Lucille watched as Lady Alicia put her pencil to the sheet of paper. She hadn’t asked what her lady needed the paper before; that was not her prerogative. The steward of the house, Mr. Lawcroft, had been understandably irritated to receive such a request late at night. Fortunately he nevertheless complied, handing Lucille ten sheets of fine white paper. Unlike the rough books she had learned her letters from as a child, this paper was smooth and almost perfectly bleached, without any blemishes. It almost felt sacrilegious to mark something so clean and pure, yet her lady did it without a second thought.

The role of a lady’s maid was to be unobtrusive; to vanish into the wallpaper most of the time, only to reappear the instant her lady needed anything. Ideally, a maid would predict what their ladies would want and prepare it ahead of time, but Lady Alicia was far too mercurial for that. She would request sweets at odd hours of the night, or else suddenly ask for an embroidery hoop, which would send Lucille running off to fetch whatever she had asked for from one of the other servants. Even though it was out of her control, Lucille was aware that these irregular interruptions had not done her any favors in the eyes of the other servants. Fortunately Mr. Lawcroft was not the type to blame the messenger much, but others were less understanding.

She almost sighed when she saw Alicia begin to draw. Not only was it a waste of good paper, but this was far from the first time that her lady had attempted art. It felt like every few weeks, Alicia would find some new skill that she believed a lady ought to know, and for the next few days she would become as dedicated a pupil as one could wish for. Inevitably, however, she would discover that she was not intrinsically gifted with mastery of said skill, and she would give it up in favor of some other skill. Of course, this process wasn’t helped by the Duchess, who was not only quite talented in music, art, and needlecraft, but was also quite harsh and critical of Lady Alicia’s attempts.

In these moments, Lucille often wanted to tell her lady that nobody was born with those skills, that they inevitably took time to develop and perfect. That she herself had struggled immensely when learning how to sew, and that it was only by failing again and again that she finally learned how to succeed. That she was sure the Duchess herself had struggled at first, and only made it look effortless now through years of dedicated study. More than she wanted to say that, however, she also wanted to keep her position, and so she said nothing.

“No, that’s not quite right,” Lady Alicia muttered to herself, and Lucille held in another sigh. It wasn’t even that her lady was bad at drawing, per se; Lucille knew that she herself was quite a bit worse. However, the young lady never sought out instructors--which would after all be an admission that she was less than a prodigy--and she had no frame of reference other than the mastery of adults. Lady Alicia had tried drawing at least seven times by Lucille’s count, and each time she would quickly get frustrated by how her hands could never reproduce the image in her mind.

To her credit, Lady Alicia at least seemed dedicated to the drawing. Lucille watched as she frowned, picking up the rubber eraser, and removed part of her work, before drawing it back in. She repeated this a few times, getting noticeably more frustrated, until Lucille felt the need to step in.

“What are you drawing, my lady?” Lucille asked. Lady Alicia didn’t look back, focused on her work.

“What, you can’t tell?” She gestured for Lucille to come closer. Reluctantly, the maid complied. She was silently dreading having to guess what her lady was attempting, especially since she knew how upset Lady Alicia would be if Lucille got it wrong. However, she was quite unprepared for what she saw.

The sketch was obviously rough and unfinished, but even at a glance she could tell that it was far better than any of the young lady’s previous attempts. The lines were clean and deliberate, and some parts looked almost as if they’d been developed through a daguerreotype. The picture depicted the head and shoulders of a handsome man, with dark hair, wide eyes, and a devilish grin. She was so shocked by the artwork that it took a moment before she realized that she actually did recognize the man; it was quite obviously Prince Alsander, although he looked several years older in the drawing.

“You’re drawing the prince?” Lucille asked.

“Mmhmm,” Alicia hummed, now shading in the Prince’s cheekbones. Each motion looked deliberate and practiced, and as she drew the picture suddenly took on a degree of depth that it had been missing before. The sudden skill on display was more than astonishing.

“When did you get so good at drawing, my Lady?” Lucille asked before she could stop herself. She gasped as soon as she realized what she had said, bringing one hand to cover her mouth.

To her surprise, Lady Alicia did not snap at her in anger. Neither did she seem pleased by the compliment, though. Her hand froze mid-stroke and she set the pencil down, looking at the drawing. She looked pensive, which was not an expression that Lucille was used to seeing on her lady’s face.

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“It’s not very good yet,” she said at last. “I can’t quite get the nose right, and this pencil is fighting me on the shading. I don’t have the muscle memory yet.”

That sounded more like the Lady Alicia that she knew, although it didn’t answer the question. She also didn’t know what her lady meant by muscle memory, but she was certainly not about to ask. “Well, I’m sure you will get better in no time, my lady.”

“I imagine so,” Lady Alicia replied, turning her attention back to the drawing. “Well, this one is more or less done at this point.” She made a few last strokes and then set it aside. With no hesitation, she picked up a small penknife and made a series of practiced cuts to sharpen the pencil to a fine point. Again, Lucille was struck by how confident the lady looked, hardly giving the task any attention at all.

She started on the next drawing, quick sketches that quickly took the shape of another man’s face. With another few strokes, the eyes, nose, and mouth appeared on the page. Within a minute, it was clear enough that Lucille could tell this man was not Prince Alsander. Although she didn’t recognize the figure, it was clear from the speed of her lady’s lines that she must be drawing from memory. More than anything else, it was that speed which both impressed and alarmed Lucille.

“Incredible, my lady,” Lucille said at last, and for perhaps the first time she truly meant it.

Lady Alicia just looked at the paper and grimaced. “Hardly.”

~*~

Somewhere around the third or fourth picture, Alicia realized just how good it felt to be drawing again. She had never suffered from a lack of imagination, and as such could easy hold in her mind the picture that she wanted to create. However, it was quite another thing to convert that into lines on a page or paint on a canvas, and in the past her treacherous hands seemed to always betray her vision. Now, though, the knowledge was just there in her mind, techniques and tricks learned over years of schooling and practice.

The key to a good drawing was beginning with a good sketch. It was almost effortless to create the shape of the face, and once that was done she could begin to put the features in place. It was harder to do from memory, but she had drawn all these faces enough times that it was scarcely a challenge. Before, she had tried to just draw things straight onto the page, and she had never even thought to try and break objects down into their component shapes to draw them.

Of course, Alicia was well aware that these memories and skills were not her own. And yet, she reflexively pushed that thought away. The events of the Blooming ceremony were still quite frightening, and the thought that she had memories of someone else’s life was so strange that she had done her best to pretend nothing had changed. Increasingly, however, she was beginning to realize that those memories were not unrelated to her present life.

This was the fourth picture. Like the others, this one also depicted a young man around the age of eighteen. The man in the picture had a sharp face with an unamused expression and was wearing a pair of severe spectacles. She knew that this was Lord William Richmond, the son of Bishop Richmond, currently serving as the Archbishop of Milton and head of the Enneadic Church. However, this drawing was not of Lord William Richmond as he was now, but rather as he would look in five years time.

If she was being honest with herself, the other memories frightened her. It was not just that they seemed to exist in a world that ought to be alien and unfamiliar, nor that the other woman occupied a lower class status. She was terrified of what it would mean if the memories were false, some sort of hallucination in response to her Blooming ceremony--she knew that it would mean she was not in sound mind, and that would be even more damning for her future prospects than Wilting. However, she was equally terrified of what it would mean for the memories to be true.

Why would she have these memories of another life, and why did they feel so right? More alarmingly, why was it that Christine seemed to have knowledge of people in Estelar, and moreover of how they would look in the future? Alicia finished the fourth picture and moved on to the fifth and final drawing, this time of a man with a firm jaw and a playful glint in his eye. This was Marcus Strayed, the heir to the Strayed Trading Company and (Christine’s memories informed her) something of a playboy. And yet, how could she possibly know that?

Those questions were terrifying to consider and so she didn’t. Instead, she lost herself in the art, in the pleasure of finally taking the image that was so clear when she closed her eyes and putting it onto the paper. She was dimly aware that her hand had begun to hurt and that the edge of her white nightgown had become smudged a dark gray by the graphite. She paid those things no mind, focused on completing the picture.

At last, she was done. Sitting on her desk were five portraits of young men. They were all extremely handsome, albeit in different ways, and perhaps more importantly all were posed to inherit positions of incredible power. “These are the keys to the kingdom,” she said at last in a low murmur.

“My lady?” Alicia jumped at Lucille’s voice; she had almost forgotten that the maid was there.

“Ah, it’s nothing,” Alicia replied. “I was just thinking.”

“Indeed, my lady,” Lucille said.

Alicia looked back at the pictures; she had a feeling that they would be important. She carefully picked them up and handed them to the maid. “Actually, could you take these to Mr. Lawcroft? Tell him to apply a fixative so the graphite doesn’t smear.”

Lucille carefully took the pages, bowing. “As you wish, my lady.” Alicia thought she could hear frustration in the maid’s voice, but she ignored it. In truth, she had just wanted to be alone for a few minutes, and this was the easiest way she could think of to accomplish that.

Lucille left the room with the papers, leaving Alicia with just her heavy thoughts.