My Dear Violet

I sit with my legs crossed gently on a stool in my room, the wooden legs wrapped with dying violet flowers. Her hair is in my hands, three thin light brown pieces threaded over each other. I smile at her soft, warm voice telling me stories and feelings. I finish the braid, slipping a ribbon off of my vanity to tie it at the bottom.

Lilli twirls the braided strands, giggling quietly. "So fancy," she muses, standing to twirl her long skirt. The moonlight hits her face perfectly, making the edges glow, like her cheeks were dipped in stardust. I'm too focused on her beauty that I don't notice her soft pink lips pressing to my forehead, the corners tipped upwards into a smile.

I laugh, standing up and taking her hand and lifting her arm. She takes the hint and spins, falling into my pasty white arms. My undone hair falls over her face and we both laugh. I kiss her quickly, then pull my face away. My kisses are always fast and easy to pull from, as my fear of being caught doing anything a princess shouldn't is the one worry Lilli doesn't make dissapear. She reaches up to tuck the light blonde strands behind my ears, her cheeks a warm pink. 

"Did you bring your ukelele?" I ask, pulling her up and my arms away. I tug at my sleeves - my nightgown is barely less uncomfortable than my normal dresses. Lilli rolls the sleeves up, as she always remembers to do, before spinning on her heel to retrieve her ukelele.

She picks it up and plays a chord I don't know the name of, because I would never be allowed to play ukelele. Harpsichord or maybe piano only - they're more ladylike. For gentle women with pasty arms and white faces and no resentment for their mothers at all.

"I wrote a new song. Well, it's more like a poem, but maybe one day I'll sing it." Her fingers find new strings, her sightless eyes still in my direction. The thing is, and it's poetic really - she loves me for who I am, not because I'm beautiful. She doesn't even know what beauty is, or what I look like. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say, but Lilli's eyes can't behold anything.

"My dear Violet," she says, her voice ethereal and silky. "I fell in love with you, and you with me. Our love is white lilies in a field with indigo violets, every petal swaying in sync. The wind is a whistling song of affection, turning our faces towards each other, love on our lips with kisses and words. The trees above us murmur words of scorn and disappointment, but we don't hear them. Their branches cannot reach us."

She smiles and I'm glad she can't see my face, because the redness must be showing even through my layers of makeup. I pull her into a sudden hug and she yelps but leans into me, wrapping her arms around my back. I pepper her face with soft kisses, my red lipstick marking her peach skin. 

The wood of her ukulele presses against my stomach but I don't mind, the strings being played as I breathe. Lilli cups my cheek with her hand, a question on her tongue.

"Violet, do you want to run away?"