The night that passed was an odd one. Leona slept on her back, her head supported in the palms of her updrawn hands, while King, trying to avoid any conceivably suspect glances, lay on her side, facing the wall. It didn't help that Leona's sleeping clothes were a pair of men's army boxers and a lightweight olive tanktop, which together exposed all the perfection of her arms and thighs.
When dawn arrived, still bleary-eyed and peering cautiously over the horizon, King was exhausted. What little sleep she had captured had been fraught with self-recrimination, personified occasionally as her mother, Jeanette-Claire, stiff-lipped and sapphire-eyed in a severe black turtleneck. It was from this woman that she had acquired her strength, grace, and the tendency to second-guess herself, the latter the result of being told, time and again, that fighting against nature was spitting in the eyes of angels. That her positive traits of loyalty and perseverance were being polluted by an embarrassing attraction to perversity. Of course, King herself was ninety-nine percent certain that her mother was wrong on that point.
'King herself'… Even in her thoughts, she couldn't bear to call herself by her given name. What was so terrible about it? Well, nothing, apart from the associations she had with the moniker, the memories of weakness, helplessness, frustration… of failing due only to the one part of herself over which she had no influence. So that name, fair, delicate and frail, was banished, even from the sotto voce murmurings of her unconscious mind. And she re-christened herself with royal dignity that was equal to any man. True, she could never hope to fully conceal her sex, but she could train herself so that her attitude revealed no relationship with that anatomy. She did not have a hatred of women – quite the opposite! – but she would never again carry the social burden of being one. She supposed she simply lacked the fortitude.
Beautiful, exotic Leona, so elegant in repose, had apparently slept soundly, and continued to do so. Not wishing to disturb her, King crept quietly out of the room, gym bag in hand and a pair of trackpants hastily pulled over her cotton pyjama longs.
The grounds were blessedly quiet. Every so often a bird chirruped, but most sat tucked away, feathers ruffled up around their faces, close and warm with their mates. Little bird hearts beating little bird heartbeats. So fragile. So in danger of stopping.
King took a sharp cold breath of morning, suddenly aware that she was making herself maudlin. Then she noticed that she was not alone in the vicinity (and possibly not alone in her sentiments). Across a shrubbery, on a pale path that circled roses and a sundial, a woman stood with her back to King, swathed in a loose-fitting blouse of white that seemed to absorb the morning's slight chill into itself. Soft black hair hung between her shoulder blades, flawlessly neat despite its length, and secured at the crown by a white silken headband. Although her face was not visible, King had the distinct sense that she had been weeping as she stood there, possibly for a very long time. She stood motionless, and the slow-rising sun caught the gleam of dew that had formed on her shoulders.
What private sorrow could have brought her to linger so, rejecting movement and the human comforts of the indoors?
On ne me permet pas de demander, King thought with a mental shrug and a raising of her eyebrows. Everyone's tragedy is their own tragedy. So she left the dew-touched woman, apparently oblivious to the advancing day, to continue the ashen vigil for as long as she deemed necessary.