Angel

            Faintly in the distance she heard the church bell ring, a noise which more often than not gave Amy a twinge of despair, not hope. It was of no surprise that the noise of the Family's gathering obscured the church bell--almost everything else in this city was obscured and overshadowed by the Family's endeavors. Tina, for instance, should have been well on her way down to the docks, but instead was stuck here. Amy wasn’t sure where Tina was, but only Angelina was here right beside her. The two had been inseparable all this night.

            Amy glanced out a window to see the darkness settle upon the town. She hoped to spy the approaching carriage and the evening would begin to move to its end instead of the continuing, restless waiting. As the glass darkened her own reflection appeared. She was pleased with her presentable plain-ness. She was pretty enough to neither stand out above the opulence nor seem a miss-fitting, base creature amongst the cruelly beautiful. First off, her face was nicely rounded, not long. Second, her nose was also nicely rounded and not so sharply pointed, like her “relatives”.

            Amy glanced from the reflection back to the mass of bodies, squinting to make the details blur and the hard edges and tense faces melt. Each one of them feared the faux-pas that loomed in the desperate pauses.

            It was too late. The guest of honor had not arrived, not sent word, and everyone else felt like fodder for the gnashing teeth of the Family's fury. Amy felt sorry for them but Angelina felt nothing.

            Amy glanced back to her lone reflection. She felt too tall for her age, but she wasn’t gawky by any means. Her hair was in a tight, thick braid and even though she couldn't see in the reflection the rich, light and dark brown color, she knew it was there. She knew a few of things that others didn't see, like the silky scarf she had underneath her dress that tickled her when she walked a certain way.

But Angelina knew a lot, almost everything as far as Amy could tell. She knew how to braid hair and how to send Amy away to safety at the right time and how to stand up to bullies. Angelina also knew adult things that Amy didn’t, like the fact that the vast array of exotic food that was presented to the guests had come at the cost of servants being only given half their normal food for the week gone by and the week to come, and the fact that the excuse given them about the extravagant cost was a lie, for the procurer of the goods had never and would never leave the grounds to spend his salary. Angelina knew lots of things Amy didn’t.