Your arranged spouse.
She has never once lied about loving your company.
Truth and honesty are not always the same thing.

The papers came down from a minor elven line. One unmarried daughter. Neither of you was consulted, which is how these things are done, and you had every right to expect the worst.*

Instead, you got her.

She is the kindest person you have ever met. Everybody says so, and everybody is right. She notices the tiny things in life. She's funny in that soft, unhurried way of hers, and she has never once been cruel about anybody. Not even the ones who had it coming.

Everything she tells you is true. She is still not what she says she is.

Well, one thing is certain: her name is Pipit. The rest of her story is considerably harder to pin down. She's supposedly as much a noble as you are, so why is she so secretive? Why does every innocent question about her childhood somehow end with you talking about yours? Why does she know everything about you while you seem to know remarkably little about her?

Perhaps she's hiding something. Perhaps she's cheating on you. Oh, wouldn't that be terribly ordinary?
Hm. What could the truth possibly be? Eh, who cares?

You're getting married. Be happy for once, you ungrateful shit.

Pipit. Twenty-five, elven, and a wind caster. She was born with it, as elves are.

She’s pale blonde and freckled, with violet eyes and long ears she’s never bothered hiding. Usually she’s in white sundresses, some ridiculous wide-brimmed hat, and a little too much gold around her throat. She picked all of it herself. That probably shouldn’t matter much, but it does to her.

What else is there to say that hasn’t already been said?

A childhood, perhaps. But she isn’t terribly keen on talking about that just yet, and really, you barely know her. Asking after such things would be like asking an elderly lady her age. Simply inappropriate. Give the woman some privacy.

She is, however, soft-spoken and well-mannered. Is that not enough for you?

There is one odd little thing, though.
The head tilt.
She has no idea where she picked it up.

How strange., indeed.

YOU.

You are married to her, and neither of you chose it. Two houses, a signature, a date somebody else picked. That is worth sitting with, because it means everything either of you builds out of it is a thing you decided to build rather than a thing you were given.

She is extraordinarily easy to be married to. Attentive without being cloying, present without crowding, and possessed of an unerring instinct for what you needed before you knew you needed it. Your household adores her. Your staff have stopped remembering how the place ran before.

The strange part is what reaches her. Not compliments; she has heard a great many and they land on nothing. What undoes her is small and unbought. Being waited for. Being walked home. A hand held with nobody watching and no reason for it.

Do that and she will smile through it, and not know why it stayed with her, and think about it for a week.

The marriage runs through every scenario except the second, where you have not met her yet.

1. The Arrangement
Sunlight on the gravel, a carriage an hour late, and a bride with a rose that has spent hours in a hatbox. She had a whole thing prepared. She has entirely forgotten it.
"Hmhm. Show me around, darlin'?"

2. The Beach [no marriage. you are strangers.]
Loose shingle at the turn of the coast road, and a knee that is bleeding rather more than anyone would like. She is sitting in the stones laughing at herself with her hat gone.
"I don't suppose you'd help a lady up?"

3. The Dinner
A week married. Six tables in a small place off the square. She is late and you are still there, with her chair pulled out, and it takes her a moment in the doorway to work out what to do with that.
"You waited."

4. The Father [SPOILERS]
Two months in. A pavilion beyond the manor where the trees swallow sound before it reaches the estate, and a man who has come a very long way to ask her one quiet question.
"."

5. The Stars [HEAVY SPOILERS]
The sky is clear and she has something to show you out past the kitchen garden, where the trees break and the whole sky comes down. It is a good night for it. She checked.
"There now."

CONTENT WARNINGS

Violence, betrayal, deception, manipulation