Fledged

Chapter One: Plots and Plans

 It had been a delightfully dreary morning. Rain had poured from the heavens in a most enthusiastic torrent, and Emmeline had spent the majority of the morning lying on the roof.

            She had always been able to think better up high. In trees in the country side, playing on a swing at the pinnacle of velocity, climbing a lamppost and sitting at the top, daring the constables to just come up and get her.

            The clamor of engines and the shouts of people selling their wares and the steam rising from the chimneys and the turrets was a welcome atmosphere to help her think properly. The slightly thinner air was good for the soul, she said.

            But from inside the house, she caught the gist of a muffled shouting.

            Someone was yelling for her.

            She sighed, but lingered on the roof a moment more, shivering with pleasure as the chill soaked into her bones. She hated to leave such glorious weather, but if she didn’t answer soon, Mother would send up some poor maid to fetch her, and all of the maids detested getting their careful curls even damp.

            They hissed at her like angry cats for the rest of the day.

            So Emmeline ducked into the house, dripping wet, and trotted down the carpeted hall. She scurried into a “supply closet”.

            Back in the old days, it had been full of brooms and mops and cleaning solutions, but it had been drastically modified and modernized. Now, the room had been stripped of the carpets and tools it had used to be the home to, and was full to bursting with gears, steam, and complex controls for different things around the Pyne Estate Manor.

            The steam was pleasantly warm after the chilly rainfall, and as Emmeline changed her clothes, (she always kept a spare set of attire hidden somewhere in this closet for just such an occasion,) she relished the feeling of evaporated water on her skin.

            “Mistress Emmeline!” someone yelled.

            She rolled her eyes, which looked gray because of the overcast sky today, and shoved on some fancy shoes as she wrestled into a dress. She fastened the corseted bodice with some difficulty, clenching her teeth as the voice grew more close and frantic.

            Finally, with a final bow at the end of the blasted strings, Emmeline burst from the closet and whirled around the corner, nearly mowing a maid over.

            “Ah, there ya are, Miss!” the maid cried with obviously great relief, smoothing the ruffles on her apron and grinning up at Emmeline. “The ’ole staff has been looking’ fur ya! Ya’d bes’ be ge’in alon ’fore the Madam ’as a fit! Righ’ fumin’, she was! Be’er run, Miss! ’Oppin’ won’ do ya no ’arm!”

            Emmeline was already halfway down the hall when the maid called for her to run, and she did. Even arriving covered in a sheen of sweat with her hair like a nest of young pigeons would be better than making her mother wait a minute more than she already had.

            Emmeline silently cursed the corseted dress.

            The Pyne Estate Manor wasn’t really an Estate, and neither was it on a Manor. Emmeline privately considered that calling her parents’ house “Pyne Estate Manor” was just a pretentious and gloating way of stating that Madam Pyne was filthy rich and loved to roll in finery.

            Emmeline dodged into another “supply closet”. This one had been modified to tick and hiss as well, in a way that sent delighted goosebumps across both of Emmeline's arms.