Asphodel

At the pace of Monday’s idle, sedate stroll, they made the trolley stop just as the car was getting ready to pull away, and they both hand to scramble to get a place on it. Fortunately, there was plenty of standing room.

“For the hill, the trolley is best, Lady Serraffield,” Monday said mildly. “If we tried to climb the whole way up to St. Muirgein's, we’d surely be dead by the time we made it to the top.”

The trolley began resolutely making its way up the steep hill, clicking all the way. Demi had the unsettling feeling that she was on a rollercoaster. She gripped her hand loop a little more tightly. Then she turned her thoughts to something that had been bothering her for some time.

“I understand the need for formality in certain circumstances, Miss Volkova,” Demi said, “But you really don't have to call me ‘Lady Serraffield’ absolutely all of the time.” She stopped suddenly as she came to a realization. She could not help feeling and looking a bit ashen. “It's not expected that I be called that at school, is it? By students? By professors? Please tell me it's not.”

“I'm afraid it is, Mitya,” the still smiling girl agreed pleasantly. “And I’m afraid you’ll just have to get used to it. Even if you delivered a heroic, inspiring speech at the moment of your introduction, and moved the whole student body to tears with your earnest entreaties to call you ‘just Demeter,’ most everybody would still call you ‘Lady Serraffield.’ And the people who didn't want to would be the ones you’d be wise to watch most closely,” she said, raising a slender finger. “Best to be wary of social climbers, Mitya.”

Demi felt somewhat called out by Monday’s accurate prediction of her first course of action, which would have certainly been an attempt to ditch the honorific as it pertained to her school life.

There’s definitely something keen behind that smile, she thought.

Her brows drew together as she tried to reason it all out. “Why wouldn't people call me Demi or Demeter if I asked them?”

She was honestly unsure why a heartfelt entreaty was destined to fail, as Monday suggested it would.

Her new equerry fluttered her hands. “Oh, don't let me keep you from making your speech about liberté, égalité, sororité if you're set on it,” she said mildly. “Certainly, your fans will enjoy it, if nothing else. They’ll clasp their hands over their bosoms,” and here she clasped her own hands over her ample bosom, “And say ‘that’s so like Lady Serraffield! Such humility!’”

Then Monday giggled again, apparently thoroughly entertained by her own impressions.

Demi was somewhat less entertained, likely because she was the butt of the joke. “What do you mean, ‘my fans?’ I don't know anyone at St. Muirgein's. How can I possibly have fans?”

She hoped it was just more of the flighty girl’s hyperbole.

But upsettingly, it did not seem to be.

Like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat, Monday suddenly produced half a dozen magazines. Demi was startled by this act of incredible prestidigitation, as Monday had seemingly pulled the magazines from nowhere. Demi was more startled when she realized that she was on the cover of three of the magazines, and this drove her astonishment over the impressive display of sleight of hand out of her head. The magazines that did not feature her as the cover girl seemed to instead feature speculative articles that listed her name on the cover in bold typeface.

They were all girls’ magazines, the sort that young teenagers and high schoolers read. Demi was so flabbergasted by this sudden and unexpected blanket of coverage that she did not know what to say.

(To be fair, the sort of magazines that she read most regularly were manga anthologies and Lolita bibles. Otherwise, her mother had subscribed to dozens of magazines covering video games, as well as a wide variety of other otaku pastimes, including cosplay, dolls, and model building. Even after her death, the magazine subscriptions had continued, and even now filled the shelves of the shuttered lab. The long and the short of it was this: Demi was not particularly familiar with the kinds of magazines that Monday was brandishing like the spread tail of a peacock. This made her sudden appearance on multiple magazine covers that much more impactful to her. It felt very unreal. This was a world that she had very little experience with, both by circumstance and by choice. She hadn’t even delved into it during her research into high school life and high school girls, having been content to immerse herself in the lives of fictional high school students, rather than engage with the extant examples provided by reality.

Therefore, she was having a difficult time processing what Monday had revealed to her.)

Fortunately, Monday was not quite so stupefied.

“You see, Mitya, even if you don't know a soul at St. Muirgein’s, the girls at St. Muirgein’s know quite a lot about you,” she said with a flourish, adroitly tucking all of the magazines but one under her arm, and flipping the remaining magazine open so Demi could see for herself.

“The mysterious and elusive Lady Demeter Serraffield finally comes to the mother of all Cities!” Demi read aloud slowly. “Lady Demeter Serraffield will soon join the ranks of Metropoly’s young and beautiful elite. By law, the young mistress must be a resident of the City by her sixteenth birthday, or forfeit her title and position. This magazine has received exclusive information that she will be attending St. Muirgein's Above-the-Forest starting this autumn term. She will be a legacy student at that institution, following her mother’s distinguished record. The young lady herself is something of a mystery, although it is known that she loves the out-of-doors. Reared as a country aristocrat on a vast family estate, she has made few public forays into the City, and is little known among her peers. This beautiful debutante’s coming out is sure to be the event of the season.”

Demi looked up blankly.

“Are they all like this?” she asked. There was quite a bit more of the article, and it featured several candid pictures of her on the grounds of Forest Home and in High Sylvia, the small village near the estate. There was even a picture of her dressed smartly in her Forest Girl’s senior ranger uniform.

It was somehow acutely embarrassing.

“Oh no,” Monday said, shaking her head, and Demi was momentarily relieved, until the other girl continued. “Some of them are much better than that.” She gauged Demi’s expression. “Much worse?” she wondered aloud thoughtfully. “Much something,” she decided at last. “The best ones speculate about your love life!”

“Why are people interested in this?” Demi wondered in confusion.

“Because Mitya is an authentic celebrity! A real life princess! At St. Muirgein's, this will inevitably be the event of the year! You’re a beautiful and mysterious transfer student! Everyone at school already loves you, and they’ll no doubt be vying with one another to become your bosom friend. You are as glamorous as a movie star,” Monday answered easily. “More even, because there are more movie stars than there are heirs to the Curia.”

“But I haven't done anything to be admired for,” Demi protested. “I've only just arrived!”

“And already been made squire to one of the twelve peers,” Monday noted with a smile. “The ominous dragon who never takes on squires — the Iron Duke of the Iron Garden!”

“You’re well informed,” Demi said shrewdly.

“I’m your equerry,” Monday pointed out. “I have to be well informed to be useful to you.”

Demi sighed and decided to let the point go for the moment. There were other things that were more immediately worrying at hand.

“I know that my rank guarantees some notoriety,” Demi said slowly, “It’s just, this is far beyond my expectations. I’m not sure how to feel about it.”

“That’s because my sweet and lovely Dimusha was raised in seclusion, like an adorable little nun,” Monday said decisively. “This is just how the City is. The social pages of the teen magazines will follow everything you do, everyone you see, everything you wear. They’re hungry to show how royalty lives, because it captures people, it enchants them. It enthralls them. Everything that used to be private is now going to be public. There’s nothing you can do to avoid it, so it's best to learn how to shape your publicity in your favor.”

As suddenly as they had appeared, the magazines were gone. Monday’s sleight of hand skills were nothing short of astonishing.

But Demi felt so heavily weighed down by all these new revelations that she did not have the energy for enthusiastic applause.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to spin absolutely everything I do,” Demi said tiredly. “That sounds exhausting.”

“You’ll learn,” Monday predicted. “It's sink or swim in the City. Lucky for you, I am an excellent life guard.”

“Lucky for me,” Demi echoed with slightly less enthusiasm.

“You’ll have your fans, whether you like it or not,” Monday said philosophically. “Both at St. Muirgein's and in the City at large. Millions of girls will idolize you. There’s nothing you can do about that. You’re a fairy tale princess come to life. And it's more than that too. There’s another reason people will be reluctant to call you by name rather than title. The power that you will one day wield is legitimately terrifying,” she said. “The girls at school in the Uppercity all have well-to-do parents: businessmen, doctors, professors, officers. They have had privileged and comfortable lives filled with all the luxuries that citizenship affords. But you, Mitya, you are something different. You are the heir of one lord and the squire to another. You have rights to walk in the Curia of Lords. St. Muirgein’s is honored to have you. You are our forest princess,” she said with another flourish of her hands, as if she were introducing Demi on stage. Then she giggled again. “It's very convenient for us that you appear to look and act the part of a princess. The girls would be terribly disappointed otherwise — although I know from experience that they would get over it.”

Demi frowned slightly and tilted her head to the side. “You told me to be wary of people who didn't call me Lady Serraffield,” she pointed out. “And you're definitely not calling me Lady Serraffield.”

Demi wasn't quite sure how she felt about the varied nicknames Monday was so keen on giving her.

“You will discover that I am an exception to nearly every rule,” Monday said as she dreamily drifted back and forth on her feet, as if she were being gently swept by the movement of an unseen sea. “I am sure you will find others,” she added. “Please call me ‘Momon!’”

“Ara,” Demi said, caught off guard, and slightly flushed.

“Ara ara,” Monday echoed mildly, a peaceful and radiant smile on her face.

I have a feeling we could just go on with this indefinitely, Demi realized.

She had entered into a potentially endless loop of ara aras.

She was still adjusting to Monday’s pace. It was remarkable how quickly this girl moved from serious social advice to extremely silly, featherbrained behavior.

But it’s probably most awkward because it feels like looking in a mirror, Demi realized.

Still, she wasn’t quite ready for ‘Momon.’ She needed to mentally prepare herself.

“Are you sure I can't just call you Monday?” she asked, shifting a little on her feet.

Monday let out a dramatic sigh, and seemed to deflate utterly and Demi felt bad for having not indulged her. She was about to fold to her new equerry’s request when the other girl was suddenly as sunny as a daffodil again.

“If that's how you’d like to handle it, Mitya, that's fine with me,” she said with a relaxed smile. “After all, I have the long future of our everlasting friendship to convince you to call me Momon,” she said, throwing her arms around Demi in a moving sisterly hug.

Demi expected the hug to run its course, but Monday apparently had different ideas on what constituted the appropriate amount of time to hug a person that she'd just met, and Demi began to be uncomfortable as she turned her head from inside Monday’s embrace and realized that a number of other school girls and commuters were watching them as if they were breaking news.

“Ah, Monday,” Demi began, mildly embarrassed. “People are looking at us.”

Monday giggled as she snuggled against Demi alarmingly, rubbing her cheek against the top of Demi’s head. “Of course they're looking at my lovely Dimusha. It's because she’s a beautiful princess!”

“I really don't think that’s the reason,” Demi answered flatly. During the course of the hug she had gotten alarmingly well acquainted with Monday’s expansive chest. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience, by any means, but Demi could not help but feel that the other girl was leading her around by the nose.

“Well,” Monday sang out. “What else would they be looking at?” she wondered aloud, snuggling Demi again.

Being crushed into Monday’s chest was one thing, but having her own self petted and patted was quite another.

“Ah, Monday, please be careful of where you're touching me,” Demi said, squirming, he flush rising on her cheeks so that her ears burned.

“But I am being veeeeeeeery careful, Dimusha,” Monday giggled.

Demi sighed. It seemed like Monday had a catlike personality. The more something squirmed and wriggled, the more she wanted to pat at it. Getting more embarrassed was likely to spur Monday on. The best thing to do was to play dead.

And so Demi did just that. She played dead, and went limp in Monday’s arms.

Monday Volkova had not been expecting such a tactic, and so they both almost went spilling over, right onto the floor of the trolley. Fortunately, Monday managed to catch a hand loop, and Demi fell back over her arm, executing a perfect swoon.

Together they made the sort of scene that might have been a key panel in a yuri manga. This development was enough to make even Monday mildly embarrassed, because she had been caught so off guard.

After a moment, Demi fluttered her eyelids, her lashes thick and dark, and drew her hand to her mouth, saying. “I’m terribly sorry, Monday. I guess I’m feeling a little faint this morning.” Then with practiced ease, she shifted her weight and easily extricated herself, rolling out of Monday’s arms. As a matter of precaution, she moved a comfortable step away, just out of the range of Monday’s roaming hands.

If the other girls on the trolley hadn’t been looking at them before, they certainly were now, but Demi had resolved to herself that it was an acceptable sacrifice of dignity.

Monday had been so startled enough by this turn of events that she didn't react immediately, but simply hung there frozen. She didn’t remain frozen for long, however and quickly recovered her balance and her mild, comfortable smile. As she did, she began to giggle.

“Mitya is very wily,” she said in admiration. “I like that.”