In what seemed like an endless cycle doomed to repeat itself, Lina woke up at her desk with sunlight streaming through the window and a heavy hand knocking on the door. Her neck ached and drool pooled under her cheek where she’d been using a part as a pillow. Apparently, a part related to the air systems, since there was a vent with a grate that left lines across her face.
Lina groaned and twisted her head to the side, rolling her shoulders against the stiffness. She looked over her shoulder longingly, towards the bed. It was such a nice-looking bed, so soft and comfortable. It was a shame that it seemed she’d never actually use the darn thing.
The knock vibrated the door again and Lina pulled herself to her feet, yawning. “Yeah, yeah, I’m comin—whoa!” The moment she opened the door, she was nearly bowled over by a trio of people barging in, bringing with them a rack of clothes, another rack of accessories, and an armload of overstuffed bags.
“Oh, would you look at this mess,” one person said, looking around with a sneer. She had close-cropped hair that was a bright shade of orange and a tiny pointed face with an upturned nose.
“Got our work cut out for us,” said another. He was tall and thin, draped in a loose-fitting suit of eggplant fabric with a shiny bald head.
“I don’t know if we have enough time for this,” said a third. A small, plumper woman with a riot of black curls framing her face.
“Well, I’m not going to be the one to tell Farita that,” said orange-hair.
“We won’t have to tell her anything if we get to work,” said the bald man.
Lina cleared her throat, louder than necessary and all three turned to her. “Um… mind telling me what’s going on?”
The two women ignored her, setting to work clearing off her desk and dining table, picking up things with the tips of their fingers and glaring at them like everything was covered in foul-smelling slime. The bald man stepped forward, his hands clasped in front of him.
“Farita sent us to prepare you for the royal birthday party.”
Lina frowned. “That’s not until tonight. It’s barely morning.”
“And we’re going to need all the time we have,” snarked the curly-haired girl.
The bald man gave her a long-suffering look before turning back to Lina. “There is a lot of preparation to do and we should get started right away. I’m Terrance, that’s Emily and Greta,” he said, indicating curly hair and then orange hair.
“Okay, but I have other things to do— Please don’t touch that!” She raced across the room to snatch a cavern piece from Emily and set it down gingerly. “These things are very sensitive, you can’t just—” She jumped in front of Greta to stop her from tossing another thing across the room.
Finally, Lina sighed. “How about I clean up and you… do something else?”
Greta huffed and rolled her eyes. “I guess I could unpack my supplies.”
“Great, do that,” Lina said, taking another part from her and putting it away carefully. If she didn’t keep an eye on them, they’d ruin all the work she did while up late last night.
Last night… She’d figured something out, but wouldn’t know if she was right or not until she had a chance to go back to the cavern and test it. There was enough scrap down there to rebuild the hull of a ship, and if she could piece everything together inside of it like she had with the music box then maybe… But she couldn’t worry about that until after the birthday party. Maybe if she was lucky it would be her going away party, too.
Emily and Greta started unpacking bags and bags of hair supplies, makeup, and shoes. So many shoes that Lina was sure there weren’t enough feet in all of Mabnoa to fill them. Meanwhile, she tidied up and did her best to shield her projects from their chaotic forces. She’d hardly finished clearing off the table when Terrance grabbed her by the wrist and shoved her behind a changing screen he’d set up, tossing dress after dress over the top.
“Start trying those on. We’ll need to make a selection and do all the alterations while you’re in hair and makeup.”
“I—” She started to ask if all of this was really necessary, but she already knew the answer. People in Mabnoa seemed to value all this pageantry and nonsense. For someone who’d never even had real clothes, it seemed very silly to Lina. But she knew that arguing was a fruitless endeavor and endured the hours of primping and poking and prodding at the hands of the trio.
By late afternoon, she didn’t recognize herself. When it had been time for the ball, she’d only been given a dress and the rest of her was no different than any other day, but this time…
This time she looked like a totally different person. Lina gently patted the smooth coils of hair, twisted and artfully arranged on top of her head. She didn’t know how they’d managed to get it to stay up there, or how they managed to make it look so shiny and perfect — like something out of a magazine — but they had.
And her face, too. Nearly unrecognizable. Lina had never given any thought to her looks — what was the point when she was the only one of her kind and the only person she ever talked to was her mom? — but since coming to Mabnoa, she’d been confronted with the fact that she wasn’t like the others. She wasn’t as poised and polished. She didn’t know how to make herself presentable, and on more than one occasion, someone had told her about grease on her forehead or dirt on her cheek, exceedingly embarrassed for her. Lina herself never felt all that embarrassed about it, though she knew she should.
But tonight was going to be different. Because Emily, Greta, and Terrance had made her a princess. Her eyelids shimmered gold and whatever they’d rimmed her eyes with made them pop, vibrant and big. And underneath the dirt and grime of a mechanic, Lina had recently acquired freckles, the sparest dusting of them crossing the bridge of her nose. She’d never seen enough sun before for freckles, but she liked them. Everyone else here seemed to have them and seeing that she did too helped her feel like maybe she belonged more than she felt most days.
They’d even given her jewelry, in the form of a big, sparkling gemstone hanging from a dainty chain. It glittered right above her chest, above the neckline of the one-shouldered lilac dress that flowed to the floor like water.
“Didn’t think we’d be able to do it,” Greta said, grinning at the other two.
“Psh,” Terrance said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You knew we could. We’re the best.”
“Hopefully not too good,” Emily added, the worry creasing her brow doing nothing to temper her huge grin. “She might show up the princess herself, looking like this.”
Lina’s mouth opened in a protest, her eyes wide. “Oh no, I didn’t want to— I don’t—”
“Oh, honey, she’s just teasing,” said Terrance, waving his hand again. “You look gorgeous and everyone at that party is going to wish they could be you — including the princess.”
Lina pressed her lips together and looked at herself in the full-length mirror again, smoothing her palms over her skirt, wondering why they were suddenly so damp. “I don’t want all of that… I just want to help Suriah celebrate.”
“You can do both,” said Emily, still grinning. Greta just nodded dutifully behind her.
A knock on the door interrupted Lina’s worrying and she turned quickly, stumbling over the hem of her skirt. A hand shot out to steady her and Terrance said, “Easy there.”
“Wouldn’t want to rip,” said Greta. Emily’s smile had melted into a look of horrified shock as her eyes kept darting down to the bottom of the skirt where Lina had tripped.
Lina stuttered, trying to shake off that look. “I’m sorry, I just—” She started to pull towards the door, but Terrance’s grip was unyielding. Too tight to pull away from.
“No need to rush. That’s how accidents happen,” he said, his voice holding an edge Lina hadn’t heard before.
“Right,” she said, swallowing, her eyes going back to the door as another knock echoed through. “Can I answer it if I promise to go slowly?”
His grip relaxed, but Lina still felt a fist squeezing her lungs. She couldn’t wait to get away from these three. As much as she appreciated their hard work in making her a suitable guest, they’d never see eye-to-eye on most things. They just came from different worlds. These people came from a world where a ripped dress was a tragedy. An accident. In Lina’s world, dresses weren’t even really a thing. How could you possibly reconcile that?
The fist around her lungs loosened a bit when she opened the door to find Farita.
“I was just stoppin’ by to see if you’d finished that— Well, look at you!” she exclaimed, pushing her way into the little apartment, which was now starting to feel very cramped. The space was meant for someone living on their own, and an acceptable size for hosting the occasional guest, but right now she had four extra people crammed in and she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
“If you aren’t prettier than a blossom in the moonlight…”
“Thanks,” Lina said quickly, her face already heating up. “I finished the music box last night, it’s over here.”
“We’ve done all we can,” said Emily.
“She’s in your hands now,” said Greta to Farita.
“If she doesn’t destroy the dress before you get there, it’ll be a miracle,” she heard Terrance mutter under his breath. But she didn’t care, because the three of them trickled out of her front door and she finally let out the breath she’d been holding all day long.
She slumped forward while searching for the music box and just breathed in and out in long, steady breaths. Maybe this would all be over soon, and she could go home. Where dresses and makeup didn’t matter. Where she didn’t have fancy parties to attend and wasn’t friends with royalty.
If friends was even the word for it anymore. She didn’t know what they were. It was weird. Could you just stop being friends with someone because they didn’t talk to you, even if you weren’t sure it was on purpose? It was something she’d never been faced with before.
Farita’s heavy, yet gentle, hand settled on Lina’s spine in between her shoulder blades. “There, there. I know this is all a bit much for you,” she said, rubbing soothing circles on Lina’s bare back. “I know it’s overwhelming and feels like too much, but you’re doing a great job. And you really do look incredible. You’re going to be the envy of everyone there.”
Lina fished the music box from the pile of things she’d had to set aside for the makeover crew. It was going to take forever to reorganize all of it. “Here,” she said, offering it to the older woman. She turned the key a few times and the melody began to play.
Farita smiled at it and took it from Lina before setting it down on the desk and taking her by the shoulders. “I mean it.”
Lina sighed. “I know you do. And I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but I don’t want to be the envy of anyone. I just want to go home. I don’t want to go to parties and dances and not know what to do or what to say or who’s important or any of that. I just like fixing things and wearing my normal clothes and not having to worry about whether my face is clean before someone comes knocking on my door.”
Farita wrapped Lina in her arms and squeezed her tight. “You know, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. If you want to stay home tonight, the princess will understand.”
Lina sighed and shook her head. “No. It’s her birthday and I want to be there… It’s just…”
“The prince?”
Lina’s gaze shot up, her eyes going wide. “What?”
Farita chuckled and tutted, shaking her head. “You really think I’m that blind? The way you two look at each other? How moony-eyed he got over you when he brought you in and wouldn’t leave your side? I may be old, sweetheart, but I’m not dumb. And I’m certainly not blind. So what’s been going on?”
Lina shook her head. “Nothing.”
Farita frowned, but what else was she supposed to say?
“But that’s the problem. I haven’t heard from him in a week. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. It was a stupid thought, obviously.”
“You quit that right now,” Farita said, wagging a finger at her. “I’ll not have any of that defeatist attitude here. Now, I can’t tell you what’s going on with Bain because I don’t know, but I do know that sitting here and worrying and sulking about it isn’t going to fix anything.”
“I don’t even know if it can be fixed, Farita,” Lina whined.
“Then you do the only thing you can do.”
“What’s that?” Could she be so lucky that the older woman would have the magic answer for her? Mentally, she crossed her fingers.
“You go to that party and have yourself a good time with the princess and don’t think about her brother at all. Just enjoy yourself. You said it yourself, you’ve never been to a birthday party. It’s supposed to be fun!”
She nodded slowly, her hopes deflated. “Yeah.”
“I mean it, now. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen with the prince is a problem for another day. Today is about celebrating the princess’s birthday.”
Lina nodded again, this time with more conviction. She swallowed and nodded again. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I’ve been too busy worried about myself and my problems that I forgot this is all about Surie.”
“And,” Farita nodded, her expression turning pinched with mock offense, “you didn’t even notice my new dress.”
Lina laughed. “I’m sorry Farita. How could I have been so insensitive? You look magnificent.”
“Thank you,” she chirped, primping her hair for effect. “Come on, it’s time to go. Don’t want to be late.”
Lina nodded and scooped the music box off her desk before heading out the door, linked arm-in-arm with Farita.