Chapter 2 Marrianne
Maria rounds to the pools which sit just beyond the one white fence and the chicken coop. She's used to navigating the servants' areas of the palace, always a ghost in her own home. Anima has always been home to her, no matter how many Italian friends she makes, or how much her father compliments her French pronunciation. Life feels strange to her, even home in Anima, now. She doesn't remember when the ice elves knew what was what and held the crown, she can barely remember anything before she was seven, when poor Ellor raided the palace, pushed by his green-hearted father. Her heart swells with the thought of her friend, who she's currently hiding from at the moment. She thinks of only how much he's endured in those sad, red eyes. He always looks tired, from the moment she met him. Now..he'll truly be a king, a king with a regency, but a king nonetheless.
Maria fiddles with the ribbons on her pink dress, and plays with the lace, trying to distract herself from the pounding coming from her chest. It was not from the running, she knows that, but she blames it on that anyway.
"There you are, Maria, why'd you run? Are you mad?" Ellor's soft voice entered the courtyard, he was yelling, but it just sounded like normal talking. Marrianne didn't respond, she just got up and left, and Ellor didn't bother to follow. She doesn't know why she's being this dramatic, she just wants to let him know that just because he's going to have a jewel encrusted crown on his head, that doesn't mean he can forget about his friends.
Maria enters the nursery where her and her brothers and governess live, she lies on her bed, exasperated. Everything in the nursery is bright green, from the walls to the bedsheets, to even the candleholders. The entire nursery is filled with fabrics made with aniline dyes and weighted silk, the whole room is incredibly flammable, something her father, Mr. Cronies didn't care to think about, saying, "Oh but green is such a nice color for a nursery,"; Maria's father was a very careless, silly man, at certain times in her life she felt like she had to raise him rather than him raise her. Her father has forgotten her name several times, and often says she has green eyes, despite her eyes being brown pools like her mothers'. All of her brothers have bright emeralds for eyes, matching her fathers, her mother always says that that's only because their eyes are filled with envy and greed. Maria's science tutor disagrees, and he always states that colors carry only light and no emotion. Marrianne doesn't sense who to believe.
She doesn't realize she fell into a deep slumber until she finds herself awoken by her governess in the dark.
"Kedves, dear Miss. Cronies, it is time to awake and dress, the dinner has begun," her governess, Ms. Luiff holds her hand over Marrianne, not to slap her but to help her out of the bed. Maria forces herself to walk over to the vanity table, which sits at the foot of her bed, so Luiff could comb and style her hair.
"How have you been spending your free day: Kedves?" the governess asks in between braiding and spin-curling her hair. She is everything calm and contained, and it isn't that she's miserable, Marrianne's governess has a true, strong maternal instinct. Maria remembers when Luiff would hum to herself Hungarian songs about familial bonds and such things. She's not that much older than Marrianne herself, and so they have a type of sisterly bond which brings comfort to their otherwise hectic lives.
"Well I read for an hour." Maria finally replies
"And what did you read?" her governess asks back.
"I most certainly studied the classics and French, dear governess." Maria says with a tinge of sarcasm. Her governess' only reply was a thin line of a smile. She dresses her in green, something she always says is-
"A good balance to that shock of hair you have," Luiff says in a form of routine. She smiles and hums, placing her hands on Marr-ianne's shoulders.
"Don't horrify your mother, and above all, do not make your father guffaw in that wretched voice of his," Luiff said, making sure that Maria nodded twice. Maria faded out the door, humming along the same song that Luiff was earlier.
Her brothers were sitting on the slim railing of the stairs, howling at their fathers' attempts to flirt with the two Ladies of Rankor Hart, daughters of the Duke of Rankor Hart. Their green eyes fluttered open several times, and they looked as if they had red flecks within them as they cackled. Maria patted each of their deep auburn heads, and flew down the stairs, heading to break up her father and the ladies before dinner began.