There Is No Arizona

Outfit

Maybe she didn't have all the answers, and maybe she wouldn't, but Sabine had to think that somewhere out there there had to be some kind of answer. There had to be something to tell her, maybe even just partially, who she was. But that wasn't something that she could dwell on... Not really. The woman in the bar had been interesting, it had been a flash forward, kind of... Whatever it had been she wasn't sure that she wanted to dwell on it. There was no point. It just made her long for things that she never got to have, and there was no point in that. Living her life the way that she wanted to live it was what was important right now. She didn't have anyone else that she really had to watch out for, and she thought that that was rather nice. There were people her age out there that had kids, and husbands, and things that she wasn't sure that she ever really thought that she would have. She was too sharp, too cold, too closed off, for things like that. 

It wasn't that she didn't want it, she thought in some ways it might be nice. But there were other things that she wanted to do first. And she wasn't sure that she knew how to be anyone's anything. She didn't have role models to look to for that sort of thing. She didn't have a mother to model herself after. Everything that Sabine did, she did purely on gut instinct. She followed her gut when she had to. That was Rule Number 32. Follow your gut. And then double check with your head. It had gotten her this far, and she intended to keep using it. She had a rule for everything. That was how she focused, that was what made her stay on track, stay in line. It provided a basis for consistency that she didn't have anywhere else. And maybe that made her a little weird. One of those quirky things that there was really no answer to. No fix for. 

She wasn't looking to fix herself though. She thought that it was far more interesting being her, just the way that she was. The blonde flipped her curls over her shoulder and she made her way into the store. She knew that there was no reason to really be shopping for things. She had already planned what she was going to wear out with Cora tonight for her birthday, and actually buying her a gift from here was a little bit overkill. She wasn't the Twilfitt and Tattings type really, but she knew that she did need to buy her something before she went out with her for drinks later. They were going to Wales, which was out of the normal range of places that Sabine went. She didn't leave England all that often really, but when she did, it was for a night out with one of her friends. Last week it had been Constance. This week it was Cora. Different reasons, all around, but she thought that one of these days she wasn't going to have anyone to go out with anymore if she wasn't careful. Everyone was slowly starting to grow up. Picking up one of the dresses that she saw upon entering she shook her head and put it down... Bright colors weren't really her style...

outfit

Things were going well, or so it seemed. Better, perhaps. Lady Roma and Lady Nora were discussing engagements for their children-- Loraine to the next lord Rosier, and their possibilities for their sons. She supposed they held the boys closer-- they were both the eldest and youngest. It would take someone special to keep up with cousin Ivan, and his brother Jules was the younger of the three children. Loraine was the only female, but there were a good number of heirs that were suitable, seemingly.

She did hope that they would remember her eventually. They had to, she was aware. It was somewhat thorny-- the Warringtons claimed they wanted both approval on Ivan's marriage, and Blanche's to be arranged first, but Blanche wasn't quite sure how much the Bulstrode-Warringtons (the Selwyn-Avery pair) cared for that. While engagements were in the lucky grey area, if Ivan was married before Blanche was betrothed, her family in France would be displeased.

She plucked at a strand of skirt, watching it fall. No-- this was more winter, and Blanche was a spring/summer cusp. There were possibilities, Blanche was aware. Her family cared little, she supposed, on if she married the heir to a great house, but they would prefer she wed a known house, and if not into the main line, in the foremost junior line. Those did make her options more available than some others, she supposed-- young pureblood women her age preferred heirs. There were a handful of other eligible women her age-- Shafiqs, Lady Nora's cousin, a MacGuffin or two, an Abbott, an Avery or so. There were likely others, but those were the only ones she knew from notes she'd seen for Ivan and Jules. Hypothetically, there were also the Mounbatten girls-- but apparently the number of them fluctuated somewhere between three and eight, depending on the time of day, according to Lady Roma.

"Pardon me," an embarrassed smile on her face, Blanche made her way to the other blonde. "I haven't seen anyone else here for ages. . .do you go here often?"

It wasn't even just that she wanted to know her. Because that was part of it, but it wasn't everything. She wasn't dead set on meeting the woman that was her mother, because she thought she would get anything out of it. She didn't think that there was just magically going to be some sort of relationship there that should have been there all along, but that wasn't the only reason to want to meet her. She wanted to know that she wasn't alone. That she wasn't the only person in the world like her. Because she wasn't like her friends. She wasn't like Constance, she wasn't like Cora. She didn't think that she was warm, and easy to get along with. She was cold, and she was sharp, and Sabine didn't think that there were really even all that many reasons to be friends with her at all. They had made it work though. And while Cora was her age, Constance was older. It was easier to be friends now that they were out of school. Now that there weren't differences in classes, and months of not seeing one another to contend with.

Working on who she was, and who she was going to be were things that she thought that she had once had all figured out. At one point she had thought that she didn't need the answers, and maybe that was true. Maybe she didn't need them. But that didn't stop her from wanting them. The older she had gotten the more she had wondered. What it was that had made her give her up? Had she died? That always seemed like a possibility. That the woman had died giving birth to her, and so she had been sent to an orphanage. No family members around to take her on. One more, dead parent to add to the bunch. That was awful to think about really, but it didn't bother her. Not anymore. She was an orphan, that had had parents for a little while, long enough to have an inheritance, long enough to have stocks, and bonds, and a trust fund. Long enough to know what it meant to be a Larsen if you looked hard enough. But not enough to really matter.

They weren't her parents. They were just the people who had taken her in. The people that had died. And then she looked at her friends. Cora had been in a similar situation. Adopted, magical, her mother died. But then the MacGuffins had taken her back into their lives. She was a MacGuffin, and Sabine didn't think that she was going to get that lucky. To just wind up finding her mother, only to discover that she was a pureblood all along… If her mother even knew who her father was… That thought had plagued her for years. That that was why she had been given up. Because she was the result of something horrible. A reminder of things that were better left alone. There would have been no chance that she would have wanted her then, if she had been a mistake all along.

Running her hands over the fabrics in front of her Sabine thought that if she really wanted something exquisite she should see if she could get her best friend's mum to make her something special. Not that the blonde even really needed a dress for something special right now, but she thought that it was better safe than sorry really. One could never have too many things to wear. That was, at least in her opinion, close enough to being one of her rules that she might as well make it one. If you really want it that bad, buy the dress. Shaking her head, a little bit at the thought Sabine chuckled under her breath. That wasn't what the rules were for. Looking up at the sound of someone's voice she quirked her eyebrow just a little bit at the other witch, "Not really." Her answer was short, but not harsh, just all that she had to offer as a response. "I'm afraid bold colors aren't really in my color palette, and there seem to be a lot of those going around these last couple seasons."

English, without a doubt. Or British perhaps, as even after the half-year in England, Blanche wasn't quite sure of the difference still in accents. She could perhaps, pick out more high-class if she heard the similar accent from the ordinary folk from the cadences and the emphases, the small words that slipped in, but as this accent was not the same as either Lady Nora's, Lady Roma's, Ivan's or either of his siblings's accents, she supposed she couldn't tell the country here.

She thought, at least-- accents might be minuscule depending on the ear, and there was no such thing as being truly unaccented. Her French was mostly southern, with Occitan influences, for all that Beauxbatons had been in the Pyrennes, taking students from several countries. A native French speaker would be able to mark out her region (perhaps even her city if they knew people) and that she'd been to Beauxbatons for her schooling, rather than a local school, or one of the smaller ones that were not so impressive.

To the British ear, or the British ear who might speak French fluently if not as a mother tongue, Blanche's words might have a few odd stresses, lesser nasal vowels, a small collections of colloquiums that marked her as a native speaker. She knew the British accents were as freely diverse, for all that she could not generalize them quite so much.

"I sympathize, madmoiselle, for I'm much the same." Bright colors were all well and good, she supposed, if patterned lightly on quieter colors, though never as the emphasis. A few lines of silvers or golds were also acceptable, though she preferred a quieter rose than singing yellow. "I was hoping to find more neutral or softer shades but I see only the bold."

She knew that she needed to figure out who she was before she started worrying about who she was supposed to be. But Sabine thought that was just the thing. There was no one that she had to be. There was no one that she really wanted to be. Amazing. She wanted to be amazing. But she didn't know how to do that yet. She didn't know how to be the person that she was supposed to be. And she thought that part of that was not knowing where she had come from. Not knowing who she was born to be. Because she had been born, and she had been abandoned, and that was the way that her life had started out. She was an orphan, until she wasn't. And then the people that had become her parents, for those couple of years, had drowned. A horrific accident, six people were dead… And Sabine… Well Sabine had opted to stay on the shore. That had been the answer that had led to her being alive, while they were dead… Something that she didn't think that anyone had really questioned. It had been an accident. It had been ruled an accident… And that was the end of it.

It wasn't something that anyone thought of anymore. Gabriel and Mariska's friends had mourned them. They had said that they were sorry that Sabine had gotten so little time with them… But she didn't mourn them. She didn't miss them. They were the people that had adopted her, they were the people that had felt sorry for her, they were not her family. They were just the people that had died. No, if she was going to find her family, then she needed to find her mother. That was where she had to start, because her mother would, hopefully, know who her father was. Her mother would be able to point her in the direction of who she would have been, at least. And she thought that she could make who she was going to be for the rest of her life, out of that. She wasn't warm, and caring, and sunshine, and strength. Not the way that she knew that her friends were. She didn't make you want to talk to her because she was warm and inviting. Sabine made you want to talk to her because of that icy chill in her eyes. The cold, harsh lines of her chin and her cheek bones.

She knew that she was pretty in an unusual way. She knew that she had learned to accentuate the things that she could use to her advantage, and Sabine thought that she could get through this shop without finding something atrocious. She thought that she much preferred KA, and shopping in Constance's mother's line, but this would have to do for today. She wasn't going to go bug Anicka about making her something new on request, just because she felt like she wanted something. There had to be something in here that she didn't want to just throw in the river and call it a day. The colors that seemed to be circulating over the last couple of seasons were enough to drive just about everyone crazy with their boldness. Sabine thought that they were forgetting the fact that they were coming up on spring, and not everything needed to be so burning red, and more subtle shades of pink would do just fine. "I'm afraid so. You would think that with spring looming so closely, they would be lightening the palate a bit." At least she would be…

"I suppose that's the style at this time." A pity, truly. The smallest of frowns creased the space between her brows, as she turned through the racks. Though, there was little risk involved as the other young woman patroned the store, and wasn't in whatever lower-rate shop Diagon Alley might have. She did far prefer this shop over others, and were the colored more muted, she would have found many more things she enjoyed this session.

"I have, however been told by a few friends that I'm decent enough at finding the dresses and robes they're searching for, while having little luck with my own." It was a gift of sorts, though it did mean Blanche had to trust one of the girls with her to remember she was not particularly blessed in a certain area like so many others, and she was rather small in that area as well. Gaping necklines, and sagging fronts were unfortunate and when not found by Blanche herself, it wasn't worth the effort to have them tailored to fit. "You are. . " She tilted her head, blue eyes scanning over the woman and her outfit. "You favor whites, I presume?"

there is no arizona No Painted Desert, no Sedona

Sabine knew that her own particular fashion choices were influenced by several different factors, and she knew that she wasn't going to change that just because the style of the times said something else. That was like throwing away something that was working just fine, because they said that there was something newer, and fancier out there. Sabine had grown up in an orphanage, with very little to her name. She didn't throw things out, just because they didn't match with what everyone else thought that the style right now needed to be. She didn't care about something like that. She thought that her own personal style was much more befitting of her and really, since it was hers to begin with, that was what mattered most. Being comfortable in her own skin was something that she had had to work for her entire life. She didn't think that there was anyone that could say that there weren't days where it was harder to be them than others. If they did, she was certain that they were lying, but that was beside the point. The point was that Sabine thought that she had been given too much now to squander it like that. She didn't know where she had come from. She didn't have answers about the past. All she did have was the fact that she knew who she was now. She knew what she had gotten for herself, and how she had gotten it. She knew how she was, and what she was doing. Sabine knew exactly how powerful she was. She knew all of that. She knew everything about it. There was the fact that she was her, and that she had taken her company the way that she had. She was Sabine Larsen, and while that might not have been a household name, Larsen Economics was. She knew that her family's business had connections with many of the people all around the country when it came to those in high powered positions, and their economic standing. The best thing about the Larsen name, was that it was completely neutral. There were no ties to either side, and there were accounts siting side by side in their filing cabinets that belonged to Death Eaters, and muggleborns alike. Sabine didn't care where their money came from, so long as she had her investors hands on it. If they could continue to run the business the way that it had been running for generations now, that was what mattered. And she knew that Knox took care of most of it. She knew that it was something that they were going to have to deal with eventually, her actually learning everything that he did on a daily basis, but for now she was in school. For now, that still got to come first, and eventually she would be another CEO. She would just be whomever she was, and there would be no story there. There wouldn't have been anything special about her, but right now she was special. Right now, she was the witch that had become CEO of one of the oldest investment companies, in the country, at seventeen. It was almost like fate or something, when she had been adopted, and then Gabriel and Mariska had met that horrible accident. She hadn't had the time that she would have wished for with them, and all of the other press answers that she had been spoon feeding reporters for years now. "Style is ever evolving, unfortunately…" There were plenty of what were now deemed 'classics' that Sabine thought should really make a comeback. They were classics for a reason, after all. "Isn't that always the case?" She offered a cool smile to the other girl and she nodded to the racks in front of her, "I'm afraid I'm usually quite spoiled. My best friend's mother is in the industry. She gives the best fashion advice you could ask for." Sometimes even when Sabine didn't ask, but over the years she had at least seemed to think that Anicka Wentzell had learned that she much preferred whites to everything else, and when new dresses emerged for each of them for things, there was, on occasion, a white one among them. "I do." She nodded a little bit, "I always have, there's something serene about it. Calming…" And ironic, but that was beside the point as well.