Taking Tea in the Salon
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Important Note: This drabble has sprung out of one of the prompts I got from my drabble suggestions on Tumblr, and I'm off my face on a cauldron of mulled wine right now and therefore very open to suggestion. It's still going to be in the sentence drabble but I wanted to mess about with it a bit too.
PS: It takes place on Earth several thousand years after the other Breaking Down fics.
PPS: The abbreviated form of the title spells TTITS. Snerk.
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As a rule, they had nothing to do with humans. They kept a respectful distance from them and vice versa. However, from time to time, Rose needed to have a talk with one of their higher-ups about something and a few days later they would find themselves trussed up in whatever the fashion was at the time (and it changed so often it was faintly ridiculous) in some supposedly impressive building waiting for an audience with whoever 'God' had deemed fit to make the rules.
Amethyst was left behind, much to her chagrin, because the French were sticklers for rules and she couldn't be trusted not to cut loose and break something. Garnet had refused point blank. Pearl, though, hadn't really needed to be asked...
(...Rose asked anyway...)
...she was practically on the warp pad before Rose had even finished speaking.
Rose generally spoke to the king/lord/baron/emperor alone and Pearl was, generally speaking, happy to let her do this. No human was or ever would be a match for her even if things did get ugly, and waiting in the lobby or antechamber examining paintings and rifling through their books suited Pearl perfectly well.
Except this time, the king's young wife insisted that Pearl join her in her 'salon' for tea.
She'd been invited to eat and drink with people before, they all had, and she had refused every time. Even when they insisted that it was a custom for visitors, even when they said it was a slur on their hospitality to refuse, she had always said 'no.'
She couldn't understand quite why she said yes to this invitation, but she said yes, even though she didn't intend to let anything pass her lips under any circumstances.
The king's wife was very young, pretty in the way these Earth men seemed to like, soft and pale and always fluttering, whether in her hands or her eyelashes or the multiple layers of lace she had draped over her form. Her smile had the consistency of water, glimmering but shaky.
She escorted Pearl to her salon personally, making polite small talk all the way as Pearl discreetly scanned the paintings and sculptures they passed along the way. They passed many ladies along the way, ladies-in-waiting and ladies of the court, idly milling about, bright and fluffy as an enormous flower garden.
It was clear that the king's wife took great pride in her salon; as they entered, she took great pride in pointing out the wallpaper to Pearl, and the silk brocade that covered the furniture.
"They were blue when his majesty gave me these chambers, and the first thing I did was tell him I wanted them to be pink," she told her with a satisfied sigh. "Pink is so much more flattering, don't you think?"
"Yes," Pearl agreed blandly, for she could hardly disagree. She was wearing pink herself, an enormous frothy confection of a dress that she wasn't exactly comfortable in but was putting up with for the sake of 'blending in.'
"And this is real gold leaf on the piping," the king's wife continued, stroking a swirl of gold on the wall. The maid entered with a tray just then and the king's wife clapped her hands as the spread was laid out.
"This is my own table," she said as she motioned for Pearl to join her and sat down herself. "I had it brought in from Germany. They almost wouldn't allow it, but I insisted. I told them I would not consent to be married if I could not have my table."
Amethyst would have laughed, and Garnet would have said nothing but scorned her inwardly. Rose, sweet as she was, would have wondered about such fuss being made over a table. But Pearl found herself nodding and smiling; she had formed such attachments that could not be explained to things that meant nothing, but to one person meant the world. It was a triumph to have successfully kept something that was truly 'hers.'
The king's wife pulled off her gloves to pour the tea, and Pearl watched her carefully, wondering why this all seemed so familiar to her. The carefully painted pink roses in the bottom of the cup vanished under the fall of steaming fragrant liquid, and although her jaw clenched instinctually at the suggestion that she might be expected to drink the stuff... it was fascinating, all the same.
"It's bergamot and ceylon," the king's wife told her, as if it made any difference. "I take it with honey. It was sent to me by my cousin, Josepha, all the way from China!"
Pearl took an experimental sniff of the rising plume of steam coming from her cup. The scent was pleasant, but not overpowering.
The king's wife picked up her cup and blew the steam away, took a delicate sip and placed it gently back down on its saucer. Gently she waved the palm of her hand over the rim, deftly wiped the traces of her lip rouge away with a cloth. Softly, under her breath, she hummed to herself with satisfaction.
It was a ritual, of some sort, almost a prayer. The king's wife had not seemed so settled before the first sip of tea braced her, and her mutable presence seemed to coalesce into something stronger. This was her place.
It suddenly hit Pearl that she had not been in the presence of another Pearl for over a hundred thousand Earth years, and her departure had been so abrupt she had barely thought about it for fear that it would tear open a wound.
The king's wife was not a Pearl, and wasn't and would never be even close to what a Pearl was, but there was something in the way she moved, the subconscious speech in her fluttering hands and her tremulous smile that betrayed a sameness in them. Perhaps that was why the king's wife had latched onto her, had barely looked at Rose who always filled the room.
Pearl picked up the cup, and encouraged by the king's wife's pleased expression took the tiniest of sips.