Ch 2.54: Overdue
<span style="font-weight:400">It had been hard for ina to talk to Prismately. She’d always been the one to approach, always been the one to to have to figure out what to say. Somehow though, knowing what to say didn’t make it easier this time. It was simple, but she found herself fighting her inclination to turn around and walk away anyway.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Why?” she eventually said. “Why didn’t you just tell me.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Prisma didn’t move, didn’t even nce back as she still examined the piece of mail in front of her. “There wasn’t anything to tell. Untilst week, he and I were just family friends.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“That’s not true, and you know it.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“It’s not the type of thing you talk about. No one, talked about it.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Bullshit. You knew, everyone else knew, apparently. I know you were all talking about it.” ina herself felt like she was talking to a wall, to Prisma’s back as she was still turned away. “You think I don’t know what this is really about? I’m not like you, am I? I’m just ina Weaver, the girl who didn’t even have ast name a few weeks ago, so it’s okay to keep secrets from me, right?”
<span style="font-weight:400">That finally moved Prisma, her heels spinning as she turned. ina wasn’t sure what she expected Prisma’s face to look like. She’d thought it might look mad, perhaps hoped it would look sad, that she would feel bad for keeping ina in the dark. It was neither though, instead just hollow, the face of a person who’d had the life sucked out of her eyes, the joy ripped from her soul. “That’s <i><span style="font-weight:400">not </i><span style="font-weight:400">it.” Even the emphasized word held no anger, just emphasis.
<span style="font-weight:400">“I wanted to tell you, but I… I never talked about it,” Prisma continued. “Not once, not with Koh, not with Waine. I knew because I heard the way people whispered around me, but I didn’t want it to be real.”
<span style="font-weight:400">ina wanted to stay mad, but the winds of anger were taken from her sails, because somehow she knew it was the truth. As bare as Prisma’s face was to her in terms of emotion, as dull as the tone she spoke in, ina could tell there was no facade in either, nor the meaning of her words. “Prisma, do you even like him? Like, do you like being around him at all?”
<span style="font-weight:400">Prisma shrugged. “Not really. He was okay before, but ever since Koh’s awakening, he’s be… well, cruel. ”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You don’t have to do it, you know. They can’t make you marry him.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“They can. They will. I’m the heir to the house now that Koh took up the teaching job.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You say that like it’s a fact, like you having to marry him is the same as the sky being up and the ground being down.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“If my father says the sky is down and the ground is left, then that’s what it is.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Something about thatstment broke ina. her anger had tempered, was something she was proud that she was getting better at controlling in general, but it returned, swelling into a raging me that rivaled anything Prisma could produce with her aspect. “That’s not true, and I’m not gonna stop until you realize it. I don’t care who you marry; you can be with anyone you want, as long as it’s <i><span style="font-weight:400">your</i><span style="font-weight:400"> choice.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Prisma didn’t respond with words, but as ina turned around she thought she saw something, a tiny shred of light returning to her eyes.