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

[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.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Totally true," Tally says. "It reminds me of my tattoo, only not black."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you like your tattoo?" he asks, as he goes to get his makeup palettes from the drawer where he keeps them all neatly organized.

[tallyyoungblood]

Part of Tally stings at the question. In New Pretty Town, asking something like that would have been a gentle suggestion to get it removed. Not all surge was pretty-making, and it was easy to just go back to the surgeons and get it removed. But... Galahad's different. He's really asking.

"Of course," Tally says. "It shows how bubbly I am. It matches my heartbeat." Back when she'd gotten it, she'd intended it as a reminder of the scar Peris had given her when they'd jumped off the party spire, and as a way for Zane to look at her and know if she was pretty-minded. He had one, too, so they could keep each other bubbly. Here, she's the only one with a flash tattoo, and that makes her vulnerable, in a way. There's no lying about what gets her excited. She kind of likes that, though. It's not such a bad thing to be kept honest.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad looks at the tattoo above her eye, the knotted symbol that looks like something Percival would have pointed out to him in old churchyards or wrought over the doors of barns, charms to ward off danger or faeries -- the way it's always in motion. "May I touch it?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Oh, sure." Tally shifts so that it's easy for him to get at it. "It doesn't feel like anything. It's subcutaneous. Under the skin." It picks up speed a little as he gets closer.

[onthewillowsthere]

He trails his fingertips over it, but she's right; it doesn't feel like anything. The same as his own tattoo. "Did it hurt?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"No. I was unconscious, since I got it done at the same time I did my eyes." She opens them as wide as possible. "See the twelve little red jewels in there? They're a clock. Um, a counterclockwise one." If Galahad looks closely, he'll see that the gem in the nine o'clock position is blinking, since it's around three o'clock.

[onthewillowsthere]

He inspects the clock in her eyes, and then looks down at the watch on his wrist, and back again. "Why is it counterclockwise?"

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally has to roll her eyes. "You can say that again," she says. "I got it to match my friend. She thought it was too boring for them to be a regular clock." Shay's faces flash through Tally's mind, all three of them, from too-skinny ugly to clueless pretty to cruel-pretty Special. "Shay's not big on moderation."

[onthewillowsthere]

"She's the person you chose your gift for. When we did the experiment."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yeah," Tally says, remembering. It's shocking how much her feelings about Shay have changed since then, considering she hasn't actually seen her since then. "She's my best friend. Or maybe my worst enemy. Or maybe I was in love with her. You know." Saying it is scary, which is why she does it. She shrugs, even as her tattoo speeds up even further. "It's complicated. I guess I don't really do moderation when it comes to her, either."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad doesn't particularly understand this tangle of feelings, but he tucks away Tally's description of it anyway to talk about with Claudius later. Claudius knows all about complicated ways of loving people.

"Do you miss her?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yes," Tally says. "No. Yes."

[onthewillowsthere]

He waits.

[tallyyoungblood]

"I guess I found out she does something really bad to me in the future, on Evil Twin day," Tally says. "I mean, but, I did something pretty bad to her, too. So... I want to be friends with her again, but I'm not sure either of us can ever get over that."