WHO: Rebecca Abercrombie and Winnifred Llewellyn
WHAT: Not smacking Winnie over the head with something heavy (yet)
WHERE: Some restaurant? St. Mungo's dining common? A PLACE WITH FOOD
WHEN: Backdated to last weekish.
STATUS: Finishing in comments because I fail!
"Ugh, let us not speak of it," Winnie told Rebecca as they sat down to their weekly luncheon during Rebecca's break. She absolutely did not want to talk about the total betrayal of Carys Llewellyn-Whatever-Her-Married-Name-Was and her own siblings against her. It was an event she would not let blacken her precious time spent with her oldest and dearest of friends.
She had salad, with respect to maintaining her girlish figure. Though, naturally, her attention was rapt on the current events of her friend's life, she could not help but feel Rebecca was mentioning an unnatural number of subjects pertaining to She-Who-Would-Remain-Unnamed and the Unfortunate Event That Would Not Be Spoken Of. An act of restrained violence, she stabbed a cherry tomato with her fork and bit down on it so hard, her teeth rattled on the tines of the utensil. "Yes, of course—do you know what that reminds me of? How it was in Hawaii. The tropics. So gauche in this day and age, honestly. But no, no, we ought not to dwell on that unfortunate creature for a moment longer."
There was nothing more to be said, of course.
"It does not bother me in the least," she added, taking a dainty sip from her goblet, which happened to go from nearly full to nearly empty when she set it down gently, the smallest of clangs following.
As she progressed throughout the meal, the topic did steer delightfully clear of The Witch and The Event, though when Rebecca mentioned the elopement that just occurred on their favorite WWN drama programme, she politely choked.
The last of the lettuce cleared away, and with neatly reigned-in disgust, she placed her fork down with the smallest of clatters and tossed the napkin lightly onto the table.
"—I mean, I'm family!"
But they would not speak of it, no.
A quick breath was let out of her nose as she was once again interrupted by Winnie’s tale of woe. Rebecca had been properly scandalized at the ordeal when her best friend had told her every sordid detail, but was now growing quite tired of it. Yes, she should have been invited, but Rebecca could not recall a single time when her cousin Carys’ name had been mentioned in a positive light by Winnie. If Rebecca and Euan had a wedding reception, it would have been dreadful to have those members of her family who did not approve of the marriage in attendance; in that sense, she could understand Winnie’s lack of invitation.
Not that she would ever say that out loud in fear for her life. Or her hair, she would be most fearful for her hair.
Rebecca dropped her eyes to her bowl to gain some of the composure lost at being interrupted, and then lifted her gaze with a sympathetic smile toward her best friend. Her best friend, she had to remind herself often when Winnie was in one of these snits.
“You should go straight to her mother.” Every pureblood woman, no matter how independent they claimed to be, was terrified of their much more proper pureblood mother, “I don’t know how she got away with it in the first place; I’m sure Mrs. Llewellyn will see to it that your cousin make it up to you.”
She swirled her spoon in her soup slowly, her mind beginning to drift again. Rebecca’s gaze began to lose itself in the liquid, “Perhaps a trip for the two of you, or a gift of some appropriate sort...”
With the lightest of scowls, Winnie folded her arms primly and looked down, quickly smoothing over the crease in her brow she saw in the dull reflection of her plate. She certainly didn't need premature wrinkles in addition to being unloved and ill-treated by all members of her family.
"She doesn't deserve me to give her any more attention than I already have," Winnie sniffed haughtily, fingers busily shredding her napkin in her lap. "I spoke to her sisters, my elder cousins. Would you believe she told her family I'd been invited, but I'd simply been unable to attend?" Her voice rose dangerously on the end of the sentence and she shook her head to tamp down on the hysteria. "Who does that? If you're going to be so ghastly and rude, have the decency to see it through!"
Not, of course, that she would ever dream of being so barbaric in return. Granted, she and Carys might not be the best of friends, or even really get along, but that was no excuse. Simply no excuse!
Winnie's hand shot forward before she really knew what she was doing, grasping Rebecca's in her own. "Am I some sort of social pariah? Blacklisted? I'm the last to know everything, hardly invited anywhere! Even my own best friend could not, for reasons beyond her control, inform me on similar developments." It still gave her a spear through the heart to think of.
"Not that it concerned me," she hastened to add belatedly, realizing it might be a sensitive subject for her friend, as her then-paramour was believed to be brutally murdered.
"Of course, the only wedding I've ever been invited to was Gabriel’s, and—with that shrew—" she broke off, closed her eyes, took a calming breath, and slowly opened them again. "Well, we know how that worked out."
Rebecca floundered, jumping slightly in her seat as Winnie grabbed at her. She felt her face heat up in embarrassment; her friend was never going to let her forget about the impromptu wedding. Rebecca just found it so silly to think about having a reception now, nearly two years after the fact. And---and even though that terrible Karkaroff had been captured, who knew if his allies were still out there? A big, lavish event would be like putting a brand new target on Euan’s back. Rebecca didn’t know what she would do if Euan was hurt again, or attacked, or---she’d already lived through his death once, she couldn’t do it again, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
“You went to your sister’s,” Rebecca pointed out, not in the kindest of tones, but more like stating a fact than simply trying to stop Winnie from obsessing over her cousin’s wedding. It was over, no one else seemed to be bothered by it but her, “And your brother’s.” Rebecca scrunched her nose, “Winnifred, I do think you’re exaggerating quite a bit, if I can recall...”
Her gaze sharpened ever so slightly, eyebrow raising as she waited for her friend’s retort. Rebecca had heard enough of the moaning, and was simply not in the mood today to take much more of the frustrating whines. She had taken yet another pregnancy test this morning and once again, just like all the others had, it had come up negative. Nothing the healers could give them to take was helping their situation, and it was really feeling like a lost cause.
“There are more important things in life than being invited to a party,” she snipped, looking back down at her soup because she could only be so stern with her friend.
