Rhinocrisy

It’s time to start bringing this thing back from the dead. To start off with, here’s a bit of stuff I’ve been working on lately. This is one segment of a story about a girl and an angel:

“The girl is wild,” Catherine said. She was tall and pale, her posture impeccable and the folds of her long blue dress carefully aligned. Her thin, firm hands held each other tightly.

Madeline’s father shrugged, indicating his indifference. “The girl is as she is,” he said.

“You have let her run unchained for too long,” the lady responded sternly. “It is a wonder she can even read.” She turned her gaunt, serious face towards the window and stared through the lace at the shadow of the sun. “She needs to learn what it means to be a woman.”

He ran his fingers across his mustaches, smoothing them against his lip. “What could I do about teaching her to be a woman?” he muttered. “Do I know anything of it?”

“You might have hired a governess, at least.” She stared her father down. He avoided her eyes, frowning pensively.

“She had a tutor.”

“But no one to teach her etiquette,” her aunt snapped. “Does this matter not indicate that you have let her go too far?”

“Raymond is a good boy,” he grumbled defensively. “He is a good match for her.”

“My God, Aaron, are you yourself so deranged? Can you so easily pass over indecency?”

Madeline kept her gaze firmly on her feet. Her toenails were crusted with dirt. She curled her toes over, hiding them in the shadow of the drawing room table where Aunt Catherine would not see them. She imagined the carpet was a pool in the middle of the woods. She perched on a rock beside it, pressing her foot against the cool surface of the water. There were fish in the pool; they came up and kissed the bottoms of her feet.