[He glances down, and for an instant, she almost tries to hide her feet beneath the hem of her dress. "Giving up her legs" was a euphemism at its best. The tiny heeled shoes she wears are a mere three or so inches long, and the shape of the foot jammed into them is obscenely wrong, the arch snapped and shoved upwards, the toes folded under to form a sharper point, the heel pulled inward. There was surely no way it could have been done without great pain, and what child would ask to have her feet broken? To live her live mincing about, incapable of running, playing...
Sieglinde Sullivan apparently had. So she won't hide her feet. They were the proof of the great duty she had inherited, the work she had been entrusted with. She should be proud of them. (But sometimes-)]
Sebastian taught me that people of the Outside World preferred handshakes as greetings, but perhaps now... I will have to take your advice and risk being seen as ill-mannered instead.
[A beat later, she thinks to add,]
I did ask that raven fellow to instruct me in the shield spell. I have never practiced such overt magic, but... if I am lucky, perhaps there will be little cause to use it.
[She did not plan to take a position on the front lines if a battle were to erupt... The only thing she feared more than failure in her duty was becoming a hindrance, and if she could simply support Zenith's cause from the background... Yet she had already been unlucky, with her shard, and so perhaps the time for relying on luck had already long passed. The hospital is closer now, her gaze settles on it with resolve... but she is distracted just a bit by the idea of shopping (which she misinterprets a little bit, as only a child from a remote village could).]
- there are places full of gloves we could visit? An entire shop for them?
cw: foot binding
Sieglinde Sullivan apparently had. So she won't hide her feet. They were the proof of the great duty she had inherited, the work she had been entrusted with. She should be proud of them. (But sometimes-)]
Sebastian taught me that people of the Outside World preferred handshakes as greetings, but perhaps now... I will have to take your advice and risk being seen as ill-mannered instead.
[A beat later, she thinks to add,]
I did ask that raven fellow to instruct me in the shield spell. I have never practiced such overt magic, but... if I am lucky, perhaps there will be little cause to use it.
[She did not plan to take a position on the front lines if a battle were to erupt... The only thing she feared more than failure in her duty was becoming a hindrance, and if she could simply support Zenith's cause from the background... Yet she had already been unlucky, with her shard, and so perhaps the time for relying on luck had already long passed. The hospital is closer now, her gaze settles on it with resolve... but she is distracted just a bit by the idea of shopping (which she misinterprets a little bit, as only a child from a remote village could).]
- there are places full of gloves we could visit? An entire shop for them?