it through her hair once more. She hates whenever her bow gets lopsided.
"Millerna." Her fingers freeze around her ribbon—Eries is staring at her evenly, her lips turned down at the corners. The book has been lowered to her lap but Millerna feels anything but triumphant now that she finally has Eries' full attention, not when she knows a lecture is in store for her. "We all have our responsibilities. We may not like them but there is no changing that we have them. And as members of the royal family it is our duty to carry them out to the best of our ability, no matter how boring or tedious they may seem." Eries' voice softens imperceptibly. "Etiquette can be both, I know, but trust me, Millerna, you are learning it for a reason."
She's trapped in Eries' calm, unblinking gaze until her eyes awkwardly flit away. She exhales through her nose, smiling ruefully. Really, Eries can be a bit too intense sometimes.
"I know, I know. I just…" She looks at the window, the curtains rustling around it. She can smell the faintest hint of roses. "I just wish…"
She doesn't finish. She doesn't need to.
Some time passes. Millerna closes her eyes, listening. Sounds carry to her from the halls: servants bustling by, the faint squeaking of a cart, idle chatter, the whisper of politics. Sounds she's heard a million times before. Will hear a million times more.
She can't help wishing sometimes is all.
Fingers in her hair and Millerna's eyes fly open. She does her best impression of a statue, hardly daring to breathe as they reach for her half-done ribbon, retying it with an expert's ease.
Eries knots the bow with promise, her smile the barest upturn of the lips.
"There." Eries smooths some hair behind Millerna's ear, a rarely seen mischievousness in her eyes. "Now you're almost presentable."
Millerna is fingering the ribbon, dazed in more ways than one. "Almost?"
Eries arches a brow, giving her the pointed look she's long been waiting for.
Millerna huffs and adjusts her skirts, covering her knees at last.
Biting her lips does nothing to smother her smile.