It's summer and she's laughing. Warmth pervades the air like sweet perfume. The others, they're welcoming it with open arms, skipping along the pavements and drinking it in as if it were nectar. He's not so sure. Under his sun hat, he's blushing from the heat, struggling against sweat lying thick on his sallow skin.
Arabelle seems to be having no such issues. As they walk, satchels swinging to their steps, sneakers chirping on the concrete, she seems happy. Much like her mother, and all the other residents around La Haute-Saint-Charles, she wears it long and loose. He watches, vaguely mesmerized, as the snowy strands glitter in the sunlight.
Suddenly, she turns her big cobalt blue eyes towards his and he startles, hat slipping back on his head. She giggles and grins and repeats whatever question it is that he has missed:
"I said, what are you gonna do with your summer?"
"Dunno" he replies. And he doesn't.
Arabelle shakes her head, making the little braid behind her slightly-pointed ear twitch.
"That's a silly answer. You can't not do anything!"
He shrugs and looks down at the road, every step becoming more and more lethargic. Arabelle is struggling with the heat too, her fair cheeks dotted with sweat. But where he allows the summer to sit upon his chest and stifle him, Arabelle goes to it like a quarterback looking to tackle. He doesn't understand why she loves summer so much-most of them get ill during this part of the year. Something about all the pollen and heat and dryness not agreeing with their magick. At least, that's what his mother says.
During this time, Arabelle has been deep in thought. Neither of them miss the strict looks of the teachers from the school, the reprimands to speak in the mother-tongue only, to walk quietly. What was the word Mademoiselle Berger uses? Poise, that's it. Go with poise and grace.
He is snapped out of his reverie of the previous afternoon by an excitable tug on his arm. Arabelle bumps into him as she latches on, making them both stumble. Unbidden, a small grin comes to his lips.
"I know! We should go down to the glade-it's always cold there!"
"That's stupid!" he replies, "there'll be meetings going on!"
"No there won't. They stopped holding them outside when the Charrons all caught summer-draft from the pollen last year."
"How do you know we won't get summer-draft?"
"I don't" she answers simply. "But even if we did, it'd be better than staying inside."
He can't disagree with that, but he'll have to come up with a clever excuse to go outside. His mother doesn't like it-says that sun will burn his already yellowed skin. Neige-fae are meant to have a snowy complexion. He can already imagine the pursed lips he would return to should he turn up at home all golden and tanned.
He looks out of place enough as it is. Dark brown hair and eyes the colour of stained oak stand out in the reservation. Mother hopes that when he uses his deep magick for the first time, his blood will take over and he will look just like the rest of them. Jacque doesn't really want that, but when she coos so softly over little Emillie's white locks, he wonders if it would be worth it just for the peace.
But for now, it is easy enough to forget what he should be doing and simply enjoy the now. With Arabelle attached to his arm, orbiting perhaps only by the strength of his oddness, he allows his grin to widen. Mischief sparkles in his eyes.
"That's true. My mom won't even turn on the air conditioning."
Arabelle's face registers shock, disbelief etched in the wide pink "O" her lips form. That's the first time he's spoken English to her-ever. She'd known he could, most of them could. But with parents wishing to live in a time and country both far away, those words are supposed to be far from their tongues.
She switches over to the other dialect almost seamlessly. He likes the way she says her words, with a deep, soft lilt that his own voice doesn't have. This is his father's fault-or blessing, maybe. Even so, she is fluent enough and without realising it, they both slip into whispers so that should an elder be walking past, they will not receive a disapproving glare.
Jacque enjoys his half hour of freedom, walking home arm in arm with Arabelle. As they walk, his eyes settle upon the slender silver ring on her finger. It flashes in the sun, the little sapphire set in the filigree seeming to wink at him. He breaks away from the conversation are having to ask something of her:
"Arabelle...How long have you been engaged?"
Again, her eyebrows lift in surprise, blending in with her icy bangs as they sway across her face. She looks at the ring with mild interest, apparently having forgotten she was wearing it at all.
"I'm not sure. I can't remember when It was given to me-it's been there forever."
His eyes turn down to the pavement again as the sapphire leers at him.
"Do you think you were betrothed before you were born?"
She shrugs and he's hit with a pang of worry that he might've upset her. But her expression lightens again, all sheltered innocence.
"I guess. That's great though-just like a fairy tale!"
"What, knowing who you're going to marry since you were born?"
"Yes! I won't ever have to worry about it."
He doesn't say anything more and a beat later she realises what she's said.
"Sorry, Jacque, I didn't mean-"
"It's fine."
Neither of them mention that he's the only child not yet betrothed to another. That he doesn't have that subtle piece of jewellery to mark him as the intended of another. He forces this to the back of his mind though and lightly nudges Arabelle's side with his elbow.
"I don't mind though. At least I don't have to go to family dinners with smelly Timothé!"
The elbow is returned to his own ribs with strength times three and he's laughing as he stumbles from the pavement, breaking into a sneaker-slapping run as Arabelle gives chase, presumably avenging the wounded pride of her oblivious fiancé.
They run all the way to the end of the street, skidding the corner and turning down the snaky estate lanes until they reach their road. There, Arabelle has to stop before she overheats, breath puffing in clouds in the thick air.
He drifts to a halt, skinny frame folding slightly as he catches his breath. He can feel the weighty tug of his home from the end of the road the same way a dog strains to escape its leash. Arabelle looks that way too, brow furrowing. She doesn't want to leave him, knowing he doesn't like it there but not the reasons why.
The Gelée household is no different from the others around it-clad all in pale wood and dark grey slate, just different enough to falsify a sense of the unique. A gingerbread house he hoped would go up in flames.
From the smothering heat, a thought tempts him with cool, swaying hands. He's murmuring again, French this time. His gaze is fixed somewhere beyond his house.
"Arabelle...Will you run away with me?"
It's said desperately, from the depths of a soul with nowhere else to turn. It's not like that between them-she's more important to him than his own sister-but he already knows what she'll say.
"Jacque...I can't. You can't. We're too..."
"Important." he finishes for her. Because they are. Pure genes from a near-extinct race. Valuable. Necessary. Locked up in the reservation with hopes that eventually they'll all breed. Just like their parents did.
She must see something change in him, because suddenly her mood is all sugar sweet. Her home-life too is woven from candyfloss nerves. A soft pat on the shoulder and she's off skipping down the street-skipping!-as the front garden sprinklers hiss at her along the way. He doesn't blame her. After all, Arabelle thinks she has no value aside from her beauty. Saint Charles women never aspire to more than that.
He watches this sunbeam, this stray grain of colour, of impulsive relief, disappear from his sight. He just sees the sapphire on her finger grin at him in the sun and she's gone.
The sprinklers on the lawns turn to hiss at him and at each other. Up above, the gods are already bored. That rogue strand of English wasn't good enough. It will be some time before Fate is tempted to meddle in the affairs of young Jacque again.
He huffs a breath of air to clear the sticky strands of hair from his face, as much of it has escaped the straggly ponytail his mother had dragged it into that morning, before starting to walk. Now, his rubber-clad soles seem to stick to the blistering hot paving stones. Every step takes an eternity.
Before he expects it, the dark blue maw of the front door looms up to meet him. He watches himself get swallowed into the glossy varnished void. A silver doorknocker wrought in the shape of a fox's head warps his face into an even more grotesque mockery. He sighs, slips his key into the lock and attempts to disappear, like a mouse, into the labyrinthine depths of the house.
As he hangs his bag up on his peg and puts his keys down, he hears her from some far away corner. Her voices haunts him from the dim, slightly-cool dark.
"Welcome home, darling."
Desolately beautiful. Just like a fucking glacier.
She couldn't be more wrong.