Turning over a new leaf - attn: Bronwyn Isolde

[Winter Mist]

~Rossa~

 

How many nervous young women had worn this dress before it came to her? Rossa had considered often the thought that the clothes she wore every day may not have been tailored for her, but as it fit well enough and her previous life had been well and truly left behind, she could hardly complain. Not that the complaint would fall on sympathetic ears anyway. As long as the dress was decent and would not tarnish the fastidiously high image the White Tower strived to maintain, Rossa would wear the hand-me-down gowns. At first it had been a novelty. She had always had seamstresses make her dresses before as the latest de rigueur fashions were necessary to be seen in at court, and at first it had been fun to see how the other half lived. Now, as she plucked at the white folds brightened only by seven bands of colour at hem and cuffs, she could see what it truly was, the White Tower trying to teach it's initiates humility.

 

To be asked to oversee a chore on her first real day of being an Accepted was probably the kindness of the Mistress of Novices. It was always difficult after the Arches to try and find normality and the last thing Rossa wanted to do was languish in her new room where she only had her thoughts for company. Being out of those four walls would be far nicer than being cooped up inside them, and testing out the lengths of her new authority. There were so many different things to learn now, so many different ways to behave and ways to get used to being treated when in the banded skirts. Would she be treated any differently by her mentor now? So many questions...

 

It was a chore she had undertaken herself when she had been a novice and she had enjoyed it herself in a strange kind of way. But then, copying out sections from textbooks was not everyone's idea of a good time. Walking down the corridor towards the Novice's room, Rossa contemplated the other possibility, that she had failed the novice test and been put out of the Tower, or worse, not come back out of the Arches. No. She had to think positively. She had come out of the other side and was an Accepted now. Rossa took a deep breath to give the outwards appearance of a calm person - she was back in the court of the Tarasin Palace about to greet a potential alliance and knocked firmly on the door.