As Melanie Fray passed him the portraits, Tate Langdon recognised the look that crossed her eyes; and though his girlfriend was the mind reader, he liked to think that he had a pretty good handle on understanding her when he could. That being one of those moments as she moved carefully in her old clothes with the papers to match her attire, and told him the story of how she had been with the so called Harold McClair. It made the jealously that had burned inside him subside slightly, because he knew what she'd felt like when that little boy didn't leave her alone even after she tried to make him leave; it sounded familiar to him to a point. "I get it." He informed Mel in a pause she'd made as she showed him another portrait. "It was the love. The acceptance; it filed your heart, didn't it?"
"Yeah, in a way." Mel dared look into her boyfriend's eyes, and she felt a small soft warmth fill her heart the moment she recognized the understanding in his eyes. "Until now with you..." Mel's eyes fell to the picture Tate held in his hands. A group of ladies in positions where some were talking and some were entertaining themselves shone painted in the canvas; at the left corner rested a poorly painted Mel. Only poorly for the lack of detail that made no justice to the girl sitting before him, but even then, the resemblance was uncanny, which intrigued Tate to the core. In the picture, Mel spoke to a blonde and a redhead. "...time at the parish and my time with Harry were the only moments I had been truly happy in my life." She admitted with a smile that willed to accompany the gaze begging him to understand that things had changed; that her happiness rested upon him along that moment. "You remember I talked to you about Alice and Victoria?" She wondered as she pointed toward the portrait, pointing at two girls that sat close beside the image of her in the painting. When Tate nodded, she decided to continue speaking. "Well... as you know, my story took a turn for the worse when I turned eighteen..."
~October 10th 1533~
The sun shone bright up in the sky, very strange for an autumn evening in Cambridgeshire as a young, tall, blonde girl and a shy redhead walked along with the birthday girl, a newly turned eighteen Melanie Fray, down the street from St. Andrew & All Saints Parish. Alice and Victoria had been two girls that had arrived a couple of years after Mel had, and of course, Harry and herself had taken it upon themselves to make the girls feel welcome, and if possible, slightly less sad. But upon that day, the three friends were off, with a couple of other girls, to celebrate the coming of age of the young Fray girl. Each girl held a basket with food as they walked along the stony paths toward the furthest solitary place they could find in the mile radius that the rules of St. Andrew stated their residents to be allowed to go: the back of an old, still in business, shoe maker; where the girls knew they'd enjoy a wonderful picnic without being bothered by anyone at all.
"Soooo." The blonde haired Alice said, deviating from the topic of the latest parish gossip that they'd been indulging in moments prior. "Pray tell, why did dear Harry not come with us?" She wondered as they walked.
"He said he'd give us, ladies, the pleasure of a private venture." Mel informed her friend. "Truly, I reckon he knew he would be highly bored by our choices of topic; I don't think court gossip calls the attention of gentlemen like Harry."
"'Gentlemen like Harry.'" Alice echoed the other's words in a light mocking tone before laughing shortly and turning to look at Victoria. "Would you listen to her speak?" Both girls giggled before the blonde turned to address Mel once more. "The truth is that the boy will become interested in whatever your choice of topic may be, whether gossip or not."
The redhead almost immediately agreed with a simple noise. "He'll just swoon over you the whole time!" Victoria added, making Mel's loose curls shake along with her French hooded head.
"Don't speak such things!" She nudged the girls. "We're merely friends! He's like my brother."
"Oh, then you are assured to commit incest shortly, my lady." Alice teased with a slightly quiet voice toward a flushed Mel.
"Alice!" Mel's light blue eyes looked around with widened worry at their surroundings for anyone that might have heard her friends speaking such words, for everyone knew incest was a crime with possible sentence of death. The other girls behind them were simply too interested in their own topics to pay much attention as they walked. Finally, Mel turned to look at her friends once again; the two girls were nearly doubled with laughter at Mel's reaction. She couldn't help but smile. "You're insane, you know that?" She shook her head once more, before hooking an arm in one of each of her friends'.
"Well," Alice shrugged as she leaned against Mel, addressing Victoria again when she spoke. "I do try." She laughed, finally.
Half an hour later, all the girls had finally reached their destination behind the shoe factory, and set their food on a couple of long white sheets two of them had packed in their baskets. Valerie, a tall green eyed girl who had almost unwillingly joined the group due to her hatred of the birthday girl, suddenly spoke toward the young birthday girl. "So, you're plenty rich now, Lady Fray."
Alice, who remained as the only reason behind the green eyed's presence in the girls' little gathering (given that the two were friends), immediately looked in her direction. "Valerie." She warned as all the girls finally sat down on the long sheets.
"What?" The scolded questioned in pretence innocence. "It's true." She turned to look at Mel, whose lips squeezed tight into an upset line. "Is it not, Melanie? You are now rich because your dead parents were rich, 'tis not but the truth."
"Do not talk about my parents." Mel suddenly warned, finally looking up at the hateful green eyed girl.
"Oh, what?" Valerie looked around the group of girls who, apart from Alice, who clearly made a big show of keeping her sight set on the bullying girl, seemed to pretend to be busier fixing their skirts than to pay attention to what happened before them."You mean thy father? Whose money would have absolutely disappeared had he not died in that fire? How lucky a time for such an event."
"VALERIE!" Alice yelled toward her friend, looking quickly toward Mel, ready to jump between both girls if they decided to get in a physical argument like they'd come close to do many times before.
"Oh, Alice, I beg of you, refrain from stopping the truth from leaving my lips." Valerie waved the blonde girl off. "We all think about it, do we not? Even those outside the parish whisper it behind Lady Fray's back." She looked around at the girls again, making their gazes finally land only on her. "Her father's fortune was disappearing, thus, I dare accuse the man. He was but a coward, unable to face the reality of his misfortune and took his life and the life of his family with him."
"HOW DARE YOU SPEAK THUS ABOUT MY FATHER?" Mel suddenly yelled, making all the girls look at her with wide eyes. Anger rose inside her like a veil; like a smoke flaming and guiding her along with the memory of her family's death, like a fog that instead of blindness brought clarity and sharpness not commonly experienced within her mind, and such brought forth a piercing scream that startled all the girls around her when her feet propelled her upward and her head began pounding, almost as if fire had started blazing inside it, but all she could do was keep her eyes on Valerie; a focus that only brought forth the attention of the other girls when her frame so instantly flew back, as if thrown by an invisible force, toward the brick wall of the shoe maker's place. The girls screamed.
"Melanie!" Alice's voice echoed toward her from between all the frightful screams. "Your eyes! What is happening to you eyes!?"
It'd been almost as if such a question alone had been cue for disaster; Mel's eyes rested in a deep endless black, and loud cracking noise had started echoing all around them; rumbling as if a giant earthquake were shaking the ground, but nothing trembled as it would. And one by one, the bricks that formed the wall of the shoe maker's began falling; hissing sounds followed, and a big, powerful spit of fire erupted from inside the place, making everything within it explode along its walls seconds before it engulfed everything outside of them as well. From her frozen spot, Mel saw the horrified faces of her best friends, Alice and Victoria, who were screaming in agonizing pain as the flames consumed them, before everything went black.
~•~
When Mel woke up, she found herself laying on the wet grass of a forest; her whereabouts were a mister, alike the means with which she'd gotten there, but she could remember the flames that had eaten at her friends. She'd killed her best friends... just the way she'd killed her family. And at that moment, Melanie refused to go back to the orphanage. She'd killed Alice, and she'd killed Victoria; she knew that if she returned Harry would await her. And she feared that his end would come by her hand they way it had come to all those she loved before; thus, she did what she should have done upon her parents' deaths: she ran.
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"Whoa." Tate suddenly whispered as he looked at his girlfriend. He took in her words probably like an interested child took in a story of his favourite superhero. His eyes looked down at the portrait of the girls in his hands. The two Mel had pointed out seemed lifeless, staring at Mel blankly with smiling faces, and he felt as if the ghosts of the girls were stuck inside that painting alone. When his eyes lifted shortly, they fell on the portrait of Harry that Mel continued to hold in her hands from the moment they'd started to speak, and he remembered the reason she had even begun telling him her story. "So..." He slightly prompted. "You never saw Harry again after that?" No more than a hopeful question that he knew the answer to before she even spoke.
If only it'd been that easy. Mel thought as a soft shake of her head made the few loose curls bounce in place. Slowly, Mel pushed back the tears that had begun to threaten an escape as she took a deep breath. "I planned on staying hidden in the forest; back then it was rather easy to go along unnoticed, you see." She nodded. "Plus, other than Harry, I had no one else alive that would care to find me." Tate watched as the memories of some dark past shadowed his girlfriend's eyes once more. "But... well, I needed food. So, I remembered once place I was being expected; a place where word of the 'accident' wouldn't have reached quickly." Mel's dainty hands lifted from their caring hold on the portrait to form air quotes beside her shoulders when it was needed, but then her hands lowered once more. "I went to court," she stated. "Just like I'd been promised to do; to serve King Henry VIII and his new wife... newly crowned Queen Anne Boleyn."
~June 1534~
It'd been months since her arrival at court; having intercepted any and every letter that came from St. Andrew during her first month, the King and Queen remained unknowing of the accident that had surely been told to end her life. She found herself at a haunted peace after having been given a position as one of Queen Anne's ladies, for she could easily look into the young Queen's mind; something that, the same way she'd done during her years in the parish when she became able to get inside the minds of everyone around her, she kept completely hidden, but it didn't stop her from feeling guilty, getting into the mind of a Queen seemed a greater sin than getting into the mind of her fellow orphans.
"Lady Fray." The voice of the Queen in question called her from in front of her, pulling young Mel away from her mind and into the pregnant Queen's automatically as she let go of the fabrics she'd been fixing on the Queen's night gown.
After blinking a couple of times and curtsying shortly once Anne turned to face her, her lips lifted in a small polite smile. "Your Majesty." She voiced, placing her hands laced at hip level soon thereafter.
"You may leave." The young Queen told Mel and the rest of her ladies with the smallest smile Mel had ever seen; in her mind, Mel could see the way the second pregnancy had begun taking a toll on the new Queen. Dizziness claimed her mind and thus became enough to make her want to rest; which made Mel, much unlike the manners she grew up learning on etiquette to live at court, reach for Queen Anne in aid. The rest of the ladies gasped and whispered among themselves as it seemed the young Fray had reached to touch Anne for absolutely no reason, yet the young Queen leaned on Mel's offering arm as if it were completely normal, something that left the girl buried within her attempts to not react to the manner in which the other ladies started thinking about her. "I believe I need some rest." The Queen announced.
"Do you wish for me to fetch the physician?" Mel wondered, helping the young Queen walk slowly toward the giant bed in the room, forbidding herself from looking up toward the other ladies that watched the Queen and her Lady with widened eyes, but soon after, Queen Anne shook her head.
"No, no. I am but in need of some rest." She said as Mel helped her sit on the big bed. "You may leave." Anne finally dismissed, and each one of the ladies, Mel included, curtsied shortly before turning to exit the room.
How did she know? Mel heard one of the ladies thinking, which made her frown and hurry her pace toward the kitchen to return some of the silverware Queen Anne had used hours before towards the kitchen to be washed. Leaving the ladies behind, Mel walked the halls of Greenwich Palace; her mind running wild with fear of things such as the horrid accidents that had happened previously in her life.
"Melanie Jane Fray." A voice suddenly spoke once Mel's path had crossed that of the servant chambers. Startled upon the sound of her full name, Mel's whole frame stopped in place; had she found herself walking in the higher levels of the palace the sound of her own name wouldn't have surprised her, yet down there, within the servant's halls, the young Lady became highly aware. Her eyes searched the place, and only stopped when they rested on the shadow of a woman standing a couple of meters behind her.
"Hello?" Mel called, her eyes dancing along the shadows to attempt finding a light to brighten the woman's frame so she could see more clearly; but the woman wouldn't move. "Who calls my name? Who are you?"
"I know." The woman said through the shadows, and those two words were enough to send a chill down Mel's spine; she turned around and started walking quickly toward the kitchen, the sound of the silverware clattering in her trembling hands. "It will not help to run." The voice said, now in front of her, making a short shriek leave Mel's lips before the silverware she held in her hands fell into a clattering mess against the floor. "And I beg thee to understand that I mean thus now and ever in your life. It will not help."
"Margaret?" Mel questioned as she took a step back, finally managing to recognise the outline of the other's frame as the light of the candles shone against her face; but the moment her eyes rested on the other's orbs, they widened, for the woman's eyes were as dark a black as the one she had seen upon her reflection the night her parents died, and her head suddenly started pounding the same way it had both times she'd murdered someone she loved; even the recognition of her bright red of her hair and the cloak that had hidden her perfectly within the darkness didn't seem to matter.
"Oh no, no, young Margaret is gone." The woman in front of her responded, "'Tis but me in this old home; Cassia, that little fallen anger upon thy shoulder, and though thy mind places me among your kind, I assure thee, we are not alike, my Lady." Finally, the woman's orbs washed away from all darkness to reveal a bright human green after a short blink. "Not but for the Lord we must serve."
"What?" Mel whispered, resting her back against the closest wall within her means of attempting to step as far back from the familiar woman in front of her as she could. "I warn thee, run. For a single call will bring the guards to my aid, and-"
"Melanie Jane Fray." Cassia repeated along the same tone with which she had before within her interruption. "Your Ladyship got angry at her parents and burnt them to death along their home and children; being the only survivor, she was taken to parish, where she grew up and made a few friends, and more than half a year ago she killed her friends in yet another fire. You see, Lady Fray, I know who you are. And more importantly, I know what you are, for we have been watching over you from the day of thy birth, and I have been waiting to talk to you purely thus long."
The more the Lady listened to the woman, the more she wished she'd run when she had the chance; why was it that the horrible power that had brought forth the very crimes the other accused her of refused to make an appearance upon that moment? What could she say? "What do you mean you know what I am?" She managed to ask, with a tone much stronger than she felt as the cloud of a dark shadow crossed her otherwise ocean orbs; worry and horror evident within her disposition.
It became enough for Cassia to emit a low chuckle. "Oh, my Lady, you have no idea, do you?" Mel's frown deepened, and her eyes blinked in confusion. "Too long I waited, I see thus now." The other repeated. "But no, no, thy father told me to wait.'She won't understand when she's a child.' He said, so I waited, and oh, I waited too long."
"My father?" Mel whispered, finally finding the strength to take one step away from the wall, forcing her next words to coax from her lips with a louder tone. "You knew my father?"
"Did I know your-" The echo of a forced laughter left the redhead's lips, making the frown across Mel's forehead deepen whilst Cassia's head shook from side to side in disbelief. "Not the father that raised you, child." She announced. "But thy real father." When she saw the way the other's expression shifted upon her confusion, the repetition of Cassia's laugh echoed within the hall. "Oh that I dared wonder why all children come to think of their elders as saints, when the reality could be no darker." She mused within a shake of her head as a step led her even closer to Mel. "It was thy mother, my Lady; her naivety became our gain, for thy father, the devil, wished to see his child again."
"The devil?" The darkness within the Lady's orbs darkened deeply as they narrowed, much to match the means with which Cassia had looked upon her before. "Shame on you for saying such; my father was Lord Edward Fray, and he was no devil. He was a respectable man, a loving and kind man who raised me as all young ladies should, and you, Miss Cassia, should be ashamed for speaking ill of the dead."
The redhead's exasperated sigh surprised Mel. "I believe I have no other choice than to mention your mental abilities, my Lady?" Her eyes met the brunette's again. "The ease with which other's musings fill thy head? The mere fact that something or someone could move by thy will without one of thy fingers touching their flesh?" she smirked, "Or, pray, do tell how it came to be that within no more than a blink, your Ladyship travelled from the back of the shoe maker's to the middle of the forest." Within the girl's silence she found the encouragement to begin walking over, closer to Mel and around her as she spoke. "Even you could not deny the wonder that is such power, with much more than the dark that clouds thine eyes, but the clarity that comes with it and the ease with which thy mind can manage fire, earth, water, or another object when your Ladyship needs it; pray, shall I go on?" Almost instantly, the brunette's head shook from side to side, scared, feeling the very power the woman in front of her talked about raise inside her. "T'was thy mother, Lady Fray; she was seduced, committed adultery with a young man within which the devil himself hid. And because of it she had you." Cassia finally pointed at Mel with a finger. "The little half human, half... demon girl that you are."
Truly, it wasn't as if the girl could deny to any of the spoken instances, regardless of how much she wished thus; the fires, the colour of her orbs, the ease with which she could convince someone to do her will, the voices within her head... "Insanity falls from your lips." She claimed regardless, for the utterance from such a redhead fell as no more than sins; hell, the devil, demons, a tight gulp and a shake of her head were enough to beg thus to be nothing but a dream. "You lie." She claimed within her own denial, looking away from the woman that no longer seemed familiar in order to move quickly to retrieve the silverware that had fallen from her hands. Clutching the plate to her chest, Mel tried hurrying away from the other, trying to ignore the loud laughter that emitted from her lips. "Leave." Mel yelled toward her.
"Oh, but I have come too far to-" The redhead had started, but the moment she reached to grab Mel's arm, she turned around with the dirty knife still tightly held within dainty digits and drove it straight through the other's heart, who gasped at the same time her eyes shifted into the endless black one more time. Where the Lady's orbs had shadowed within their darkness, the ocean of her blues finally shone through, with no more than shock mirrored in the sparkle of the other's darks.
"I said..." Mel whispered with a trembling tone, her hand shaking just as much while she held the knife tight against the woman's heart. "Leave."
Cassia could see the fear, the regret, the self loathing radiating through Mel's eyes, and even upon that moment, with a knife deep inside her vessel's heart, she laughed. "We will see each other again." And with those words, Mel watched the means in which a shadow-filled cloud of black and grey smoke flew away from the lips of the woman that moments later fell limp against her frame.
Not much of that day had served as more than a nightmare in Mel's mind, for she somehow made the murder of the woman look like a suicide; and though she trembled, and cried, and feared for what she'd done, no one would ever suspect what had really happened. Thus, Mel stayed at court, serving, helping and remaining as calm as she could. AS the days passed, every single word Cassia had told her sunk deeper into her soul, and the denial eventually burnt out into the reality that the demon had spoken every worth of the truth.
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"Against my better judgment I went back to Cambridge in 1536, after the Queen's execution." She confessed, releasing a breath within the frown of frustration that adorned her forehead. "I simply couldn't bear it; being the only one to know the complete truth about Anne Boleyn's innocence and not being able to help in any way, it— it was so unfair." Her eyes lowered to the picture in her hands. "My excuse to go back to Cambridge instead of far away to some other country like I should have was that I wanted this trunk." She motioned with her head toward the trunk beside her. "But the truth was that I wanted to check up on Harry. I really shouldn't have." She shook her head once more. "It would have been so easy to just disappear from his life forever, but I was selfish." Her eyes shifted toward the trunk full of memories, her voice echoing slightly broken.
"I don't believe in destiny, but, as fate would have it," Mel finally turned to look at Tate again, who'd been staring at her with curiosity and attention, listening intently to every single word she spoke. "That the day I decided to return for my belongings was the very day in which Harry was finally leaving the parish. And good should he have, he was twenty, after all..."
~May 28th 1536~
The eyes of a grown Harold McClair widened as soon as they set on the coming woman, who walked up the stairs of the familiar parish; and within her gaze it truly felt as if he were seeing a ghost. A ghost who's eyes shone with the promise of willing tears the moment their eyes met. "Melanie?" He whispered, the name feeling almost foreign in his lips, for he hadn't spoken it in what felt like an eternity.
"Harry..." Mel smiled, lowering her hands to lift the skirts of her green dress high enough for her to be able to run up the stairs to not fall. The man's hand suddenly let go of the suitcase he'd been carrying, and his arms opened wide just in time for Mel to slam against his chest; his arms wrapped around his friend, and his face buried against her shoulder the same way her face buried against his. Her hands tangled in his messy brown curls as she allowed a couple of tears to trail down her cheeks; manners or lack thereof, at the moment, she didn't care if anyone around her spoke of such an 'scandalous' encounter as that of the two's reunion.
"We all thought you were dead." He whispered against the soft fabric of her dress, as he seemed unable to rid his throat of the knot that formed within it. "The fire..."
"Not here." Mel swiftly pulled away from his very warm embrace, for the memory of her crimes brought forth the very manners she had previously forgotten, moving even dainty hands away from him as his own fell unwillingly from her waist; and within that shared gaze, her head shook and her eyes pleaded him to stop his questions.
And as usual, as if no time had passed between them at all, it felt as if he were a mind reader the same way Mel was, for Harry nodded and slipped into the poised gentleman the parish had brought him up to be, making Mel do the same, before he bent slightly to pick up the suitcase he'd let go of from the floor. "May I request the honour of thy company in my new cottage, Lady Fray?" He inquired along the very tone that matched his disposition. "I do wish to show you my rose garden." Those were his words, regardless of if his eyes nearly pleaded with her to comply, for he missed her, and his eminent need for answer shone within the continuance of his smile.
Even so, Mel hesitated; her eyes locked on the deep glassy green of his own, and her lips parted for a moment, about to say no; after all, who was she to will danger into the other's life by walking back into it; when she realised she couldn't just come into his life again with absolutely no explanation as to why she had gone. Their friendship meant much more to her than an unspoken abandonment, and it was only thus that she nodded and dared look into his big green eyes one more time. "I will be there."
And after Harry told the Lady where his cottage could be found, both friends parted ways, and Mel, using the name of the only friend her mum had ever had, got the orphanage to give her everything that had once belonged to her, including the slightly burnt out wine red dress that her mother had once owned.
To Be Continued.