Catherine Raines
January 01, 2007 3:21 AM
Mirror, Mirror (fourth year girls' dorm). by Catherine Raines
It was rare for Catherine to find her dorm room empty, but it did happen, sometimes. Watching as the last ashes of her grandmother's letter finished their descent to the floor, she decided it was a good thing that one of those times had been in the past fifteen minutes. Being around other people might have kept her from first crying and then burning the missive, but it might not have, either. Her roommates, her friends probably more than her enemies, weren't the types to take kindly to tears and temper tantrums.It would have been one thing, she supposed, if Amelia had turned nasty in the past few years, but try as she would, Catherine couldn't come up with a single memory of Amelia being any way other than the way she was. Snobby. Abrasive. Utterly convinced that Catherine wasn't her granddaughter. Vocal about said conviction. The old lady kept her mouth shut in public - usually she did - but Catherine was quite sure no one either of them shared a drop of blood in common with had yet to hear about the Louisiana tramp who betrayed Amelia's son and dumped her half-blood brat on him.
When she was little, Catherine had accepted the universe as a place where everyone but Amelia adored her. When she got a little older, she had been confused about why Amelia was an exception to the rule and why she said such nasty things about her mother, until she found out the answers half by accident. For a few years, she had been angry, angry with Amelia for saying and believing the way she did and angry with her father for not doing something about it. Now, she could only work up the energy to care when someone threw it in her face, like the letter had done.
She glared at the ashes, torn between repeating either the crying or the getting so angry she set a fairly large piece of parchment on fire in a room full of beds and clothes and Merlin only knew what Gwenhwyfar and Jordanna had between them that would do best unexposed to fire.
In the end, she wound up doing nothing, not even cleaning up the ashes. Her bed was next to Gwenhwyfar's - a fact that made her skin crawl when she thought about it too much, which was why she hardly ever thought about it - and the ashes were between them. She could blame it on Gwen. If the other girl tried to object to this with the truth, the Crazy Carey image Catherine had worked so hard to build in Jordanna and Nicoletta's minds should serve to eliminate any chance of them believing her. She fell back onto her bedspread, staring up at the canopy.
Amelia's letter had done one useful thing, and one useful thing only: she now knew that her parents were together in Louisiana for some vague reason her grandmother derided as Robinond business. Amelia herself was enjoying the run of the estate and had attended some very nice parties, which news Catherine frankly couldn't care less about. Amelia had also intercepted one of the weekly reports Catherine sent to Lorenzo, which was the whole reason she had taken up the time of day to write to her legal grandchild and explain, in a typically lovey-dovey bonding moment, exactly why Catherine wasn't worth the Raines name. She rubbed her still-sore eyes with the back of her hand, blocking out the red trappings of her bed. Amelia still knew how to get to her.
Twenty minutes, and the dorm was still empty. A miracle, no doubt, and proof that there was someone who figured she was worth something. Or maybe just felt sorry for her; Catherine was willing to take either, as long as it got her the privacy she needed to pull herself back together before she had to see anyone. Beggars, or so a saying she'd heard a few times before went, couldn't be choosers. Standing up again, she went to the biggest mirror and planted herself in front of it, surveying her reflection with a critical, unhappy frown.
It had become something of a ritual with her, whenever she was alone or thought she could get away with it. It still came as a surprise every time she did these inspections of her looks that they hadn't changed into what she wanted them to be. She still had the same dirt-brown hair, and it still grew in the same Robinond waves that took at least a charm and sometimes a charm and a potion to do anything at all with. Her forehead was still too high, her chin still too blunt, and her nose and face both still too long. Her blue eyes were still too faded-looking, and their current red rims were not an improvement over the usual picture.
Beyond her face, the only real improvement she had seen in the past four years was that she now had a chest. Other than that, she was still too tall and bony. Her knees and elbows were still too big for their respective limbs, and her feet still resembled planks. She had the long hands of a pianist - she sometimes thought, half-hopefully, that they resembled her father's - but her nails were narrow at the bottom and wide rectangles at the ends if she wasn't careful to keep them shaped, and they broke so easily she had to be careful how she held her wand.
She looked like her mother, if you weren't paying attention to details. Catherine knew she would never have that self-possessed elegance, much less those perfectly delicate features and darker shades of their mutual coloring. That she was and always had been a rough miniature of Lila was an accepted given. It was wondering and wondering where the other traits - the ones that made her a rough copy of her mother instead of a perfect one - came from that glued her to mirrors for as long as she could as often as she could...and engrossed her so totally that she failed to hear the dorm room door opening as it admitted someone else. \n\n
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Catherine Raines
Mirror, Mirror (fourth year girls' dorm).
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Catherine Raines
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Nicoletta Dupree
January 05, 2007 7:39 PM
On the wall, who's the fairest of them all? by Nicoletta Dupree
Thankful to be done with her classes for the day, Nicoletta had rushed up to the dormitory to get her personalized parchment, which was scented, of course, so that she could write a letter to her beau. When she opened the door, however, she certainly wasn't expecting to see Catherine staring in the mirror, almost entranced.Gracefully, she made her way over to stand behind her. With one slender arm and a perfectly manicured hand, she leaned over to grab some meaningless artifact from near the mirror. With a bored expression, she pretended to study it before speaking.
After a moment, she stated in a bored tone, her profile reflecting in the mirror, "Everything has taken an interesting turn, hasn't it?"
Nicoletta turned to face the twins staring back at them, staring Catherine in the eye in an indirect manner, her delicate black eyebrow raised. Her expression was pointed, hoping Catherine would catch onto her meaning. Jordanna had changed and was taking off without them, those who had ensured her place. Here they stood. One staring at her peaked reflection, the other the observer.\n\n
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Nicoletta Dupree
On the wall, who's the fairest of them all?
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Nicoletta Dupree
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Catherine
January 06, 2007 2:52 AM
Not me, but don't tell anyone. by Catherine
Catherine examined her hairline critically. It didn't look very much like Charles', but she couldn't decide if it looked more like Nick's. Her mother's was better than hers, which meant hers had to have come from somewhere else. Not Amelia or Aunt Margaret; Aunt Ellie kept her hair done up so that Catherine didn't know what her hairline looked like. Maybe she had Miles', or crazy dead-and-good-thing-too Aunt India's. There weren't many pictures of either of them, and fewer of those were clear. It would be just awful to look like the woman who started the rumors.Nicoletta's arm showed up in her peripheral vision, but wasn't registered as she began to speculate about the set of her jaw. Charles had the deceptively mild, soft-looking face common to men of a certain socioeconomic status, the one referred to by nasty people as 'new money', so she couldn't say anything about that for sure. She'd never seen him in a real temper, where individual features might become more sharply defined and readily apparent.
She shook her head, irritated. Whoever her biological father was, her friends weren't keeping her for her looks, and while she was hardly hurting for capital, her family lacked the status and interest rates of established families like theirs, a fact she never forgot. Another amazing thing was how much a little ideology and a willingness to suck up, shut up, and nod could do for a girl.
Nicoletta's voice broke into her reverie. Her first thought once she finished stopping herself from jumping was that it was a good thing it was Nicoletta instead of...others. Fair-haired others, though Asher Tallow walking in on one of her mirror sessions was hardly a thought to be relished. When she returned eye contact, she didn't flinch. She could trust Nicoletta not to say anything to her face, at least, and she liked to think she could trust her to keep her mouth shut in general.
Ever since first year, Catherine had, though Merlin only knew where she got off with doing so, felt closer to Nicoletta than Jordanna. There were times where it seemed like Nicoletta saw her as an equal, or at least a near inferior, instead of as a mouthpiece yes-girl, which was always nice. And then there had been the problems with the lower-order girls and the beginning of the pre-Christmas curse, both of which had involved Nicoletta and Catherine while Jordanna was off, for a large part, doing something else.
Keeping in Nicoletta's good graces was every bit as important as keeping in Jordanna's, if for more reasons. She could tell by the look on her friend's face that she was supposed to understand what Nicoletta meant by that, but she wasn't sure. She was almost sure that it had something to do with their roommates, though; it almost always did. The only real change from first year was that they had all gone subtle and the Loser Crew had split up.
"I'd say so," she said, hoping to get lucky and half-bluff her way through until she could get more information. "Everything changes, and most people change with it." That might not have been the best way to put it... "I suppose that's why real loyalty's so rare." Small differences in voice inflection could make all the difference in how something was interpreted; Catherine thought she was good enough at it for the point to have gotten across that she was loyal and thought Nicoletta was.\n\n
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Catherine
Not me, but don't tell anyone.
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Catherine
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Nicoletta
January 23, 2007 12:21 AM
Your secret is safe with me by Nicoletta
A curve of the lip to indicate that she thought Catherine knew what she was talking about. With a slight sight, she placed the piece back down. This time, she picked up a hairbrush and ran it gently through Catherine's hair."You know, Catherine," said in a flattering tone, the brush paused, "your hair would look rather nice in a simple twist. It would also compliment your bone structure."
Continuing with the brush, she continued in a less flattering tones, "I am curious to know if you've seen Jordanna lately? Has she spoken with you? She seems to be rather occupied with...boys. And while I admire the appreciation for them, these are not just boys, but...first year boys."
Nicoletta's lips pursed in disapproval of Jordanna's latest actions. What respectable fourth year girl chose the company of first year boys? Exactly, what was she playing at?\n\n
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Nicoletta
Your secret is safe with me
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Nicoletta
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Catherine
January 26, 2007 8:48 PM
I owe you one. by Catherine
She was a little anxious about her mirror-gazing making her look stupid to Nicoletta, but Catherine was mostly relieved to have had the ritual interrupted. The litany of features and their possible origins never changed, and she knew that if she did, somehow, find something she convinced herself meant that the rumors were true, she'd lie about it if it drove her crazy. She liked being Charles Raines' legitimate heiress; she didn't think she could stomach being Nicolas O'Treman's half-blood daughter by his employer's wife.The whole line of thought was driven out of her head when Nicoletta began brushing Catherine's hair. Her blue eyes widened a little, and she had to stamp down on a nervous giggle, but was fairly proud of her lack of reaction. Sure, they went around doing each other's hair all the time. She tried to focus on the conversation, and blinked at the seeming change of subject. "You think so?" She tried to picture her hair the way Nicoletta had suggested. "I'll have to try that sometime."
It occurred to her when her friend got back to the heart of the matter that the comment on her hair, like the brushing, might be an attempt to lull her into agreeability. If it was, then Catherine was faced with trying to figure out if she should be offended or not. On one hand, did she really look that stupid? A little flattery and she was anyone's for the having? On the other, could it possibly indicate that Nicoletta thought she had enough spine and sense to not follow blindly after anyone who offered to lead? To put off the decision, she answered the question and resolved to put the speculation off until later.
Of course she saw Jordanna; they shared a dorm, for Merlin's sake. She knew, though, that saying that would be monumentally dumb in the situation. She knew what Nicoletta meant. She nodded, letting the other girl know it. Gossip, be it for or against the three of them, was Catherine's forte and her role in the group. "I've noticed, but she hasn't talked to me about it - not exactly." As if she had ever, really; Catherine had always had a good idea of where she stood with Jordanna, and it was about as high as her father stood with Gwenhwyfar Careys'. She tried to blank out the treasonous thought.
"Last year, she had this idea to win all the first and second years over to her, to give us the upper hand when it came to the losers. I'd think this is something kind of like that, but..." she hesitated, then confessed. "I don't think she trusts me anymore. When she first came back, she asked me for all the news, and I told her about Dione being the Head of House while she was gone and Tallow leaving, and then Tallow came back and Marlowe took over..." She shrugged, silently praying that the confession didn't prove the end of Nicoletta having anything to do with her, too. \n\n
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Catherine
I owe you one.
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Catherine
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