1781, NOLA.
She knew perfectly well what she was doing in this damned Crawfish town. She was trying to run, from what she swore to herself she’d never repeat. Her soul is on edge, it’s tainted. It’s wrong, twisted and mauled in a way it wasn’t before. Not physically, not really. But she had always survived somehow. It was her grand blessing or curse. Audrey, unlike her sister, Camille was not fair-haired or brilliantly lucky. Though she’d once sold her virginity as soon as she was old enough to wed, for the equivalent of 9,000 British pounds. A hefty sum. Quite a convincing lie if she must say so herself. For it was most certainly a lie. She hadn’t been virginal, or ‘virtuous’ in quite some time. She must have been 20 then. She was forever 30 now, for better or worse, it was 1781 now. She ought to be 31 or dead, but fate had other such ideas. Her first lay was at 16, a blonde village boy, charming enough, a wannabe poet. Her first kiss was at 14, a girl whom she teasingly kissed. After that, she stops remembering, and it gets foggy. It pays, but she is hollow, she thinks, like a pretty piece of porcelain. Pretty, hollow, and broken if pushed too far. Ought to be held softly and with much greater regard, but she wouldn’t know what that meant. Not for a decade at least. Ah well, no rest for the wicked.
