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What Is This Feeling?

By- Lest The Stars Diminish and Xela Lupe

Chapter Two

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JOHANNA:

Green finch and linnet bird,

Nightingale, blackbird,

How is it you sing?

~~~

            The birds were such bright colors; a flying rainbow as they swirled throughout the large, silver cage. They sang loud and sweet, twittering lovely sounds. It was a beautiful sight. The cage was sitting in the courtyard of an enormous stately garden, full of towering sculpted hedges in something of a maze. It wound-around an area of at least one square mile. But though the garden was full of so many plants and living things, it looked dead. There were no flowers and the only color in the garden came from the birds. A teenage girl was standing outside the cage, running her fingers through a bag of birdseeds. Her long curly hair shown a reddish gold in the rare British sunshine. Tears shimmered in her eyes and as she closed them, one ran down her face. Her face, which had seemed to show a graceful melancholy look a moment before suddenly fell into an expression of utter rage and she slammed her hand against the cage. The birds inside flew around, frightened and scared. The cage shook uncontrollably.

            "Why must you taunt me so!" she cried out at the fluttering feathers. She grabbed a handful of seeds and flung them about randomly in a fit of rage. "How can you sing like that? Don't you realize you are trapped? You will die in that cage! Why don't you understand!" she screamed at the top of her lungs and her anguished voice rang out into the silence of the garden. She banged her hands against the cage against. She didn't know where all this rage had come from or why it had decided to come out at that specific moment but she did know that if she didn't do something about it, she would positively explode. Her rage suddenly focused on furniture in the garden – a few chairs and a glass table. She overturned the chairs and threw the glass table on its side, shattering it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the birds were still singing.

~~~

JOHANNA:

How can you jubilate

Sitting in cages

Never taking wing?

~~~

            A loud voice suddenly came from the towering mansion to which the garden belonged.

            "Marlitarlianagui Amarintiocarlia Saint-Luchia de Dominu!"

            The girl's feelings of rage were immediately replaced by feelings of intense fear. She turned around slowly to face the building behind her. In one of the lower windows of the right tower she could recognize her father, Master Dominu's menacing frame.

            "Get inside this house right now!" he yelled. Marlitarlianagui looked once more at the rattled birds and the destroyed patio set and then did as her father had wanted. She walked to the main hall and stood near the foot of the stairs that led to the tower her father was in. She could hear his footsteps echoing as he walked down the stairs much faster than she would have liked. He was angry. She supposed he had the right to be. She had acted like a two year old would have, smashing things randomly. That was not the way a Dominu acted. She was a lady and she should know better. Her father reached the end of the stairs and Marlitarlianagui took one look at his eyes and immediately shifted her gaze to the floor. The man was frightening looking when he was angry. He had severely slicked back dark hair and ice cold grey eyes that seemed to bore into your skull and read your mind.

            "What in the name of Hecai were you doing at there?!" He yelled. Marlitarlianagui looked up at him.

            "I was… Father, I was just… frustrated…" she didn't know what to say. 

            "Frustrated!" He raised his hand and the girl flinched for fear he would hit her but he merely touched her cheek where a piece of flying glass from the table had cut her. He sighed. In his mind he was thinking that he should not have to deal with these types of problems. He'd gotten along fine with his daughter for sixteen years but now – ever since her mother died, she's been nothing but trouble to him. Of course, if he had thought about it more he would have realized that he only seemed to have trouble with his daughter now that her mother and his wife had died was because, before that, he didn't have to deal with her. She'd been her mother's responsibility. He didn't know how to take care of a child. He cursed his wife under his breath that she'd had the nerve to die and leave him with such a brat. "Frustrated is when you slam your fist on the table! Not when you smash furniture! I can't believe you would act so immature! What were you thinking! Your mother and I raised you better than that! You are a Dominu young lady and with that names comes certain very clear expectations and boundaries. You're behavior today was lowly and common and I have half a mind to kick you out of this house. You have been nothing but a pain in my side ever since your mother died! Of course, dealing with you I'm surprised she didn't die sooner! I would have killed myself!" He yelled at his daughter. He sounded as immature as she had though he didn't realize it. Both were emotionally unstable and neither knew what to do about it.

            "Are you saying that it's my fault my mother died you selfish wretch?!" Marlitarlianagui screamed back at her father. She couldn't believe he'd said something like that. She felt her rage boiling up once more.

            "Well if you hadn't given her so much trouble perhaps her heart wouldn't have given out so soon! If you had accepted your life! But no! You always complain! Being part of the oldest, most prestigious family is wizarding history wasn't good enough for you! Having every comfort! Your every need met!"

            "My every need?! All I've ever wanted was to be away from this place! I never asked to be part of this family and I've never wanted to be!"

            "Well you don't have a bloody choice in the matter! You are a Dominu and you will act like one or I will see to it that you are locked in your room until the end of your days! I will not have my daughter out disgracing our family name!"

            "Then you had better lock me up! I want no part of this family!"

            "Fine!"

            "Fine!" Marlitarlianagui crossed her arms and turned away from her father. This was the third or fourth screaming match they'd had in the last month. First it had been about sending her to school after her mother died. Her mother had always been her tutor since it was considered indecent for a Dominu to be taught along with the "commoners." The last thing Marlitarlianagui wanted was to spend any more time than was necessary in her father's house so she had taken it upon herself to contact the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and see if they might be persuaded to take her in so late. They had accepted and when she told her father, he had done everything but beat her senseless. Still, she had stuck and finally convinced him to let her go when the next school year began. The other memorable argument was one still not settled and always a hot debate. That of Marlitarlianagui's eventual arranged marriage – an idea she was firmly against in every way.  Whenever she and her father began to yell, all the servants in the house wisely stayed clear for it would have been deadly to get in one of their ways. Master Dominu yelled for Alabertha, one of their maidservants.

            "Alabertha! Take this wretched girl and lock her in her bedroom! Is that understood!?" He yelled and the frightened older woman nodded and took Marlitarlianagui by one arm and led her to her room. She didn't put up a fight with the maidservant for she didn't want to hurt the poor woman who was only doing her job, but she was all ready thinking of ways to get back at her father. Soon she was in her bedroom and she heard the lock click from the outside. Fists clenched she strode over to her nightstand, picked up a decorative glass orb and threw it against the wall. Then she sunk onto the ground and began to cry.

~~~

JOHANNA:

Outside the sky waits

Beckoning, beckoning

Just beyond the bars.

How can you remain

Staring at the rain

Maddened by the stars?

How is it you sing anything?

How is it you sing?

~~~

            Eventually the girl got up and stood by her window. It was soon to be evening and all ready she could see the moon coming out. It was full tonight. Bright and round, staring down at her. She looked away and her thoughts went back to that afternoon – what had made her so mad in the first place. Really, it was just everything cascading down on her. All the pain from her mother's death, having to deal with her father, the prospect of going to a new school – meeting new people when in her whole life she had only known the gentry her parents were friends with, the idea of an arranged marriage as well. It was too much for her to deal with all at once. She'd been living up to someone else's standards for as long as she could remember and she was tired of it. When her mother had been alive, she tried to put on a brave face. She knew her mother cared about her and wouldn't let her be miserable. But now that she was gone and Marlitarlianagui was left only with a father who didn't know how to deal with her or really be any kind of parent all, she was worried that she would be forced into becoming one of those trophy wives. The kind that stand there and smile next to their husbands as they are ignored and trampled until they have no spirit left within them. How could she deal with something like that? How could she fit in that life when it was the opposite of everything she wanted? The birds had set her off. They too were captive. Still though, even in their cage they had the nerve to sing sweetly, as if they were happy. She was expected to be a bird. To sit there and look pretty, smile when you were expected to smile, laugh when you were expected to laugh but never leave your cage.

~~~

JOHANNA:

Green finch and linnet bird

Nightingale, blackbird,

How is it you sing?

Whence comes this melody constantly flowing?

Is it rejoicing or merely halloing?

Are you discussing or fussing

Or simply dreaming?

Are you crowing?

Are you screaming?

~~~

            No one deserved to be kept in a cage like that. Not bird nor beast nor human girl. That couldn't be her fate. There had to be something else.

            A knock came from the other side of her door and she jumped.

            "Yes?" she asked coldly, thinking it may have been her father.

            "Miss Dominu? The Master would like you to come down to dinner now. He says that he's ready to talk about whatever was bothering you seriously." The woman relaying the message sounded nervous.

            Marlitarlianagui felt her anger creeping back and struggled to keep it at bay. She would go downstairs and he would pretend that it had been all her fault, that she'd been irrational and now it was time to calm down and talk civilly about the matters at hand. Quite frankly, she was not in the mood to do anything of the sort.

            "Tell him that I will do no such thing and that if he wishes to talk civilly he may come and apologize to me himself," she said curtly.

            She could tell the maid outside the door was fussing now. "Please Miss, your father just wants to speak with you. It's, well if you don't mind my intruding Miss, it's the proper thing to do…"

~~~

JOHANNA:

Ringdove and robinet

Is it for wages?

Singing to be sold?

Have you decided it's

Safer in cages,

Singing when you're told?

~~~

            Marlitarlianagui almost hissed at the word. Proper. All her life she had heard about being proper and she was sick of it. The last thing she wanted to be was proper.

            "It may be proper but I will not speak to him and that is that. If you do not leave me alone right now I will have you fired!" the girl said sternly toward the door. The maid muttered a 'yes, miss' and left.

            Marlitarlianagui looked at the room around her. She knew that if she didn't agree to talk to her father, he would leave her locked in her room. She'd never had to hold out for very long there but she often wondered how long he would keep her in there if she didn't eventually apologize. He'd threatened so many times to make her room a real cage by putting bars on the windows that she'd stopped being afraid of the prospect. He was all empty threats. He wanted to make her feel bad, to guilt her into doing what he wanted. He often told her how grateful she should be to be born into such privilege but it only made her angrier. She never asked for her decadent lifestyle and if she could give it up she would have in a moment. Her gilded cage.

~~~

JOHANNA:

My cage has many rooms

Damask and dark.

Nothing there sings,

Not even my lark.

Larks never will, you know

When they're captive,

Teach me to be more adaptive.

~~~

            She heard her father yell downstairs. He was undoubtedly angry that she refused to come down to dinner. Suddenly, the thought of having him come up and yell at her made her shake with anger. She looked at her window back at the sheets on her bed. She knew that it was a long way down from her window to the ground but she had a lot of sheets. She began pulling them off her bed and tying them together. She'd seen enough muggle movies to know how the whole process worked. In the end, tying every sheet on her bed and in her closet got her about five sixths of the way down to the ground. She tied the end of the sheet rope to her bed frame and got out her wand. Hopefully she'd think of something useful by the time she got to the bottom of the sheet rope. Without wasting another thought, she began to climb out of her window and away from her accursed house.

~~~

JOHANNA:

Green finch and linnet bird

Nightingale, blackbird

Teach me how to sing!

If I cannot fly,

Let me sing!

~~~