Portrait
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Lady In Black
The woman descended down the mahogany staircase with a controlled stillness. The architect responsible for the lavish ballroom had planned for a decadent platform as its centerpiece. The lady took a brief pause in waiting; a statuesque display atop a stage. It was on this stage that she made herself known, while also taking the opportunity to record her environment and its inhabitants to memory. Her evening gown was a bold midnight black, she alone knew her color choice was a consequence of her eternal mourning. It was comforting, to live every day shrouded by grief, the choice was long removed from her.
After a quick survey of the room she continued the last steps and immediately met with the first of her many acquaintances. Over time, they found her hard to forget, and she accepted that there was value where she placed it. An invisible fog washed over the guests and the atmosphere shifted into one of slight tension. Delicate at first, gradually, like a swarm of misled flies they began to gravitate in her direction, a risk met with a stern and all knowing gaze. They crowded her, and she swore she could feel their insatiable breath, suffocating her.
The gentleman across the floor, a man most admired, could not help but break his usual confidence. When she met eyes with him, not only was it unsettling, but he would find himself walking towards her, unable to turn back. He found in her the fascination of beauty, of beholding it, and then slowly realizing such beauty was in contrast of torment.
Maybe he could save her and rescue the damsel in distress? Ignorant to the truth that the shriveled petals of a rose turned black with death made it the sole existence of a beauty that once was, and never will be again. Never again. She only needed to smile, and the gentleman would stay with her but she knew he was only a fleeting dream, something that had yet to live. Something that would only result in an illusion. Someone that would be destroyed. There was no room for such naivety in her life. She did not choose him, and would leave him wondering as she moved away.
The others clawed and pined for her constantly. Closer they pushed, so fiercely that she could feel them on her skin, as if she were nude beneath her gown. Who would take her tonight? There was one she could not ignore, her breathing stiffened and she could feel the choking of her corset. Beyond a sea of inviting smiles she had found her captor, and it was with them she would escape. The mysterious woman would vanish, and the atmosphere would breath again, the fog lifted. -
Wardrobe
Various things of similar aesthetic or that Annelise would use.
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