Written for Dra, who's amazing, and for the Romance Awareness Challenge, Day 2: Your soulmate's name is written on your wrist, Western!AU.
Word count: 963
your sacred stars won't be guiding you
It takes Daphne two weeks from the moment her family moves into Slyther Creek to start hearing the rumors.
The last Nott is back, they say. Terrible thing, what's happened to his mother, some whisper, tone full of pity.
What else did you think was gonna happen, giving birth to a boy like that? others reply, much less kindly. Taking her own life was the right thing to do—the only thing to do, even—when the boy is touched by the Devil.
It's thanks to Astoria, her little sister, that Daphne gets the full picture—or as close to it as she can get, anyway.
Daphne appears at first glance, with her sharp cheekbones and icy eyes she inherited from their father, rather unapproachable. Astoria, however, was luckier and takes after their mother, all soft smiles and innocent looks, and so people talk to her more freely.
(Daphne pities anyone who tries to go for her sister, however—for all that she has their mother's beauty, Astoria has, like Daphne herself, their father's razor-sharp wit, and it's left more than one suitor in tears)
As it turns out—or so Astoria relates while they do repair on their travel outfits, her eyes wide with the delight of juicy gossip—Theo Nott is the last of his name, a bounty hunter whose handsomeness should, according to most, leave everyone swooning in his wake if not for one little detail: he was born without a soulmark.
Juts hearing about it makes Daphne shivers. It feels like a cold wind has blown through the room, and while Daphne never really bought into the whole religion thing as much as was proper, she could still tell that people with no name or names on their wrists—people who didn't have those perfect souls out there, designed to be your match in every way—were odd. Different.
"Do you think he's truly the Devil's son, like they say?" Astoria asked in an excited whisper.
The question causes Daphne to stab her needle into her thumb instead of the dress she's trying to embroider, and with an annoyed sigh, she sticks her bleeding thumb into her mouth.
"Ugh," Astoria says, pulling a disgusted face. "I can never understand how you can stand the taste of blood like that."
Daphne rolls her eyes. "It's not like there's more than a couple of drops, I barely taste anything. If you weren't such a big baby, you'd know that for yourself already."
Very maturely, Astoria sticks out her tongue at her sister. "But really," she asks, "do you think they're right?"
It takes all Daphne has not to roll her eyes again. "No," she replies very pointedly, "I don't. I think it's stupid to assume that every time someone is different it's a sign of the Devil or of a greater evil when most of the time it's simply something we don't know how to explain yet."
As she speaks, she forces her hands to stay unclenched lest she damage the fabric even more, and in the end Astoria rests her right hand on Daphne's, clenching them lightly in support.
"I'm sorry, I should have remembered, I didn't mean to…"
"It's fine," Daphne replies, throat tight.
"It's not fine, Daphne. You lost your soulmate because people thought he was in league with the Devil, or whatever their excuse truly was, and it shouldn't have happened. Come on, I'm your sister, you know you can tell me anything."
Feeling a smile pulling at her lips, Daphne says, "It was a long time ago. I'm over it."
And to prove it, she turns over her wrist to show her mark. The name, Draco Malfoy, which she had once spent so long tracing with excited fingers, has faded from a solid black to a very light white. It shines in the low light of the late afternoon, and it looks more like a scar than anything else.
Absentmindedly, she wonders what Theo Nott's wrist would look like—would it be entirely bare or would he, like her, have a name so faded it was almost as though nothing was there?
Suddenly, knowing the answer to that question feels of the utmost importance.
"Do you think Mr. Nott would agree to see me?" she muses aloud.
Astoria startles so badly she nearly unseats the box carrying their threads. "What, are you mad?! You want to go see him? The entire village says he's mad!"
Daphne has actually never heard that particular rumor, but considering everything else she has heard, she wouldn't be surprised either way. She rolls her eyes.
"And I'm sure that in a couple of weeks you'll hear all about how I'm a witch who killed her last husband," she retorts dryly. She's seen the way people eye her around town already, and she knows they'll lead to nothing good.
"Well, maybe if you didn't scowl so much people wouldn't think so badly of you," Astoria replies. "Really, Daphne, is it so hard to smile once in a while? You know you have a lovely smile too."
"Yes, it would be," Daphne says as dryly as she can, fighting off the twitch in her lips until she no longer can, and breaks off into giggles.
Astoria huffs but she waits until Daphne has calmed down to speak again. "But seriously, why do you even want to go see him? You don't even know the man!"
Daphne shrugs. "I don't know," she says, and she doesn't. "I guess I just feel like I should."
It's an odd feeling too—something expectant, bubbling up in her stomach and chest, fizzling around her heart like excitement.
"I don't know," she repeats, "but I feel like he could be important."