Kristen's heart pounded in her chest. Not from stress or fear this time, thank
Aionus and
Astra and all of the Pantheon. What caused Kristen's heart to hammer so painfully hard within her chest was sheer anticipation, and it was a
good pain.
She could scarcely believe it, even as the carriage was approaching the Royal Palace. Somehow it didn't seem to be true, as if it were a dream in which she had been granted one wish and she'd made it and the dawn's sun would surely come to cut out the fulfillment and cast her sprawling back out into the waking world. But it wasn't that. The letter had been real, the
House Pirian attaché had been real, Proctor Magomo's reluctance and final allowance (after the attache whispered something in Magomo's ear) that she could go had been real.
This was real, and it was happening. Right now.
Eight years. Half of Kristen's entire lifetime had her sister Amelia been gone. Kristen begrudged her nothing, for even at the small age of eight she understood why Amelia was leaving to live abroad. Yet Kristen had cried her heart out nonetheless that very night once Amelia had left. She cried and cried and cried and felt like half of her soul had been ripped from her body. They were close, she and Amelia. Big sister Amelia was always there for her. Always there to play, always there to help. Mother often said that Amelia raised Kristen as much as (if not
more than) she did. They kept in contact via correspondence after Amelia's departure. Kristen would come running down the stairs from her room whenever it was announced that a letter from Amelia had arrived, and she would stand, trembling with impatient and barely restrained eagerness, awaiting for the letter to be handed to her. It was the closest thing Kristen had to the eight years before, and though no hugs nor kisses nor shared laughter could come through those letters, she still cherished and kept each and every one, the stack in her room growing larger as the years went on.
So much had happened in those eight years.
And finally the chance had come to convey what could not be conveyed through the written word alone, no matter how beautiful the calligraphy. Those hugs, those kisses, just the wonderful sight of each other. How much she had grown since Amelia last saw her! Goodness, would she even recognize her? Oh but of course, yet her Big Sister's countenance would be a marvel to behold once she bore witness to how tall her little sister had grown! Funny! Perhaps this was would be the one time in which her height did not bother her!
The carriage stopped in front of the Royal Palace. A tall and imposing building, part of the grander complex of the Keep of Anir, nearly a city onto itself.
The door opened for her. A Pirian servant swinging along with the motion of the door with a brisk couple of steps himself, and then he gave an inviting sweep of his arm out of the carriage and toward the Palace. "My Lady."
Kristen wringed her hands. Once. Twice. Balled her hands then into excited little fists and pressed them into the underside of her chin and her smile could have turned midnight into the blaze of day.
"I'm..." Nervous almost came out of her mouth. It was both true and not true. But she instead said,
"...so glad this is happening!"
The servant offered her a smile of his own. "I know, my Lady."
Kristen carefully exited the carriage. Her dress was an elegant (and expensive) affair, voluminous and immaculate, mostly white with some red, the colors of House Pirian. It was something she would have worn to all of the balls and galas of yesteryear, before she had enrolled into the Academy. Clad so and with her hair in a spotless braided bun, she looked the farthest she could be from an Initiate and the very model of a noblewoman once more.
Inside the Palace she was led, a steward at the lead of her entourage and a small grouping of servants both in front of and behind her. All of the glamor of the Royal Palace went unappreciated. All the beauty of
Arethil could have been compacted into these halls and Kristen would have been blind to it all, for she only had eyes for one thing and one thing only this day: to see her beloved Big Sister once again.
Her heart was pounding the entire way. Pounding as the steward found the door he was looking for, a door which led into one of the Palace's salons, and asked for but one moment to see if Amelia was present and if Kristen was ready to be received by her. An eternity passed and the steward came out, giving Kristen the nod she had been waiting for.
And Kristen entered, only the light shuffle of her dress to be heard, and this barely so over the pulse of her beating heart thudding mightily inside of her ears.
The swinging door gave way, revealing more and more of the interior of the salon. Slowly. Slowly...
And at last.
Amelia.
Big Sister. Beheld at long last.
"Oh my god..." Kristen said, covering her mouth with the tips of her gloved hands. Her eyes immediately set to burning with tears of joy.
"Am...Am...!"
She couldn't even finish. She was already in motion and crossing the gap of distance in the salon with an earnest intensity and her arms flung open and wide. Kristen threw her arms around Amelia the second she could, with a fierceness that was as sweet and tender as it was energetic and strong. It was an embrace eight years in the making, and with it came all the power of a fondness made ripe through prolonged absence.
"Amelia! I have missed you! I have missed you so...so much! I love you!"
And those tears did flow. Wonderful, joyous tears.
Amelia Pirian Anireth
