Alethea wasn't eating. When servants brought food, she barely touched it – a nibble of toast here, a strawberry there – despite all their efforts to entice her with her favorite things, in tantalizing quantities. She'd smile, thank them, and soon be sitting with her eyes unfocused, her attention lodged somewhere beyond the walls of the room.
In the week since the attack, she'd gotten noticeably thinner.
But it wasn't just hunger that evaded her. Sleep, too, was hard to capture, forever evading her grip. She'd lie awake in the darkness, seeing the faces of the dying every time she closed her eyes – seeing Gibbs' face, contorted as he fell from his horse. And then she'd free herself from the strangling sheets, slip to the window and gaze out wondering where that horse was now, and where Flash was, and most of all where her guard was, and if there was such a thing as a soul that lingered. "I am sorry," she would whisper into the night. "I am so sorry I would not listen."
In the daylight hours, she was scarce.
Other horses were offered, but Alethea refused them, making the trek to the orchard on foot instead, where she would draw for hours among the trees. Her notebooks filled up with leaves and insects and fruit and flowers, and so many depictions of Leto that she had lost count, and occasionally an attempt at Flash, though it was hard to recall the shape of his dapples without him there, in front of her. As dusk fell, she would hike back, tired and dutiful, and ignore her dinner, and start the cycle over again.
Except for this night. Alethea needed a break from the cycle, on this night.
She paused before her silvered mirror, her sheers poised on her right hand. The reflection staring back at her was asymmetrical; the honey-colored hair had been shorn at chin-length on one side, but still fell to her waist, on the other. She pursed her lips, squinted, gripped the curtain of hair with her left hand and attempted to cut it with her right, every gesture painstaking and slow. It was not that she was worried about consistency, exactly, but she wanted to remember what this felt like: the control, the deliberation, the power to force some change in her appearance. When she was done, the floor was covered in a heap of amber and spun gold, and the face in the mirror was changed.
She was, if anything, more striking. The fall of her hair framed her cheekbones – growing more pronounced by the day – and drew attention to her wide, thoughtful eyes. Alethea didn't think she was pretty anymore, as skinny as she was, but there was something satisfying about the arresting mask she had made for herself. The stable boys no longer whistled, but they did stare.
Her own staring was interrupted by Leto's whine, and a faint knock. Alethea drew her dressing gown more tightly around her, retying the belt, and found herself walking to the door to open it. Her hair bounced lightly against her neck. She was thinking of that, and not her visitor, as she gazed out into the hall.
"Oh. Tristan." She murmured finally, smiling. A little color rose in her cheeks. Her eyes slid to the floor, and she took a step back, offering him entrance into her room. It was, as usual, painfully orderly, except for the books and drawing supplies scattered across every large surface, and the pile of hair on the floor. "How are you?"
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