07-12-2023, 10:23 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-12-2023, 10:38 AM by Ruth Longbottom.)
[CW: likely references to child neglect, alcoholism and violence]
For what would probably be the first time during his sentence, Eugene would be led out of his cell with the announcement that he had a visitor. He wasn’t even taken to the usual place for prison visits: a dark room with cold, dark grey stone walls, bars separating the prisoner’s side from that of the visitors, and no chairs to make either party comfortable. Instead, he was led to the room where the doctor checked his patients: a room with no bars, apart from those in front of the high windows, a room with a table and chairs, a room where only the few fortunate inmates with family members wealthy enough to bribe the staff received their visitors.
But the elegant young lady who sat waiting in a chair with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap could surely not be family. Surely no Longbottom had ever worn such a fashionable pink dress, with slightly puffed sleeves and lace over the shoulders and down along the front, or such a smart wide, crème coloured hat with decorative ruby and rose coloured flowers, or such good quality, high-heeled boots of white leather. Surely Eugene had never seen his any of his sisters with diamond earrings dangling from their earlobes or a pearl choker necklace around their necks. No sister of his had clean and oiled black curls pinned up at the back of her head in the latest fashion, with just a careful few curly strands loose to frame her face.
Indeed, this elegant young lady looked nothing like the Ruth Longbottom Eugene probably remembered: a scrawny, barefooted child, who wore dirty clothes and whose arms, legs, and or face were always cut or bruised in one way or another because she fought other children and grown ups alike to get what she wanted; a waif whose black curls were unwashed and uncombed and whose nails were black to the point that teachers would sent her home frequently with the order to come back looking less ‘feral’ and nobody would hire her once she was out of school; an unruly girl with a quick tongue and even quicker hands, who could run faster and spit further than most of the boys, and punched back harder too. Nothing of that young wildling could be recognized in this fine young lady – except, perhaps, in the hardness in her eyes, as she kept glancing up at the door, a look of ‘I’ll cut you before you cut me’, and in the way she pulled her upper lip between her teeth the way he would have seen her do as a child, when she was nervous and calculating her next move.
Nervous she was.
For what would probably be the first time during his sentence, Eugene would be led out of his cell with the announcement that he had a visitor. He wasn’t even taken to the usual place for prison visits: a dark room with cold, dark grey stone walls, bars separating the prisoner’s side from that of the visitors, and no chairs to make either party comfortable. Instead, he was led to the room where the doctor checked his patients: a room with no bars, apart from those in front of the high windows, a room with a table and chairs, a room where only the few fortunate inmates with family members wealthy enough to bribe the staff received their visitors.
But the elegant young lady who sat waiting in a chair with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap could surely not be family. Surely no Longbottom had ever worn such a fashionable pink dress, with slightly puffed sleeves and lace over the shoulders and down along the front, or such a smart wide, crème coloured hat with decorative ruby and rose coloured flowers, or such good quality, high-heeled boots of white leather. Surely Eugene had never seen his any of his sisters with diamond earrings dangling from their earlobes or a pearl choker necklace around their necks. No sister of his had clean and oiled black curls pinned up at the back of her head in the latest fashion, with just a careful few curly strands loose to frame her face.
Indeed, this elegant young lady looked nothing like the Ruth Longbottom Eugene probably remembered: a scrawny, barefooted child, who wore dirty clothes and whose arms, legs, and or face were always cut or bruised in one way or another because she fought other children and grown ups alike to get what she wanted; a waif whose black curls were unwashed and uncombed and whose nails were black to the point that teachers would sent her home frequently with the order to come back looking less ‘feral’ and nobody would hire her once she was out of school; an unruly girl with a quick tongue and even quicker hands, who could run faster and spit further than most of the boys, and punched back harder too. Nothing of that young wildling could be recognized in this fine young lady – except, perhaps, in the hardness in her eyes, as she kept glancing up at the door, a look of ‘I’ll cut you before you cut me’, and in the way she pulled her upper lip between her teeth the way he would have seen her do as a child, when she was nervous and calculating her next move.
Nervous she was.
