lesmisloony | Trying Again.

Okay, remember that thing that I wrote? That I was like IT'S ABOUT SOMETHING and you were all like "No it isn't...?"

I compiled my feedback and rewrote it.

So... now is it about something?

Sophie shifted in her seat. She knew that if she moved too often rumours that la Baronne de Blomet couldn’t sit through a simple Mozart vaudeville would spread through certain drawing rooms before next week’s masquerade. Gossip like that would easily dissuade the count from asking her for a dance. She aligned her panniers so that they drooped evenly over each side of her chair and glanced uneasily around the candlelit opera house, pulling at her shawl to be certain it had not slipped from its position at the back of her neck. None of the inhabitants of the other boxes seemed to be looking in her direction, but she didn’t want to take too many chances. Under the pretence of straightening her heavy wig Sophie gently traced the long scar from the back of her scalp to its end point between her shoulder blades. It was believed that she always wore shawls and furs because of her bad circulation; only her parents and servants knew about the unsightly mark that had marred her otherwise pretty neck since she had been discovered.

“Can you believe the cheek of that beggar?” she heard. Marguerite de Blacheville was leaning toward her, whispering from behind her fan. “How dare he confront us like that?”

“Oh, I know!” replied Sophie, her face behind her own new fan. The crinkling paper still smelled faintly of paint; she moved it further away from her nose before carrying on. “They all say the same thing, don’t they? All of them have sick wives at home, but this one had sick children to boot!”

“How do you know?” Marguerite asked, wrinkling her snub nose. “He wasn’t speaking a word of French.”

“He— wasn’t he? I understood him. I thought I did.”

“Do you speak Spanish? I think it was Spanish. Either that or Italian.”

“I was never taught either, no.”

Marguerite rolled her eyes. “I do hate languages. My governess insisted on teaching me German when I was small. German, can you imagine? It’s such a horrible sounding thing, and the rules make no sense! Years of German lessons, and here I am at a Mozart all sung in proper German and I can’t understand a word.”

Sophie half-nodded, her eyes back on the stage. No one was expected to watch the entire opera in silence, not even the count, but she felt she had been looking away for long enough now. She tried to pick up the thread of the story again, but the fantastical world of this opera, so different from the ball gowns and drawing rooms of her own reality, required a little more concentration than she had been giving it. The man dressed in feathers was talking to an old woman in a mask about love. She leaned forward to listen.

“Do you know any German?” Marguerite asked. Sophie shook her head. “What language did you learn, then?”

“Latin,” said Sophie. “I did pick it right up. It’s practically identical to French, isn’t it? It’s odd; I understood it right away.”

“Latin?” Marguerite repeated incredulously. “No! It’s very different! But I’d rather have learned Latin than German.”

Sophie glanced at her, then back at the stage. “This isn’t that confusing,” she murmured. “They’re explaining everything, you just have to listen. The crone just told Papageno that she is eighteen years old, and in love with a man ten years older than her.”

“How is she eighteen years old?”

“It’s a mask. All she has to do is drop it and you’ll see who she really is.”

“Who is she really?” Marguerite asked. “I can’t stand this stuff. I only go because they told me the count would be here, but he isn’t.”

Sophie gave her a sharp look. “What do you want with the count?”

“Oh, please, it’s not as if he’s your property,” she said, falling back into her chair and smirking. “And anyway, he’d hardly want to be seen with a foundling, now would he?”

“I carry my father’s the baron’s title. What do you have to offer, Mademoiselle de Blacheville?”

“Your father’s title? Your father was probably a Spanish beggar himself. And your mother was probably a streetwalker. Only God knows who you really are.”

Sophie’s nostrils flared and she straightened her shoulders, drumming her fingers furiously against her skirts. It would not do to scratch out her friend’s eyes in the middle of the opera. She tightened her shawl again and turned away. Onstage the chorus of three boys was singing of the magnificent future of mankind, but, though they were standing right before her, Princess Pamina was caught up in herself and did not hear it.

Do let me know what I can do to make it better...