and from her flesh may violets spring
It's a cold spring day, but for once, Lexi doesn't feel content to sit indoors. There's a whole world of culture for her and her son to learn about, even if the price for that is a journey with three train changes. Perhaps it's fate that they ended up so close to this vast city, where culture and art and life happens all around them, an inescapable force, almost.
They end up at a museum purely by chance; it's old, like a lot of the buildings in the strange city of London, but the displays are free, and Lexi has learnt not to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if the two of them might stick out like sore thumbs.
The man on the reception desk, however, only chuckles at her son's insistent questioning.
"Nice to see a young person so enthusiastic about art," he says, eyes smiling from behind his glasses, as he hands her rucksack back, and Lexi has to admit that it is nice, nice to be in a place that holds so many years of human history that she has yet to discover, nice to be in a place where her patchwork dungarees and battered pink trainers aren't, as a matter of fact, being looked at weirdly. Everyone from every walk of life is here, and they feel like they belong. Because, in this place, this culture is their culture, no matter where they come from, even for the Nekross-born princess from beyond the stars, and it's this fact that Lexi muses on as her son and her are sitting on one of the benches in front of one of the nineteenth century paintings, an image of a young woman surrounded by flowers in a stream.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Lexi almost - almost; her Nekross senses haven't left her quite yet - jumps at the sound of the voice beside her. It's the friendly man with glasses, the one from the reception earlier, clutching a clipboard.
"It is," she agrees, taking a moment to check the little piece of description nailed to the wall beside the canvas, naming the beautiful woman in the stream. "Ophelia."
"Ah. A fan of Millias, are we?" Lexi hums in agreement, even though she has no idea who that is. "I'm not surprised. Everyone seems to be drawn to this painting. Ophelia is one of his greatest works."
"Who's Ophelia?" Benny asks from her other side.
The man from the front desk takes a seat beside them. "Ophelia is a character from one of Shakespeare's plays. A lot of artists at the time painted characters from his works. They called them the immortals."
"Why?"
"Because they were such a big part of our culture that they didn't think that they were ever going to leave us - and they were right. You'll learn all about them in school in a few years, no doubt. Anyway, Ophelia was a character from the play Hamlet. Not the most cheerful story, I might add."
Benny doesn't look phased by this, merely curious. "What happened?"
"Towards the end of the play, she's driven into despair, due to the conflict between her family and her lover." He glances at Lexi, as if she might object to her son being exposed to such a story, but she nods for him to continue anyway, even if that concept is a little too close to home for her to ignore it. "Hamlet accidentally kills her father, and, unable to cope with such a thing, she drowns in the stream." He nods his head towards the painting. "That's the moment that Millias has captured and preserved for us."
"Why that moment?"
"Well, I think part of it is because people see a lot of beauty in sadness." Lexi finds herself agreeing with that. "It seems to be what Millias is trying to convey in this moment. Look -" He points to the painting"- you see the flowers around her?" Benny nods, intrigued. "They all represent Ophelia in some way. The poppies represent her death, the daisies and violets represent her innocence, and the pansies represent her loving in anguish."
Benny nods again, taking it all in with a look of awe on his face. Lexi keeps her eyes trained on the painting, on the face of Ophelia in her final moments.
"It's a shame she didn't get a happy ending," she muses aloud.
"It is," the man agrees,"but, then, I think whoever you ask will agree that Ophelia was just a victim of everything that was going on around her. "
Victim. That's certainly one word that springs to mind when thinking about Ophelia. She looks so helpless, drifting in the stream with her symbolic violets, mouth open in what could be a sigh of acceptance, as if she's resigned to the idea of her death. Lexi certainly knows what that's like. Acceptance of the end of your own life isn't exactly something one forgets in a hurry.
But that's the thing, isn't it? Lexi is alive. She's had Ophelia's conflict - her family, or the boy she loved - even if she is no where near as innocent, but she's a survivor. Her being here, right now, even if her halfling gave her a second chance, is proof of that. He gave her a human body, but he hasn't given her her spirit, the thing that has spurred her to survive in this big concrete jungle with a child to support. That comes from her, and she knows it.
"It's a beautiful painting," she says again.
"It is." The man gestures to the clipboard in his hand. "I'm currently in charge of the afternoon tours - I could show you some more work in the Millais style, if you're interested?"
Benny is looking at her now, imploringly, and Lexi doesn't try to hide the resulting chuckle. She takes one last look at the image in front of them, of Ophelia and her violets.
"Well, you've certainly caught the attention of my son, so how could I say no?"
(On the way out, Lexi stops by the gift shop, and decides that she can spare seventy five pence for a postcard version of Millais' Shakespearian muse.)
*shouts my love of lexi into the ether forever and ever and ever*.
i ended up on a tour around tate britain and then i sat on a bench and wrote a very rough draft of this. also, lexi in dungarees is my aesthetic.
title comes from a quote from act 5, scene 1 of Hamlet by shakespeare, and i own nothing recognisable