Disclaimer: RWBY is property of Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC
Chapter 10: Arrivals
Blake was woken by the sound of a distant shriek. Fearing the worst, she leapt out of bed, snatched up gambol shroud from where she'd left it on the floor, and charged through the open servants' hall door. She vaulted over a railing and took off down the corridor; Weiss was at the end of the hallway in her night gown, facing the window. Blake ran as fast as she could to close the distance, but just ten feet away from Weiss she stopped, realizing that there was no one else nearby and that the corridor ended in a dead end. She looked around a bit wondering what was going on. Weiss spun around smiling.
"It snowed!" Weiss exclaimed, her smile was as bright as the light from the window and Blake knew this, because she had to squint to see either the window or her friend. The light of Weiss' smile subsided as she took in the sight of Blake. Then the light turned a little pink as Weiss blushed. "Blake?"
"Yes?" Answered Blake, looking slightly worried by Weiss' embarrassed expression.
"Could you maybe put some clothes on? I don't think I was ready to know that you sleep in striped underwear." The Faunus coloured too and then hurried back to the closet. When both were dressed, Weiss told Blake that Mrs. Dampers had left a note saying that she was making breakfast for them in one of the lesser kitchens down towards the fifth floor.
Lesser kitchen may have been an understatement. In theory, the nook that Blake and Weiss arrived at in comfortable, but unpresentable, clothes was to serve coffee and light snacks to the people being housed in the suits on the fifth floor. It was just large enough for a collection of appliances, a cupboard of dishes and cutlery, the dumbwaiter to one of the pantries, and the table and chairs that some servant had crammed there when nobody was looking. Blake suspected that Hilda Dampers had done that herself. Weiss confirmed this along with telling Blake that Mrs. Dampers was housed in the room next to this kitchen. There was an old heater next to the slightly grimy window, a collection of uneven walls were testament to the load bearing structure that permeated all those parts of the house that the wealthy weren't supposed to see, and on the counter beside an undersized stove sat a rack of surprisingly new looking spice bottles.
Mrs. Dampers herself was engaged in cooking crepes in a shallow pan on one of only two available burners. There was a variety of, Blake noted relatively lower class, crepe filling arrayed on plates or in cheap looking plastic containers. Weiss was going at it with every sign that this was both normal and an enjoyable experience. Mrs. Dampers was carefully not making eye contact with Blake the entire time they were there. On the whole, that suited Blake just fine; she still needed to sort all that mess from last night out.
The girls were intruded upon about an hour later in the closet by a pair of uppity maids who apparently didn't fall under the Hilda Dampers school of interacting with Weiss. They fussed and bothered until Weiss and Blake walked out of the closet, appropriately dressed to greet the arriving guests. In Blake's case this consisted of a fairly plain floor length skirt, her normal tailcoat and both, rather than just one of, her detachable sleeves. There was also a crisp white blouse and an interdiction against showing her midriff in polite company. Lastly, she was given a badge to identify her as a trainee huntress, and therefor exempt from many social requirements that might, to the mind of whoever had dreamt up etiquette, have impeded her in the proper execution of her duty.
Weiss, to Blake's mind got the short end of the bargain. She was dressed in a white and pale blue gown with the fur of something small and cute running around the collar. Blake noticed that heiress was not given the trainee-huntress badge but said nothing.
Together they walked down to the entrance and stood next to Weiss' parents as guests arrived. Blake learned quite a lot about Weiss' extended family that day. There were two pairs of aunts and uncles on Mrs. Schnee, nee Greene's side (older brother, younger sister, and respective spouses.) One younger brother to Mr. Schnee who, although a widower now, was a favourite uncle and the father of the first person from Weiss' own generation that Blake met, though the man himself was absent. Stephanie Schnee, the aforementioned daughter of the favourite uncle, probably put it best by describing herself thusly:
"Yes I do always get called Stephanschnee; no, it is not funny. Yes I do mind you calling me that; no I will not stop talking to you because of it." Nothing funnier had come along since then. Some thirteen total guests had arrived. This led to seventeen people to table that evening. The main course was some manner of chicken swimming in pasta alfredo. Desert was something that seemed suspiciously like ice-cream to Blake but that head waiter announced as something that sounded foreign even to her well-read ears. After dinner it was decided that there were insufficient numbers of gentlemen present to justify the use of the grand smoking room and so the men and women parted ways en route to some of the lesser smoking and tea rooms. For their own parts, all the guests in Blake and Weiss' age group retired early because there was, to their mind, nobody important enough around to try their hand in the world of socializing; they had all already met and presumably spoken with Weiss' parents at some previous juncture, so that was now moot. Blake and Weiss themselves returned via the lavish, gilty hallways to Weiss' room. Blake took more care to note the number of staircases this time and was pleased to find it much closer to what she had counted in the servants' hall than what she had thought on their arrival.
"So, your relatives seem nice." Blake commented as they got changed into their pyjamas on opposite sides of a dressing screen that Weiss had brought in from some other part of the closet.
"You're mistaking manners for mannerisms. They're rich; the world never required that they actually say 'please', they just found it more convenient. They have in fact, arrived at politeness via the long route." Blake noted the decided lack of 'we' in that comment, but apparently none more were forthcoming. Sighing, she pulled on a pair of silk pants and buttoned up the matching shirt. She liked to feel the bedclothes she was sleeping in, but it had now become slightly cooler in the house thanks to the layer of snow that clung to many of the outside surfaces. Window sills, arches, decorative stonework facades, all were laced with snow; the house looked like it was wearing a large iridescent white gown.
[A/N]: I am too tired to actually come up with a new contest this week. Whoever comes up with the best idea for a contest gets to influence the course of the story and gets their contest idea stolen.
Nobody reviewed this week. There is no glory or honour to distribute onto noble souls.