The Betrothed
for National Novel Writing Month
Day 12
A blast of cool air and a prod on the shoulder awoke Darrick from a groggy slumber. Disoriented, he groped around for the blankets which had disappeared, and grumbled to his mother to let him stay in bed, that his alarm hadn’t gone off for class yet. He tried to turn towards the wall, but felt a dull surprise when the wall wasn’t where it was supposed to be. A low laugh sounded from the foot of the bed, the voice not immediately familiar.
“Y’know,” a voice said, the same voice that had just laughed, “when I said that most of the guests would be involved in their drinks, I didn’t think that you would be one of them.”
Abby! The events of the day flooded back into him. The Presentation, the feast, and the memory of consuming maybe one too many glasses of wine. I didn’t mean to! They just kept refilling it! He hadn’t really gotten drunk, just tired; a few drinks combined with the excitement of the day had combined to knock him out, and he couldn’t even remember making it back to bed. And she wanted to sneak off alone. I hope I didn’t disappoint her too much.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, fighting the urge to turn over and bury his face in his pillow. Instead, he looked down to the foot of the bed, where he could just make her out, standing there with his blankets in her hand. She had changed from her elaborate formal gown into a sensible blouse and jeans; noticing that made him very aware that he was only in his boxers, with no blankets left with which to cover up. The sly grin on her face made him think she was well aware of it as well. He focused instead on speaking; his mouth did not yet feel completely under his control, and he had to concentrate to make it form the shapes he wanted. “I’m not that used to wine. I’ve only had it a few times. I didn’t think I had drunk that much.” Her grin widened as she shook her head.
“For supposedly being so degenerate, you outsiders can certainly be prudes sometimes.” As if in acknowledgement of that fact, she tossed him back his blankets, after taking one final obvious look. Darrick very quickly wrapped them around his lower half while sitting up in bed. “I’ve been drinking wine at meals ever since I was a child. Of course, what they were serving tonight was a bit more potent than the usual stuff, so I guess you might not be a complete lightweight after all.”
“Is that how you think of me, as an outsider?” The word hurt more than he would have thought a simple sound could. Abby sat down beside him and put her hand on his blanket-covered leg, her head bowed, not meeting his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Darrick,” she said, her voice softer than it had been. “It’s just the word we use to describe non-Atlanteans. One of the nicer ones, actually. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Darrick replied. “Maybe it wouldn’t bother me except that my father warned me that people would call me names here, that they would look down on me because I’m not Atlantean.”
“But you are Atlantean,” Abby said. “As much as you are not, anyway. It’s just that you have been raised as an . . . as a non-Atlantean, so it’s easy to see you that way.”
“Does that matter to you?” Darrick leaned in, anxious to hear her answer. He didn’t know what he would do if she said that it did, but he knew it would strike him to the core. She turned to face him, and Darrick was surprised to see her eyes glistening, even though no tears ran down her cheeks.
“Oh, no, Darrick! Not at all.” She leaned into him, and he put his arms around her. “Maybe when I was younger, when I didn’t know any better, it would have. I think I’ve learned better than that now. Atlantean or not, we’re just people, after all.”
“But not everyone thinks that way.” It was a statement, not a question, and Abby’s sigh confirmed what Darrick already believed.
“No, they don’t,” she said. “I fear I might be in the minority, actually. Some people are pretty open about their contempt; they’re the ones you’re going to have the most trouble with, the ones who will use all those names your father warned you about. Probably not in the open, though, since most of us are at least a little ashamed of our assumptions. My parents are like that; they try very hard not to look down on non-Atlanteans, but they can’t help how they feel. It was drilled into them by their own parents. Patrick’s pretty awful anyway, but I’m sure some of his attitude towards you was picked up from my parents, as much as they try to hide it.”
“Then why did they bond you to me?”
“My mother and yours were close friends when they were young, and she was happy to marry me to her son, no matter who his father was. At least, that was the reason she gave, but I have a feeling that the opportunity to marry into your name was a big consideration for her. And some things I’ve heard make me think that Reverence Dawson had something to do with it as well, though I can’t imagine why.”
“I hope you didn’t get too much grief about it growing up.” It hadn’t occurs to Darrick until now to think of how this bond could have affected Abby. Unlike him, she had known whom she would marry for as long as she could remember, and so had everyone else. That had to have shaped her entire childhood. She leaned back so she could look him in the eye. Darrick appreciated the eye contact, though he missed the feel of her pressed up against him.
“A little,” she said bluntly. A self-deprecating smile softened her response a little. “Not that I wasn’t capable of setting people off on my own, as you might have guessed. So you might have just been an excuse for them to torment me. Kids are cruel anyway, so you can’t blame them too much. But it still meant that I didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up, and that was a hard thing, especially since I couldn’t exactly look elsewhere for companionship.” She sounded bitter.
“Why not?”
“Darrick, dear,” she said, and Darrick’s heart leapt at the endearment, “be grateful to your father for your non-Atlantean upbringing. I had to move hundreds of miles away just to begin to get away from mine. I don’t know if you can begin to understand the utter isolationism of my childhood. With only a few exceptions, all ten Houses live close to each other, within easy driving distance. They’re only friends with other Atlanteans. My parents even started a school for Atlantean children, so that we wouldn’t be corrupted by outside influences. I think they would have even founded a college if they could have. My world was nothing but Atlantis. We lived in the wider world, but we did our best to not be part of it. Unless you have lived it, you can’t understand just how warped a view that will give you of those who are not part of your little group.”
“Sounds like a cult,” Darrick said in shock.
“When I described it to my roommates in San Francisco – what I could explain of it, anyway – they said the same thing. I can see it, though I think the word makes it sound worse than it was. We weren’t being brainwashed, or exploited, or anything like that. Our parents just wanted to protect us; they were as scared of the world as they wanted us to be. They told us the same things we were told, that no one could know who we were or they would persecute us, maybe kill us; that fear was never very far away. I didn’t even have the worst of it. Those of us who weren’t firstborn sons and daughters knew that, one day, they would have to go out into that threatening world, to become part of it, for the greater safety of the entire group. I can’t even imagine how frightened they must have been.” She bowed her head in sorrow at the thought, and Darrick felt ashamed of himself. That’s what my mother went through. That uncertainty, that fear. What would that do to a kid? And what kind of people would do that to their own children, based on nothing but their own fear?
“I think my bond to you shielded me from a lot of that,” Abby continued. “I believed it when I was young – who doesn’t believe everything their parents tell them when they’re young – but by the time I was a teenager I began to wonder about the outside world. I thought of you often – every Atlantean girl daydreams about their betrothed, though most grow up around them – and when I did, I wondered what your life was like, out there, and I couldn’t believe you were evil or dangerous or immoral. And if you weren’t, than certainly everyone couldn’t be. So when I finished school, I left.”
“And did you like it?”
Abby laughed. “I was terrified for the first three months straight, I think. But once I really believed that the world wasn’t out to get me, and that I wouldn’t fall into a pit of iniquity just by going out for the night, I started to enjoy myself. I made friends, even dated a bit.” To Darrick’s raised eyebrow, she hastened to add, “Nothing serious. Just having fun, and I made sure the guys knew that from the beginning.” Her smile became wicked. “I’m not as innocent as my parents think I am . . .” She slid her arms around Darrick’s bare torso. His breath caught in his chest. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just pulled her close and back with him on the bed.
Some time later, Abby pulled away, buttoning up her blouse, her hands trembling slightly. Darrick tried to pull her back, but she playfully swatted his hand away and returned to her buttons.
“Not that it wouldn’t be fun, but I didn’t come here to lose my virginity to you tonight, Darrick.” Finishing with her blouse, she ran her hands through her hair, trying to tame wayward strands. Given his mother’s previous warning, Darrick wasn’t too surprised, but he couldn’t honestly say he wasn’t disappointed. And a bit frustrated.
“So you just wanted to tease me?” he said, and winced at how much that frustration came through. He hadn’t wanted her to know about that. Abby took his hand and raised it to her lips in a disappointingly-chaste kiss. She brought it down from her lips, but didn’t let it go.
“I promised you some alone time earlier tonight, and I plan to make good on it.”
“I think you did that,” Darrick said with a grin. Abby returned it.
“Believe it or not, I had other things in mind when I snuck in here.” She picked up his discarded clothes from the floor and tossed them to him. “Now put these on and get out of bed.” She glanced down at his waist and tilted her head. “Though you might want to wait a bit on that last.”
for National Novel Writing Month
Day 12
A blast of cool air and a prod on the shoulder awoke Darrick from a groggy slumber. Disoriented, he groped around for the blankets which had disappeared, and grumbled to his mother to let him stay in bed, that his alarm hadn’t gone off for class yet. He tried to turn towards the wall, but felt a dull surprise when the wall wasn’t where it was supposed to be. A low laugh sounded from the foot of the bed, the voice not immediately familiar.
“Y’know,” a voice said, the same voice that had just laughed, “when I said that most of the guests would be involved in their drinks, I didn’t think that you would be one of them.”
Abby! The events of the day flooded back into him. The Presentation, the feast, and the memory of consuming maybe one too many glasses of wine. I didn’t mean to! They just kept refilling it! He hadn’t really gotten drunk, just tired; a few drinks combined with the excitement of the day had combined to knock him out, and he couldn’t even remember making it back to bed. And she wanted to sneak off alone. I hope I didn’t disappoint her too much.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, fighting the urge to turn over and bury his face in his pillow. Instead, he looked down to the foot of the bed, where he could just make her out, standing there with his blankets in her hand. She had changed from her elaborate formal gown into a sensible blouse and jeans; noticing that made him very aware that he was only in his boxers, with no blankets left with which to cover up. The sly grin on her face made him think she was well aware of it as well. He focused instead on speaking; his mouth did not yet feel completely under his control, and he had to concentrate to make it form the shapes he wanted. “I’m not that used to wine. I’ve only had it a few times. I didn’t think I had drunk that much.” Her grin widened as she shook her head.
“For supposedly being so degenerate, you outsiders can certainly be prudes sometimes.” As if in acknowledgement of that fact, she tossed him back his blankets, after taking one final obvious look. Darrick very quickly wrapped them around his lower half while sitting up in bed. “I’ve been drinking wine at meals ever since I was a child. Of course, what they were serving tonight was a bit more potent than the usual stuff, so I guess you might not be a complete lightweight after all.”
“Is that how you think of me, as an outsider?” The word hurt more than he would have thought a simple sound could. Abby sat down beside him and put her hand on his blanket-covered leg, her head bowed, not meeting his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Darrick,” she said, her voice softer than it had been. “It’s just the word we use to describe non-Atlanteans. One of the nicer ones, actually. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Darrick replied. “Maybe it wouldn’t bother me except that my father warned me that people would call me names here, that they would look down on me because I’m not Atlantean.”
“But you are Atlantean,” Abby said. “As much as you are not, anyway. It’s just that you have been raised as an . . . as a non-Atlantean, so it’s easy to see you that way.”
“Does that matter to you?” Darrick leaned in, anxious to hear her answer. He didn’t know what he would do if she said that it did, but he knew it would strike him to the core. She turned to face him, and Darrick was surprised to see her eyes glistening, even though no tears ran down her cheeks.
“Oh, no, Darrick! Not at all.” She leaned into him, and he put his arms around her. “Maybe when I was younger, when I didn’t know any better, it would have. I think I’ve learned better than that now. Atlantean or not, we’re just people, after all.”
“But not everyone thinks that way.” It was a statement, not a question, and Abby’s sigh confirmed what Darrick already believed.
“No, they don’t,” she said. “I fear I might be in the minority, actually. Some people are pretty open about their contempt; they’re the ones you’re going to have the most trouble with, the ones who will use all those names your father warned you about. Probably not in the open, though, since most of us are at least a little ashamed of our assumptions. My parents are like that; they try very hard not to look down on non-Atlanteans, but they can’t help how they feel. It was drilled into them by their own parents. Patrick’s pretty awful anyway, but I’m sure some of his attitude towards you was picked up from my parents, as much as they try to hide it.”
“Then why did they bond you to me?”
“My mother and yours were close friends when they were young, and she was happy to marry me to her son, no matter who his father was. At least, that was the reason she gave, but I have a feeling that the opportunity to marry into your name was a big consideration for her. And some things I’ve heard make me think that Reverence Dawson had something to do with it as well, though I can’t imagine why.”
“I hope you didn’t get too much grief about it growing up.” It hadn’t occurs to Darrick until now to think of how this bond could have affected Abby. Unlike him, she had known whom she would marry for as long as she could remember, and so had everyone else. That had to have shaped her entire childhood. She leaned back so she could look him in the eye. Darrick appreciated the eye contact, though he missed the feel of her pressed up against him.
“A little,” she said bluntly. A self-deprecating smile softened her response a little. “Not that I wasn’t capable of setting people off on my own, as you might have guessed. So you might have just been an excuse for them to torment me. Kids are cruel anyway, so you can’t blame them too much. But it still meant that I didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up, and that was a hard thing, especially since I couldn’t exactly look elsewhere for companionship.” She sounded bitter.
“Why not?”
“Darrick, dear,” she said, and Darrick’s heart leapt at the endearment, “be grateful to your father for your non-Atlantean upbringing. I had to move hundreds of miles away just to begin to get away from mine. I don’t know if you can begin to understand the utter isolationism of my childhood. With only a few exceptions, all ten Houses live close to each other, within easy driving distance. They’re only friends with other Atlanteans. My parents even started a school for Atlantean children, so that we wouldn’t be corrupted by outside influences. I think they would have even founded a college if they could have. My world was nothing but Atlantis. We lived in the wider world, but we did our best to not be part of it. Unless you have lived it, you can’t understand just how warped a view that will give you of those who are not part of your little group.”
“Sounds like a cult,” Darrick said in shock.
“When I described it to my roommates in San Francisco – what I could explain of it, anyway – they said the same thing. I can see it, though I think the word makes it sound worse than it was. We weren’t being brainwashed, or exploited, or anything like that. Our parents just wanted to protect us; they were as scared of the world as they wanted us to be. They told us the same things we were told, that no one could know who we were or they would persecute us, maybe kill us; that fear was never very far away. I didn’t even have the worst of it. Those of us who weren’t firstborn sons and daughters knew that, one day, they would have to go out into that threatening world, to become part of it, for the greater safety of the entire group. I can’t even imagine how frightened they must have been.” She bowed her head in sorrow at the thought, and Darrick felt ashamed of himself. That’s what my mother went through. That uncertainty, that fear. What would that do to a kid? And what kind of people would do that to their own children, based on nothing but their own fear?
“I think my bond to you shielded me from a lot of that,” Abby continued. “I believed it when I was young – who doesn’t believe everything their parents tell them when they’re young – but by the time I was a teenager I began to wonder about the outside world. I thought of you often – every Atlantean girl daydreams about their betrothed, though most grow up around them – and when I did, I wondered what your life was like, out there, and I couldn’t believe you were evil or dangerous or immoral. And if you weren’t, than certainly everyone couldn’t be. So when I finished school, I left.”
“And did you like it?”
Abby laughed. “I was terrified for the first three months straight, I think. But once I really believed that the world wasn’t out to get me, and that I wouldn’t fall into a pit of iniquity just by going out for the night, I started to enjoy myself. I made friends, even dated a bit.” To Darrick’s raised eyebrow, she hastened to add, “Nothing serious. Just having fun, and I made sure the guys knew that from the beginning.” Her smile became wicked. “I’m not as innocent as my parents think I am . . .” She slid her arms around Darrick’s bare torso. His breath caught in his chest. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just pulled her close and back with him on the bed.
* * * * *
Some time later, Abby pulled away, buttoning up her blouse, her hands trembling slightly. Darrick tried to pull her back, but she playfully swatted his hand away and returned to her buttons.
“Not that it wouldn’t be fun, but I didn’t come here to lose my virginity to you tonight, Darrick.” Finishing with her blouse, she ran her hands through her hair, trying to tame wayward strands. Given his mother’s previous warning, Darrick wasn’t too surprised, but he couldn’t honestly say he wasn’t disappointed. And a bit frustrated.
“So you just wanted to tease me?” he said, and winced at how much that frustration came through. He hadn’t wanted her to know about that. Abby took his hand and raised it to her lips in a disappointingly-chaste kiss. She brought it down from her lips, but didn’t let it go.
“I promised you some alone time earlier tonight, and I plan to make good on it.”
“I think you did that,” Darrick said with a grin. Abby returned it.
“Believe it or not, I had other things in mind when I snuck in here.” She picked up his discarded clothes from the floor and tossed them to him. “Now put these on and get out of bed.” She glanced down at his waist and tilted her head. “Though you might want to wait a bit on that last.”
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