closed post: in the eye of the beholder

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's had a lot on her mind since the death and the wedding. Life, love, the fragility of those things--but, of course, she is who she is, so her mind comes back to what it always does: beauty.

As much as she'd judged that strange man for his disheveled robes, everyone else had looked gorgeous, and happier than she'd ever seen a room full of pretties look. Most notably, they'd all looked legitimately different from each other, in just about every way possible. That the effect was beautiful instead of overwhelming is a new experience for Tally.

Tally feels like she knows what Claudius might say about the wedding. He'd heap effusive praise on everyone, and tell her that of course he wanted everyone to be uniquely themselves. She thinks he understands the halo effect better than anyone else she knows here, but also, as a former pre-Rusty king, understands how to deal with a crowd of adult uglies. Galahad, though, has never been someone Tally could guess at the thoughts of. He'd clearly been too happily overwhelmed to really talk at the ceremony itself, so she goes to knock on his door a few days later.

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad frowns -- that minute drawing-together of his brows and flattening of his mouth -- and says, "You could choose a small difference."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Start small? Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I was kind of doing that with the suit."

[onthewillowsthere]

"At the wedding?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yeah. It was Gideon's idea."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It was good." A beat. "I like choosing my own clothes too. What do you like to wear?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"I always used to picture wearing a ballgown as a pretty, when I was an ugly," Tally says. "Uglies only get dorm uniforms, and pretties basically have the same clothing allowance we have here. Like, infinite."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you still want that?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Sometimes. But a ballgown is not, like, actually practical for day to day activities."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods, because this is demonstrably true, and says, "I wear things that make me feel beautiful."

[tallyyoungblood]

"You're doing a good job," Tally says. "You look totally pretty today." It's something Tally might have said to any one of her pretty friends, but it feels different now. Galahad has his own pale and ethereal beauty that she's never seen before, despite his unsurged face. "I guess I want to look beautiful, too, I just... want it to be effortless." No, that's not right. "Or, like, I want to be able to say I'm my own kind of beautiful, not just Pretty Committee-designed beautiful like everyone else back home, but obviously my face looks like this now forever."

[onthewillowsthere]

"We could do your makeup."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Really? I've never really done it except with Georgia. Pretties aren't supposed to need it. But then I guess that's perfect, right? I don't need it, I just want it."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods: exactly.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Where do you even start? Besides, um, eight layers of mascara."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I have magazines." He opens a drawer of the roll-top desk and begins taking out copies of the magazines Kade gave him, all those issues of Marie Claire and Essence and Allure.

[tallyyoungblood]

These are slightly newer magazines than the ones Georgia and Tally normally look at, and Tally crosses to look at them curiously. "Have you used these yourself?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. Kade gave them to me so I could practice. I want to try all ways of being beautiful."

[tallyyoungblood]

"All ways," Tally repeats. "You would have liked having a wallscreen. It lets you design yourself a new face." She picks up a magazine and starts leafing through it.

[onthewillowsthere]

He leans over to look at what she's looking at. "I liked it when you arranged my hair."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Oh, yeah!" Tally says, beaming with pride. "I'm totally good at hairstyles. It's too bad your hair isn't always as long as Tress-la's." Tally pulls her own hair over her shoulder and examines it. "I might need a haircut," she says thoughtfully. Pretties don't really get split ends, but hers is getting long enough that it's sometimes annoying.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Claudius cuts my hair."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Do you think he'd cut mine? We have robots to do it back home. And I'm not about to ask SecUnit to cut it." She wants to laugh at the thought, but then she thinks about how robots like it were probably enslaved to do that kind of thing in its universe, and sobers up quickly. Why any universe wouldn't ban AI, she doesn't understand.

[onthewillowsthere]

"He would be flattered if you asked."

[tallyyoungblood]

"He totally would," Tally agrees, her heart swelling with fondness for Claudius.

Most of the makeup looks inside the magazines are kind of boring, the type of makeup that's just supposed to make a Rusty look as close to a pretty as possible, but when Tally shuts the one she's looking at, she notices that the cover has something much more interesting.

"What about that?" she asks. It reminds her of flash tattoos, and of the ocean beating against the shore. "Is that, like, way too complicated?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"It is complicated," Galahad says, truthful as always. "But it's just makeup. If we don't get it right, we can wipe it off and keep trying." It's what he likes best about being an ordinary human: trying, over and over, until something is right.