Post by Oralie Slughorn on Jan 21, 2019 21:04:19 GMT -5
Come on skinny love
Pour a little salt we were never here
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer
Tugging at her mother's skirts, the toddler scuttled around. Her face was knotted up in confusion. Oralie always bore this expression when she was looking at one of the many portraits that lined the walls of the Slughorn estate. Isidore was becoming increasing annoyed with the child. She had never had any patience for dealing with children, her own included. Nannies, tutors, and house elves were responsible for care and instruction more often than not.
It wasn't that Isidore did not love her children. She just quite preferred them at an older age. Babies were fine and adults were fine. But children and teens left much to be desired.
The elegant woman sighed, and swept her hands down her sleek, well tailored robes. A tight forced smile thinned her lips and she loosed Oralie's grip on her skirt, grimacing at the streak of some unknown substance against the pale silk. A scolding came tumbling from her tongue as she vanished the stain and performed a cleaning charm on Oralie. The reprimand went unnoticed by the girl. Oralie's focus was elsewhere.
Oralie was looking from her mother to the new portrait her father had commissioned of Isidore. It'd just been hung. Her little brow furrowed and the girl's eyes narrowed. She did not understand. She never understood when she looked at paintings. They didn't make sense. They didn't look right. The people were so plain in them. They did not glow properly. It did not make sense.
"But mummy, why do the paintings look so different than real people?" The whine in her voice grated on her mother's nerves.
Isidore huffed, making a dismissive remark about artistic interpretation that was far too elevated in vocabulary and phrasing to be understood by a child. She did not understand why Oralie went on like this. The painting was remarkably life-like. Truly, it was like looking in a mirror, perhaps a charmed mirror that showed you you very best self...but still, it was her. Her features were impeccably duplicated, as was her expression. It was charmed, too--her blood contributed to the paints so that when the charm work was complete, the version of herself in the painting was a genuine as the one that stood looking at it. Both the living and the painted Isidore bore the same expression of disappointed frustration as they looked down at their daughter.
What could be done?
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MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0
