Tag Archives: summer

So, here’s a chunk from the project I’m working on. The setting is Victorian-era Austria, where a few Russian aristocrats are spending the summer. In this scene they’re at an Opera with some Viennese cohorts (including the lovely Annaliese.) Katrina, not exactly a jovial spirit, takes some time to ponder her situation.

“At the next high note, Katrina looked away from the stage. Annaliese craned her neck a bit in Katrina’s direction. She looked at Katrina with a reverse envy, a dreadful kind of pity that wasn’t really pity at all. Annaliese’s look, seemingly innocent, mocked her. It said, “I could do this if I wanted to. I have everything it takes to be as fantastic as this spectacle and more, but I’m too good for that.” Katrina shyed away. Annaliese could do a lot of things, she mused. She could have the world in her darling, flicking fingers. Katrina thought a bit more. Does she?
She thought back to when she had first arrived here, and remembered Annaliese, a vision in bright rose satin. She tried to remember Miretta, her companion. Either purple silk or deep blue had trod across the floor that night in Miretta’s usual fashion. Could she think of anyone else?
She remembered the Duchess, in red. She had talked in a somber voice, and her demure little head was angled downward. Katrina recalled talking with the Countess of Lombardy, a stately girl not much older than herself, dressed all in slate gray and dusty blue. But as for debutantes? Lovely, unmarried girls from sterling families? She could think of none that rivaled Annaliese. Still, she thought, being pretty hardly meant that Annaliese had the city in her grip.

Katrina then reminded herself that Austria was unlike Russia. At home, she remembered how her heart soared when she waved to the Empress. A faint flutter of that feeling welled inside her now, rising above the notes of the Soprano. Katrina remembered the Empress fondly, beautifully, noting her regal, stony grey eyes, the sheen on her midnight-hued hair, her fondness for pearls, and the arch of her fragile half-smile. She was not Russian, quite obviously, and had little taste in dress. Her mother, and Veronika’s as well, had talked to her for hours. On occasion the young girls could hear the Empress’ soft laughter echo down the hall. It was weak, yes, for the chill hardly agreed with her, but in Katrina’s memory it was even louder than the singers’ trills.
Those in the Empress’ good favor, including the three Russian girls who now listened to a Viennese Opera, were looked upon with a similar dignity. Katrina remembered the Princess Catherine, nobly born, receiving slightly more disdainful glances. She was not in as good sitting, to put it lightly.
Here, those rules were inverted. A glimmering eye and a nice quadrille were worth fields of gold and silver. Katrina was still getting used to the prospect.
She looked back to the Opera. A princess of some sort sang increasingly chipper melodies while the violins wailed.
Katrina wondered, a bit petulantly, why she had not achieved such stature here in Austria. She looked down at the swath of black lace that scalloped out around her white-gloved fingertips and sighed back in her seat, wondering if she could perhaps, when she was alone in her chamber before bed, find a way to pry it off.”