Hey everyone! About a week to go until TSFT is released in America. If you're anything like me, you're freaking out! So, here's another chapter to pass the time (for me, and for you)! This is from Kartik's point of view, by the way.
Story Eighteen
Title: Grace
Rating: K+ to T
Summary: Kartik watches Pippa gaze out her dormitory window before she goes to bed.
Her black-brown hair cascades down her milky white back. She is the picture of English perfection. Unblemished and snow white, this friend of Miss Doyle's resembles a girl on a cameo, a soft smile on her slightly parted lips and her eyes staring off into the distance.
After a somewhat bawdy adventure at the lake, I couldn't help but notice the girl. Then she'd been completely clothed, but her nightgown had clung to her, showing off every facet of her skin. She was a porcelain doll yet also not. There's a spirit about her that could never be found in a gift shop window.
Nearly every night she does this, stripping out of her day clothes and gazing out her dormitory window towards the forest for just a few moments. If the window is open, I often hear her roommate, another friend of Miss Doyle's, telling her to hurry up and get in her nightgown already. She always does, but only after a moment's hesitation of gazing out the window. It's as if she wants to strip out of her corset and petticoats and climb down the side of Spence and run towards the forest, leaving behind whatever worries she has. She'd take her beauty with her—it's evident that that's her grace—her redeeming, God-given quality.
The window is closed tonight, so I don't hear the other girl call to her, but when she turns her head I can't help but be amazed at the profile of her body. No feeling of lust is overwhelming me. I'm simply amazed at her beauty—her perfect nose, perfect hair, long lashes, lithe yet curved build. Her hair falls in spirals down her back and she giggles, the smile evident on her face, before disappearing from the window and walking by it just moments later, dressed in a nightgown identical to the one that she came crawling out of the lake in just a few days ago, the cloth hugging her body greedily like an octopus's soul. It's sheer and white and lacking in tentacles, but the effect is still the same.
I shake my head and turn away, blushing madly, knowing that I shouldn't have been watching her. I close my eyes and see her face—that sad, staring one. It's as if she's being pulled back, sucked on by monstrous, unseen tentacles.
I can't help but wonder if they'll gain such a hold on her that one day she'll slip from this world as she would like to slip from her dormitory window, beautiful yet free.