Light A Way

66

Standing looking at herself in the wardrobe mirror, Elsie placed her hands on her stomach and smoothed down her dress. Heaving in a sigh she was trying to forget the fact that butterflies were fluttering around in her stomach, making herself feel quite ill. Today was the day. Truthfully the time between now and last week had flown by. She honestly didn't know where the time had gone. One minute she's sitting scribbling on paper, going shopping for something smart to wear, and now...now she was standing looking herself over.

She whined and she hunched over and breathed deeply. She was trying not to hyperventilate. She was feeling very panicky. She was fine yesterday! Yesterday she hadn't spared any thought about today. Quite frankly that's how she had been looking at it; be ignorant to all. It had worked, obviously, until now. Elsie decided that maybe she had slipped into denial over the whole thing. Denial was such an awful thing to suffer from. It didn't seem to know an end, or at least the end of it suddenly appeared in the form of a new day.

Pushing away from her knees, she rubbed her hands together and fidgeted about her room. Honestly she was trying to distract herself, and failing miserably. Tapping one hand against the other she paced from the window to the door, and back again before sitting down on the bed. Reaching down she picked up the pair of kitten heeled navy shoes she had bought along with her dress, and slipped them on. She slowly stepped in front of the mirror again and titled her head. She was assessing herself, she did look rather put together she had to admit. With a nod she plucked up her black jacket, handbag, now that she actually owned one, and exited the room, with one long wistful look sent its way. Standing in an empty corridor didn't ease her at all, noise, she decided. She needed to be around noise, or at least causing some.

Picking up whistling she walked along the corridor and rather quickly trotted down the stairs to the tune she was creating. "Ta da!" She held her arms out and smiled as confidently as she could. Her painted red lips, she was even for once wearing minimal makeup, started to fall all thanks to the looks she was receiving from both Charles and Hank. "What? What is it?" Her arms slowly fell back to her sides, her bag hitting her legs with a quiet thud as her coat sagged somewhat at her feet.

"You're staring." Hank decided to point out as he walked forwards away from Charles's side and towards her. Elsie looked doubtful yet smiled when he gave a nod of approval. "I think you'll pass."

"I'm not going for a job interview, Hank."

"I know, I know, I was merely stating that you look the part."

"Oh...ah, right, sorry...a little nervous I must admit." She laughed and smiled sheepishly up at him. Blinking slowly when a pair of hands appeared lightly on her shoulders, she looked forwards.

"You look beautiful."

"Not what I was going for."

"Yes, I know. You were going for smart and confident. But well...yeah."

"Yeah?" Else asked with raised eyebrows as she leaned forwards slightly.

Charles was rather aware to his fruitless ramble. Really he didn't totally know where he was going with it, but he sort of got carried away. Truthfully, he had never seen Elsie look so dressed up. That wasn't to say she didn't choose her every day clothes wisely and look good, far from it, but she just looked so different. When he let the thought dwell in his mind, he did point out the obvious that there's never been an occasion where she's needed to look like she did now. Her navy blue dress had clipped sleeves at the shoulders, it was straight fitting and honestly it fitted her very well. He'd be somewhat blind if he didn't notice that. Her shoes gave her enough height to put distance between the floor and herself, yet not too much height that she was looking down at everyone. He hadn't seen what she bought when they returned home from their outing last week. He did however ask where the money came from for her to buy her outfit. She had promptly said it was a parting gift from Raven, and that she hadn't asked where the money actually came from before he asked.