"To the Winter Palace we go!" Rosa shouted gleefully.

"Whoo!" I shouted back, waving my arm in the air.

Our bodies were currently hanging halfway out of opposite carriage doors as the horse clippity-clopped our way to (where else?) the Winter Palace.

Were people staring at us, you ask? Why yes, yes they were. But who cared about that? It was ten in the morning, I had no work the entire day (for the first time in so many months!!!! Thank you secretly-villainous-illegitimate-daughter-of-a-Duke!!!!!!), and we were going to go see a palace!

Heh. Perks of having a secret-but-recently-rediscovered illegitimate child of a High Duke as a best friend, am I right?

I ducked back inside and sat on the fluffiest carriage seats ever. I mean, it wasn't the first time I'd sat on this thing-- it had been quite a few times actually-- but it never got old, both this feeling and the carriage seats. It was like I was nobility itself!

Also, Rosa really needed to come back in before she actually tumbled out of this thing.

As if she had heard my thoughts, Rosa slid back into her seat next to me too with a glow of absolute content in her golden eyes. "We're almost there," she told me, a bit breathlessly.

I perked up.  "To the Winter Palace?"

"No, to Lady Mildred's."

"Oh," I said, tilting my head, "I thought we were meeting her there."

"Nope, we're carriage-pooling. For the sake of better horse rights," Rosa said, then cackled like mad.

"As always, I don't get it, but okay," I sighed.

Sure enough, we pulled up to a giant set of black metal gates, complete with intricately woven designs and guards standing at attention. I whistled-- those were some gates.

"See that one castle-looking thing in the distance?" Rosa pointed towards the horizon. I peered out and nodded. "That's their estate."

My jaw dropped. "What? That wasn't the Winter Palace?!" It was huge! It was intimidating! It was overlooking a huge expanse of land!

Rosa snorted. "As if that would be."

My mind was still reeling, trying to take all of this in, when the gates opened, and another carriage pulled by a horse clippity-clopped out. The carriage came to a stop, and the footman rushed to the door to open it and offer a hand, and that was the first moment I saw the Orchid of the Court, the infamously beautiful Lady Mildred of the House of Lindvall.

"Whoa," I breathed, as gloved hand was followed by dainty sleeves and deep red gown and wisps of silvery hair until finally, out emerged the entirety of the lady. "I've never seen anyone with that color hair before." Blonde was usually blonde, and silver was usually silver-- like a grandma's hair-- but she had this weirdest combination of both that when the light slid off her hair, it was practically glowing.

She raised her eyes and the greenness of it took me by surprise, and I finally understood why everyone called her the Orchid. Upon pale skin and light hair, the startlingly clear and lush green of her eyes drew me in like fly to a flower, irresistibly.

I blinked. Whoa, where had that come from? I'd never been so poetic my entire life! It almost felt like I'd been compelled to wax poetic. As expected of the Orchid of the Court, perhaps!¹Ah, the Beautiful Villainess Buff

Helped by a footman and with a butler following behind her, Lady Lindvall in her deep red dress began crossing over the small bit of distance between our carriages towards us.

"Ro! Help!" I hissed to Rosa, my eyes not leaving the coming Lady.

"What?" she whispered back.

"I think I forgot how to curtsy!"

She rolled her eyes. "Just do whatever! I do whatever all the time." I turned my eyes to her, and she pointedly did her so-fast-you-miss-it-if-you-blink curtsy like a pro.

Hm, that might not be too bad--

I slapped myself, whispering. "Filian, stop getting influenced by Rosa!"

Rosa gasped, offended.

Before she could say anything, though, Lady Lindvall approached and Rosa's footman opened our carriage door to us. I quickly got up and settled for a nice bow instead. Rosa did her whatever-curtsy, and then the Lady came in.

"Hello hello, Lady Lindvall!" Rosa said cheerfully, completely herself. "I'm so glad you've invited us to the Winter Palace to go see the place with you!"

I was close to panicking, since I'd never really been up and personal with an actual noble noble before (Rosa didn't count. She wasn't really human), but then I recalled two things: one, my handy dandy Customer Service Rules, and second, all those high society romance novels that Mother Lily had read to us ever since we were young. Yes, I could definitely do my impersonations now for good effect, I hoped.

I pasted my Customer Service smile on but smaller, to look kind of more... polite? I don't know. It seemed appropriate. "Yes, we're very glad to be here."

Lady Lindvall didn't respond, only looked at me for a long period of time. Hm, maybe I'd made a mistake?

"Oh, right, I forgot to introduce you too," Rosa said brightly. "Lady Mildred, this is my friend, Filian. You can call her Filly, or Fi."

No, Rosa, nobody else in this world calls me Filly or Fi except for you. I smiled apologetically to the Lady. "Please, call me Filian."

"--And this is Lady Mildred," Rosa continued.

"Nice to meet you," I said, doing a mini-bow again. "And please excuse me if I make any mistakes. I'm a plain commoner, so I really don't know much, I'm afraid." That sounded appropriate enough, didn't it? I thought the "I'm afraid" was a very nice touch.

Lady Lindvall only inclined her head, probably to show she understood.

Hm, why did this... unresponsiveness seem so familiar?

Meanwhile, Rosa blithely clapped her two hands together. "Great, we're all acquainted now! So, to immediately begin on my hour-long lecture on deductive logic, let us say that we have P and Q. Oh, right, you can't read. Hmm, then let's say we have a triangle and a square. Now, if we want to say that triangle and square are both existing at the same time, then you use-- mph!"

I smiled sweetly at Lady Lindvall, as if I hadn't just clamped my hand over Rosa's mouth like any right-minded person would do. "Is she always like this?"

She didn't respond. After waiting for a few more minutes, I confirmed, "She's always like this, isn't she?"

Though not an inch about her changed, I could somehow tell that she was affirming completely to my question.

I relaxed. Now I knew why this seemed familiar. I was trained in reading these kinds of people! Nobles? I didn't know a thing about them. But unresponsive people? Ha, I had gone through Lindent. Trained by a master, indeed.

Rosa yanked my hand off her mouth and glared at me. "Stop talking like I'm some kind of horrible lecturer at college that drones on and on about theories and ideas that nobody wants to hear about!"

"But that's exactly what you are," I said, feigning innocence. I hadn't ever been to college nor had been subject to any lectures of any kind except for Rosa's, but that sounded completely right.

Rosa gasped, offended for the second time.

"So, Lady Lindvall," I said, turning to the front to ignore the I am absolutely horrendously offended! face that Rosa was making at me. "How have you been doing this fine day?"

She stayed silent.

I nodded. "It is quite nice out today, isn't it?"

She stayed silent.

Laughing, I shook my head. "Oh, please, don't be surprised. I know someone who is rather more secretive than you are. It's very--"

"How are you doing that?" Rosa cut in.

Frowning, I turned to her. "That was rude."

"No, like, Filly," Rosa said, her eyes wide and leaning away from me. She seemed downright horrified to behold me in her sight. "She... she didn't move. She didn't say anything. How are you--"

I blinked at her. "But she did say it. With her eyes."

"Her eyes...?"

She definitely had-- at my first question, she had looked out the carriage window and up into the sky, and I'd just followed my gaze to where she was looking too. And at my second question, her eyes had returned back to me and widened just enough for me to know that she had probably been surprised.

But before I could explain myself further, Rosa flailed backwards, screaming, "Telepathy! Telepathy! My friend Filian has telepathic powers! Call the police! Call the guards! It's supernatural!"

I rolled my eyes at her. "Will you stop making a ruckus? I have been trained by the best. It's nothing that weird." I did a silent nod of acknowledgement to the Master of All Things Silent, Lindent the newsboy cap guy. Though we may never be friends again, I still owe you many things.

She, of course, ignored me.

I turned back to Lady Lindvall with an apologetic smile, staying prim and proper in my seat. "Please ignore her. She'll call down in a bit," I said, though Rosa was yelling out the window "911! Where are the reporters! Where are the X-Files! She's been taken! Taken, I tell you!"

I peered out the window-- thank goodness we weren't in the middle of a town or anything. That would've been quite awful! I turned back to the Lady, who seemed very calm and collected in the midst of all that noise.

"So, as we were saying," I continued loudly, completely ignoring the wails of "taken!" around us, "any plans for once we get to the Winter Palace?"

---

A/N: Clippity-clop!

Also y'all I gots me a Ko-Fi page! (because broke college student is broke) ehe if you have three nifty dollars to spare, feel free to guilt me into writing more B)