AN: This story was originally written a couple of years ago as an RP between myself and my friend Jessica, stemming from a series of conversations revolving around Othello- specifically, around the notion of whether Iago and Emilia were actually in love. The story wound up being 187 pages long, and as yet is still incomplete, though I don't know if we'll ever start it up again. That being said, I thought I'd share it with all of the Othello fans out there. I hope you enjoy it!
For convenience's sake, I've decided to delineate the chapters by section, so some will be much shorter than others, and all will be...rather short. Jess wrote the first chapter, I started with the second, and it'll alternate like that.
"I do think my husband should be arriving at any moment..." Emilia murmured to herself in the looking glass. She leaned forward a little to study herself. It was nothing but fancy, certainly, for she knew herself to be beautiful-or at least to have fine looks...or at least to look only as fine as she ought to. Fancy, it was. A vain fancy that stemmed from her recent friendship with Desdemona, a lovely girl who was quite a few years Emilia's junior, and, perhaps, a little more in prime. Was it true? Emilia thought that perhaps it was, and yet, dared not think it. Jealousy would do no good, and it was she who was charged with Desdemona's well-being. To be jealous of one's own lady would indeed bring no benefits, and besides, Emilia rather liked the girl. She decided, staunchly, to let nothing strain the relationship.
"Oh, content you, Emilia," Emilia scoffed at her reflection. "You are just what you ought to be, and no more than that. For what reason should you desire fetching looks? It is those fetching looks, indeed, that do fetch scoundrels and men of flirtatious natures." She paused to give her words leave to ripen in the air, so that they might be of better quality to be understood, but shortly thereafter Emilia found in herself a sudden whim to make such faces into the mirror that denoted the flirtatious natures she had spoken of so contemptuously. She lifted her chin, raised her eyebrows, and pursed her lips.
"...Why, my dear husband...I am glad to think that in your eyes, I am a woman of more beauty than a goddess. But I pray tell, which goddess might you mean? Lovely Aphrodite?" Emilia flashed a coy smile into the looking glass and silently praised herself, in pleasurable guilt, for the alluring tones she had managed to achieve in her voice. "Ay, you flatter me much."