Taking time for tea (Lucrezia) on Cascade Hall

Alicia Bauer

July 19, 2014 2:16 PM

Taking time for tea (Lucrezia) by Alicia Bauer

It had taken Alicia a long time to calm down after Cepheus told her about his new betrothal, and she still, even after the near-fury had passed into something more rational, thought his grandfather should abandon the name ‘Corvus’ and start going by ‘Lucky.’ If Cepheus had not seemed basically okay with it all, considering the match made for him more advantageous than one with Theresa anyway, Alicia would have been forced to dedicate the rest of her academic career to researching stealthy-yet-excruciatingly-painful ways to kill people.

Just thinking about it was enough to make her blood pressure rise again. Those…organic entities (she was not in a mood to grant them the status of human beings; as far as she was concerned, cockroaches were higher life forms than Cepheus’ family and less deserved to have their guts squished out than every Princeton save one did right now) had no right, no right whatsoever, to treat him the way they did, yanking him around, treating him like a piece in a game. He was an adult and her friend and he deserved better than those bastards in his life. She held his parents just as responsible as the grandfather; they could have stood up to, or else killed, his grandfather themselves, and the only way she would ever forgive them for not doing so was if she found out they only hadn’t out of cowardice and had begged someone to practice the Cruciatus Curse on them on a regular basis to atone for their sins. If they did that, they could be upgraded in her estimation to merely ‘contemptible,’ but she doubted very much that they ever would.

One day, she swore, not for the first time, the previous generations were going to pay. They were going to pay for making Cepheus do things he did not want to do, for making her spend her whole life afraid and ashamed, for making it harder for her to keep Henny, for making Thad come dangerously close to acting as though asking her to marry him instead of going over her head had been a courtesy instead of the important part. Today, though, the scumbags she wanted to punish were not within her reach, so instead, she was setting up her tea set in the Cascade Hall, along with a selection of teas.

It was between lunch and supper on a Saturday, so the vast room was mostly empty and smelled faintly of soap – a relic, Alicia assumed, of the cleaning the prairie elves had given it after lunch, lingering because the overpowering food smells of supper were not yet present. A few snacks were available near the entrance, but Alicia was sitting away from them, where her conversation would be less likely to be overheard and where she could see anyone who wanted to see her coming from a distance. She did not know exactly how what she had in mind was going to go and wanted to be able to control the number of people who knew the details as much as possible.

Miss Renaldi, she had written three days earlier, in her best, clearest and most elegant handwriting, I would be honored if you would join me for tea in the Cascade Hall on Saturday, say around three? Teatime was supposed to be at four, but since dinner started at five, she had moved it back an hour. She did not particularly want to be in the middle of explaining exactly what happened to people who hurt her best friend when the whole school walked in. Sincerely, Alicia Bauer, Head Girl.

She had also then, just to make sure Lucrezia knew it was not really an invitation, added a postscript: If you do not like tea, other drinks will be available. I believe we have a great deal to talk about. ASB.

Once everything was in order, she sat down and folded her hands to wait. She wanted a cup of tea now, but thought being found with one already in hand would make her look either nervous or arrogant, and while she might well end up showing Lucrezia just how arrogant she could be, she didn’t want to start out that way and so had decided to let the other girl have a say in what they drank. She had brought some of her best to show off with: a nutty, expensive lung ching, an even more expensive Ti Quan Yin oolong, the Yin Hao jasmine she liked best after especially grueling days, a first flush Darjeeling, and a bit of Keemun Mao Feng in case Lucrezia was a fan of darker teas; she knew Cepheus was, which was why she always kept some around even though she didn’t like them much, though she had gotten used to them during the fall and still had a cup every now and then. She didn’t know enough about black teas, though, to impress if she needed to, and one thing Alicia fully intended to do, from the minute Lucrezia approached, was impress. That had been the thought she had in mind when she put in a rush order on a new dress for the occasion, too. She was going to have to explain that one when she got home – her mother and stepfather didn’t mind if she spent money, but preferred that she plan well enough to avoid the extra expenses of last-minute things, and she knew Jeremy wanted her to cut Cepheus off altogether now for the sake of her reputation and would not appreciate pointless spending for her friend's benefit – but she would think of something before then. She had other problems to think about now.

She smiled when Lucrezia arrived. “Hello,” she said, as sweetly as she knew how to, rising to offer the other girl her hand. “Thank you for joining me today. Tea?”

She made tea and then sat back in her chair, looking at over her cup without drinking from it for a moment. “I appreciate you coming, really," she said, taking a sip. "Since I heard you're supposed to marry my best friend, I've thought we should get to know each other better." She smiled again. "I can't just let anyone into my family without knowing them," she added lightly. "So. Tell me about yourself. Do you and Cepheus know each other well?"

16 Alicia Bauer Taking time for tea (Lucrezia) 210 Alicia Bauer 1 5

Lucrezia

July 20, 2014 11:01 AM

Here I am by Lucrezia

It was sure to say that Lucrezia had been having quite a weird term this year. It all had started at the beginning of last year’s opening feast and it had gone downhill since then quite rapidly. It had been weird to be a prisoner at Sonora while the whole smoke fiasco happened. It had been the best conversation with her parents once she could communicate with them and let them know she was quite all right. That had been the bad part of her year, but the good part had started as soon as her Mama had hugged her and made sure she was actually quite healthy. It was technically amazingly good since it entailed a whole lot of things Lucrezia didn’t really understand about the future, but her family was happy. She had been betrothed to a boy from a rather prominent and important family from England. Lucrezia was now set to be the future wife of Cepheus Princenton. It had come as a shock to her to find herself suddenly in a whirlwind of attention she had never been used to. The Italian was a fourth child, and she was used to be overshadowed by the firstborns and the actual male heir. It wasn’t a big of deal, really. Lucrezia enjoyed the freedom none of her siblings had. Well, until now it seemed.

For weeks she had been showered with attention and gifts, and all she could do was smile and accept everything gracefully. She wasn’t mad or annoyed it was that she wasn’t used to it all. However, it took her a couple of days for the enormity of the news to actually sink. She was already engaged and as far as she knew the contract had already been signed by both families. The only thing that was missing was Cepheus and hers signature when they got married. She didn’t really understand how it all worked, but she was sure her Papa only had her best interests at heart. After all, she was a Renaldi whether she was a fourth child or not. By the end of the winter holiday she had gotten used to the attention and was blossining quite beautifully in it, but she knew the excitement would cease after she left since Carlo was about to get married to a rather powerful and beautiful Indian heiress in the middle of the summer. The wedding of the Renaldi Heir was more important than her engagement. It was just how life was. However, she enjoyed it while it lasted, and she was quite happy with the election for her future husband. Cepheus was handsome and charming, and the Italian might have started harboring a small crush over him. How could she not? He was perfect, but at the time he had also been dating Theresa. So, Lucrezia had just admired him from afar.

However, now it was different. Cepheus was hers and she was kind of happy about it. She still had to figure some things out, but they had years before they would actually be married. So, once she went back to Sonora her free time had been spent studying and eating some meals with him with the sole purpose of getting to know one another, and she liked what she saw with the little small defect that he was still dating Theresa. She hoped he would end it soon because she was jealous, but she also knew that males tended to go astray. It was normal in the Pureblood society for such things to happen, but that didn’t mean she didn’t resent it. She could live with it, but would never be fully okay with it. Nevertheless, Theresa wasn’t her pressing problem at the moment especially since Cepheus had said he would break it off with her soon. Lucrezia’s problem was Alicia, his best friend, and the girl who had invited her over for tea. It would be a lie if she said she wasn’t scared about the encounter. Alicia was so serious and she knew Cepheus better than anyone which was daunting. There was no one at Sonora that knew him better than she did. She was sure of that. Her letter was on her bed while she got ready for the meeting. She just wanted to make sure about the hour.

Lucrezia looked at her reflection on the mirror and smiled at it. She had never been bad looking, but her blossoming womanly curves became her quite well. Her new dress had been picked by Bianca Stratford because she had said it complimented her figure quite beautifully. It was nice having family at the school. It had taken her a while to reach out to the younger girl, but had come to find out someone amazing. Her dress was paired with some blue ballerina slippers flats, minimal make-up, and a pair of pearl earrings. She thought she looked spectacular. Lucrezia took a deep breath and left her room to finally meet the dreaded best friend.

The Crotalus entered the Cascade Hall and looked for Alicia. Once she saw her, she slowly made her way towards her. Nervousness was beginning to crush her a bit, but she smiled at the greeting when she finally made it to the table.

“Hi,” she returned the greeting, she smile still on her face. “I’m happy to be here,” she answered while sitting down in front of her. “I would love some, thank you.” Lucrezia didn’t usually drink tea, but it would be nice to have something in her hands.

The Italian looked at Alicia her eyes full of warmth. She cared about Cepheus which was nice, but daunting for her. She felt like she needed to rise up to her expectations. Alicia was protective of him so it must meant that Cepheus was a good guy if someone went to this lengths to do so. “I’m glad you invited me,” she waited for her tea to be served before continuing. “Cepheus and I have been getting to know one another for the last months. It was a shock to me to find out I was bound to marry him over the winter break.” Even when she wanted to expand a bit on her answer she knew it would not be very wise. First rule of Pureblood society was to never trust anyone, especially strangers, and Alicia was one to her. “What do you want to know?” she finally asked to narrow her responses to Alicia’a vague question.

0 Lucrezia Here I am 0 Lucrezia 0 5

Alicia

July 21, 2014 7:59 AM

Eat, drink, and be merry. by Alicia

Alicia looked Lucrezia over as she sat down, determined to separate her feelings about the situation from her feelings about the girl involved in it. The poor girl might be delighted or devastated by the betrothal, but either way, it wasn’t really her fault that this was happening. She’d had – or thought she had, anyway; Alicia had never been more tempted to tell Cepheus the truth about herself than when she found out about Lucrezia, just to prove that people had more power to shape their own fates than the sub-cockroaches had told him they did, and honestly wondered if she should seek out at least a few sound hexes for herself to make up for not doing it for his benefit no matter what the cost to herself was – no more choice in the matter than Cepheus had. She was just a girl, and none of this was really her fault. She was just the poor fool who was going to suffer for it.

It did, after all, seem highly unlikely that Cepheus was going to turn into the material of which good husbands were made at this late date. Alicia loved him because he treated her well, but she didn’t approve any more of how he was with other girls than anyone else did. She didn’t care enough to get involved or ever take a girl’s side over his, but she didn’t approve. If it had just been Theresa when he’d had Meghan shoved down his throat, that would have been one thing, but she’d seen him flirt with other girls often enough since his first fiancée departed. Even if he started to like this one, he’d eventually get bored with her, too, especially if they actually made it to an altar, and then things would get…unpleasant.

For now, not crying and throwing glassware and generally distraught over completely avoidable problems, Lucrezia was a pretty girl, well-dressed and friendly, though Alicia knew better than to trust that too far. Some pureblood girls really were wispy, weak little things who couldn’t dissemble a way out of a bank of fog, were basically sweet but empty-headed creatures who hardly knew what the ideas they repeated back after someone meant and would never make a single decision in their lives. Other pureblood girls just pretended quite as much as Alicia did. So she was going to reserve judgment on Lucrezia’s actual intelligence and personality until she had more to go on.

“That’s good to hear,” she murmured when Lucrezia said she and Cepheus had been getting to know each other. If he was being decent, he was probably at least physically attracted to her, which was a start. She was not sure if it being a shock was good or not and so chose not to comment on that at all.

She put her teacup down at the request for clarification and smiled warmly. “Oh, everything," she said lightly. "But for a starting point...I hear you're from Italy. How did you come to be at Sonora, and do you like it here?"

16 Alicia Eat, drink, and be merry. 210 Alicia 0 5

Lucrezia

July 23, 2014 3:00 PM

For one I will just drink by Lucrezia

Lucrezia was sweet, trusting and generally a rather pleasant girl, but she had been raised in the Pureblood world. The Crotalus had rarely delved on such unpleasantries, but she had learned from her mother and older sisters. The Pureblood world was cut throat and it was either you or the others. There was not another way around it. It was all about power and knowledge which was why Pureblood families still played with arranged marriages. There was no better way to protect a family’s fortune and reputation than making sure they stayed within the desirable families. However, it was harder and harder to find good families to continue with the tradition. Or at least that was what she heard from her great- grandfather Ignatious.

The Crotalus was sure Alicia was judging and examining her every move. Lucrezia had become a test subject for Cepheus’ best friend. That made her feel kind of uncomfortable which probably was showing in her nervous finger movements. She took a deep breath and smiled once again before answering Alicia’ inquiries. She had still been vague, so she thought that starting with the most direct question would be best.

“My great grandmother is a Randolph,” she finally said. The Randolph family was well known in the United States, especially in the East Coast, so she wasn’t sure if Alicia knew of them. Grandfather Ignatious was famous for his family’s history and great connections. However, they had stayed in the east because he had always said west coast was full of good for nothing hippies. The Italian wasn’t really sure what that meant, but she tended to just nod and smile at him. He liked when people agreed with him. “And my Great grandfather Ignatious wanted someone to come to Sonora with the Stratfords,” she finished with her answer. Lucrezia was sure Alicia would recognize those names, at least Preston’s and Laurie’s.

Pureblood politics were complicated and she barely understood them. She preferred to watch from the sidelines, really.

Lucrezia took a sip of her tea before continuing, “I do like it here. It’s so different from home, but I enjoy it best when I’m in Massachusetts with my great-great grandparents.” Lucrezia had come to love that place like a second home, but maybe that was because her great-great grandparents spoiled her rotten. They lived alone and they rarely had someone stay over. Besides old people loved having young people around them to impart their well earned wisdom and at over 100 years old they had a lot of it.

The Crotalus was drawing a blank on how to proceed with the questioning, “Alicia, I would prefer if you asked more specific things. I’m not sure about what to tell you without boring you to death,” her smile was genuine. She really wanted to get along with her since it would make her life with Cepheus a whole lot better.

0 Lucrezia For one I will just drink 0 Lucrezia 0 5

Alicia

July 23, 2014 9:14 PM

Well, it's a start. by Alicia

Randolph didn’t ring as much of a bell, at least not one she could hang names and places on as far as she could remember right now, but Alicia knew the name Stratford. As a Sonora student – or at least as an Aladren – above a certain age, she thought it would be hard not to. Preston Stratford might or might not have stood out in the House on his own, she didn’t know since he hadn’t had to, but as roommate to the Carey twins, as a member of that Quidditch team ….

She listened, still smiling, as Lucrezia kept talking about her great-grandparents in Massachusetts. “That’s lovely,” she murmured.

Maybe it was. If she lived in New Hampshire after college and Lucrezia had close family in Massachusetts, that might provide more opportunities for her to see Cepheus. If Henny would just stay on in the east…She didn’t know if her friend would, though. She might get her degree and then want to go back home, be closer to her parents. If she did, Alicia would just go see her there; that could be easier, too, in its way, since they’d meet well away from those she’d know who might strongly disapprove of a friendship with Henny….

Lucrezia’s blunt inquiry made her pause, covering it with a long sip of her tea, as she considered how she should handle this development. “I apologize if I seem vague," she said. "I'm used to getting to know people a little more...gradually, but since I'm leaving soon, I'll really listen to anything you're willing to tell me.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her and leaned forward a little. “But if you want something direct, the most important thing I need to know about you is whether or not you’re going to try to take my best friend away from me.”

16 Alicia Well, it's a start. 210 Alicia 0 5

Lucrezia

July 25, 2014 2:55 PM

Everything starts with a step by Lucrezia

Lucrezia smiled surprised at the turn of events. She wasn’t used to such directedness. Everything about the Pureblood world was subtle hints and moving around the bush. So, Alicia’s bluntness was a breath of fresh air. The Crotalus looked at her over the rim of her tea cup as she sipped while she mulled over her answer. The Italian wasn’t stupid, and while she was brash about some things she had been raised right. A lot of things were going through her mind as quickly came up with a response to Alicia’s inquiry. The most important idea was that maybe, just maybe, Alicia had a crush on Cepheus. Maybe she hadn’t realized it yet, but Lucrezia thought she did. Her need to protect and look over his shoulder – if she could actually say that it was – was a bit too much. In her opinion, anyways. Alana and Aime had always told her that male and females could never been friends, especially because one usually ended up falling for the other, but she didn’t have experience in that department so she didn’t really know.

“As long as you don’t plan on taking away my betrothed I don’t mind you being around,” she responded unusually serious. “Our situation is hard as it without your meddling.” Lucrezia was well aware that her future wasn’t going to be a fairytale. Arranged marriages were a very messy situation to find yourself in. However, she was also aware that, even while Alicia didn’t meddle, she would never have that relationship with Cepheus. It was a hard situation because Alicia would always be a little thorn on her side, but she couldn’t do anything about it. Yet. It all depended on how things faired, but for now she rather liked the girl. Lucrezia was a nice girl, but by any means stupid. If Alicia became a problem for her she would need to deal with it, but she preferred to think that it wouldn’t come to that. The Crotalus didn’t want her future husband to resent her over her.

“Since we are being straight forward and direct here,” she continued after leaving her cup of tea on top of the table, “You seem like a nice girl and as long as you don’t cause me problems I won’t cause you any,” she smiled. “My family is very wealthy and powerful in Europe as well as the East Coast and having those connections can be very useful to you, but I could use your help with Cepheus.” The Italian didn’t really know much about the Bauers. Her Randolph relatives’ hadn’t given her any information about them, so she was threading blindly here, but she did know of her pure ancestry. And knowing that gave Lucrezia a little insight on Alicia. There wasn’t any good Pureblood in the world that didn’t look into getting good connections to further their agendas. “We could be useful to one another. How about it? Friends?” she asked Alicia before thinking about giving the other girl a condensed story of her life.

0 Lucrezia Everything starts with a step 0 Lucrezia 0 5

Alicia

July 26, 2014 3:33 PM

A baby step must precede a flying leap. by Alicia

Generations of moralists had tried to convince the world that honesty was the best policy, but Alicia had never believed it. She did, though, think honesty might fare well in a competition for the most interesting policy. Lies, from the crudest excuses to the sort of careful verbal constructs, every word technically true and few to none of them honest, which Alicia most often used, always had a certain amount of logic to them, but the truth – or at least what someone thought was the truth – was volatile, complicated, unpredictable. It was far more likely than a lie, good or bad, to get a response one hadn’t expected.

When Lucrezia used the word meddling, Alicia’s expression hardened a little in offense, but a moment later she found herself struggling to keep her eyebrows level as she realized what Lucrezia was getting at, what her version of the truth was.

She was playing tough. Maybe she had meant to include a hint of a threat in what Alicia had thought, for a startled moment, was going to be a direct one in all that talk about the breadth of her international connections and an agreement for each of them not to cause problems for the other. But at the end of the day, Lucrezia was offering her connections, opportunities, basically money and power, and asking for little more in return than a promise to stay out of Lucrezia’s future husband’s bed – or at least to be discreet about it if she was there. Hard to tell with these pureblood types, really; some girls were practical enough to see it that way, but others were foolish enough to expect either teenaged boys forced to repeat some words to them in front of a crowd or ambitious men who were really only repeating the same words to their spreadsheets to someday fall in love with them.

Several thoughts span through Alicia’s head at once. One was the desire to rant about how to assume that all love was fundamentally about sex was to reduce humanity to the level of the animals and to soundly enlighten this girl on what friendship was, as she’d clearly never had a real one in her life. This Alicia put aside as overly sentimental, not suited to the moment. The next was to wonder exactly how much stock she could put in Lucrezia’s promises, since the only way a girl in a certain kind of family was going to have much say in business was if she was unusually gifted in either economics and enlightened relatives or in blackmail material. From there, she couldn’t help but think about what she should do with that kind of access if Lucrezia could indeed deliver it: present the connections to her new family in an attempt to ingratiate herself, or try to quietly build up something for herself on the side by combining that access with the resources already at her disposal? She believed Thad had the best of intentions and that they were both planning for the long game, but she had to be practical. Love and power were slightly awkward bedfellows even at the best of times, and while Fortune favored her so much right now that things just went her way without her lifting a finger and she had been more amused than alarmed by Lucrezia's veiled threats, sooner or later the wheel would probably turn. Both her father and her maternal grandmother had ended up with nothing and nobody when their mates abandoned them for spouses who’d had more to offer than her father and Gramma Claire had. If Thad, regardless of how he felt about her at the time, stopped thinking she was a good enough investment someday, she didn’t want to end up poor or in a cult.

Following upon that was a flutter of disgust for all these politics, all this drama. They were wizards, they were supposed to be above all this, but they had built up society to the point where it shackled them nearly as much as being incomplete shackled the Muggles. She could call life from the air but was stuck making vague political threats and deals with a girl who might be able to wipe her from the face of the earth or who might not be able to levitate a feather but who much of the world would say was better than her either way. It wasn't right....

She had, however, more immediate concerns than any of these and quickly drew her attention back to them.

“It sounds like a good bargain to me,” she said agreeably, then allowed her expression to become serious. “Listen,” she said. “I will promise you by whatever you like that there is nothing romantic between me and Cepheus, and that there never has been and that there never will be. There's more than one kind of love, and we're not for each other that way.” She smiled a little again. “I want us to be friends,” she said earnestly. “Helpful to each other, of course, but really friends, too. I...don't like to brag, but I think I'm a pretty good one to have. If you're my friend and you have a problem of any kind and there is any way that I can fix it? I will do that for you if you ask me." Of course, she would likely solve Lucrezia's problems of she asked anyway, now, but with her real friends there were no strings attached to the favors other than a desire for their continued companionship and, where applicable, loyalty. "But don’t ever hurt him."

16 Alicia A baby step must precede a flying leap. 210 Alicia 0 5

Lucrezia

July 30, 2014 1:37 PM

I'm about to fly. Join me? by Lucrezia

Lucrezia blushed when she realized what she had implied about Cepheus and Alicia. She had thought it wouldn’t be obvious for the other girl to see her suspicions. The Crotalus should had chosen her words more carefully. She had never been that good in hiding her emotions to begin with and that gave everyone a fairly good view into her soul. The Italian had a crush on Cepheus. How could she not? He was pretty good looking and his attention made her feel special, and Lucrezia liked that.

“I’m sorry…” she started while watching her hands fumble with her cup for a few seconds before looking up at Alicia again. “I didn’t mean to imply you and Cepheus had something. I know you are good friends and you know him quite well.” Her words were a bit more accented than usual due to her embarrassment. The Crotalus wasn’t a bad person, but she was beginning to feel things she had never experienced before: like jealousy. It wasn’t directed at Alicia per se but to Theresa. However, Alicia was the most powerful female figure in his life at Sonora and she would always be part of their lives, and it was better for her to start getting along with her. Lucrezia had the feeling that it didn’t matter if Alicia got married. She would always be there.

She smiled before taking a deep breath, “I don’t plan on it,” she advised quite secure about her response. “At least not intetionnally,” she ended honestly. The Crotalus didn’t know what their future looked like, but she planned to make the best of it.

“I really want for us to be friends,” she smiled genuinely once again, “We are going to be in each other’s lives whether we want it or not, and it’s better for us to be.” Lucrezia took a sip of her lukewarm tea. “At least we have Cepheus’ happiness in common. I didn’t ask for this betrothal, but I want to make the best of this complicated situation. I like him well enough to want to make him happy because his happiness is linked to mine and I refuse to be a bitter old woman.” The Italian loved life too much to want to wallow in self-pity every day of her life because she couldn’t reach that fleeting beacon of hope that was happiness. She wanted to work for it and reach it.

The Crotalus tried to always see life in a positive light. It was awful to see young women so bitter thanks to things they couldn’t control. No, Lucrezia would be damned if she ended like that. “And I’m a good friend too.” She was sure she was. She had a lot of friends back home.

0 Lucrezia I'm about to fly. Join me? 0 Lucrezia 0 5

Alicia

August 01, 2014 3:24 PM

I'll bring the discreet parachute. by Alicia

Alicia considered taking advantage of Lucrezia’s flustered state to really drive her point home, but decided to back off a little. It was all a balancing act right now – Ceph was trying to balance two women, Lucrezia to establish herself a place in his life without, it seemed, starting a war, and Alicia to make it clear that pushing her out would start one without pushing so hard that Lucrezia decided the benefits were worth the risks. They were all going to have to tread lightly until things were more under control.

And to think she had once thought running a school was hard.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” she said pleasantly. “You wouldn’t be the first to misunderstand our relationship. Normally I don’t even care anymore.” She focused her full attention on Lucrezia. “I need you, though, to understand how things really are," she said earnestly. "You’re going to be someone very important in both of our lives, and if you don’t understand, then none of us are going to be very happy. That's why I wanted to just get that out of the way right up front.”

Lucrezia’s happiness was, of course, the least important one involved for her, followed by her own happiness. Or at least she hoped it went that way. She had told herself for years that if it was the only way for her friends to be happy, or at least to have what they wanted, then she would walk away no matter how much it hurt her and had been working herself up for two years to do that for Thad, thoroughly expecting that the fallout would lead to losing the others as well, but she hadn’t been tested yet. Alicia had never thought of herself as a good person, but she wanted to believe she was just close enough to have walked away without trying to take everyone else down with her if it had come to that. That she loved her friends enough to do what was best for them no matter what it cost her if there was ever a situation where she determined there was no way to make someone else, someone she didn’t care about, pay the price instead. She was not sure, in the present situation, that there was such a person, though, and didn’t want to face that test if it could be avoided, so it was better if they could all be happy.

Well, everyone except Theresa, anyway. There was really nothing within the bounds of reason that Alicia could do for her, which was a pity, but there were only three people in the world Alicia would even consider going past the bounds of reason for and Theresa wasn’t one of them. Which might cause problems of its own whenever Ceph got around to telling Theresa about Lucrezia, but Alicia couldn’t think about that right now. She had enough problems which were definitely going to come up soon to handle without speculating over what the Careys might do when the odds seemed overwhelmingly in favor of them doing nothing. Theresa might want to be another Paris, but she didn’t think the old men of the Careys were sentimental enough to play Priam and defend Theresa’s entirely emotionally-driven claim. It was too bad for Theresa, but everyone else would be better off if Theresa and Cepheus' relationship was forgotten about as quickly as possible and so Alicia expected that was what was going to happen.

She listened impassively as Lucrezia got more honest still, explaining how trying to keep Cepheus at least tolerably happy was really just serving her own best interests. “I’m glad to hear it,” she said when Lucrezia said she was a good friend, too. “And that’s all very practical of you.” She smiled suddenly, warmly. “I like that.”

She liked it because it was realistic – if Lucrezia had seemed, or even pretended to be, infatuated or in love, Alicia would have been horrified, sure this could only end in disaster for everyone – but wondered if ‘women in it together in a world led by men’ might be the angle to take with this one. Alicia did not think of herself as helpless, but she was willing to let other people think so for now if it would make a situation work better. She also wondered if she should invite Lucrezia to spend time with her and her friends at the Bonfire so she could begin negotiating her place in the larger group, but shied away from that idea. She wanted them all to herself at least one more time, and the group needed to figure out how it was going to function in the outside world before they tried to incorporate Lucrezia into their activities and relationships. She felt almost as nervous about that now as she had about pulling the friendships she’d made here and there together into a cohesive unit in the first place back in fourth year, but was sure she could do it as long as she had some time before anything seriously novel happened.

“I’m sorry we’re not going to have more time to get to know each other before I graduate,” she said. “Perhaps we can meet up a few times over this summer and write next year?” It would be good to know how things were going at her school once she was gone anyway; she was particularly curious about which of the sixth year girls was going to take her place, since she didn’t think any of them were really up to it. They were for the most part nice girls, which was half of the problem.

16 Alicia I'll bring the discreet parachute. 210 Alicia 0 5