My Selection

Chapter 11

"Five more! I thought we were nearly finished!" I heard Elisa exclaim. She rested her eyes on my and they softened. "Well, if it is Olivia and her friends I guess we could make an exception." I smiled, but saw Fiona scowl on Elisa's other side.

"Five Selected just arrived! I need five teams stat!" Elisa called over to another room, while directing us to sit in large red velvet chairs with gold embroidery on them. The hallways in the Palace were magnificent. They were covered with engraved wood gilded in the most luminescent gold. The walls were bedecked in mirrors and gold and the ceiling was painted with rosy-cheeked cherubim and and ladies swathed in silk.

They reminded me of us. We were 35 young ladies here to be on display, to be pleasing to the eye for the Prince. We were his petty toys, but I couldn't complain. The Prince was providing me with a roof over my head and food in my family's stomaches. That was all I could ask.

There was a lot of commotion happening in a room across the hall from where we were sitting, and I could hear much blowing and chattering. Elisa kept looking impatiently over at the doorway and muttering under her breath how we were all so behind schedule. I wished it weren't my fault, but it was. I was the one that strayed from the red-velvet covered walkway and talked to that little girl. So the blame was on me.

After passing a relatively short time joking and laughing with Lydia, and being glared at by Fiona and Ginger, a young frazzled woman appeared out of the room. "Miss Elisa, there are five chairs available, ma'am." She bobbed a curtsey and hustled out of our sight.

"Now, Ladies, your time as a Selected has officially begun." She threw open the doors to the mysterious room and my breath was stolen out of my throat as my eyes grasped what was in front of us.

A large rectangular room was laid before us. Two rows of six chairs lined the center of the room, with each chair situated next to a washbasin and in front of a large, lit up mirror. There were four people standing next to each station and Elisa directed each of us to a particular station. "Ginger: Station 6 Right, Lydia: Station 5 Right, Bellania: Station 4 Right, Fiona: Station 2 Left, and Olivia: Station 4 Left." We each ran off to our stations, me going almost all the way to the end of the line.

I was greeted by four smiling faces, all female. They immediately put me in my chair and pulled the chair over to the washbasin. The women introduced themselves as Maia, Mia, Leah, and Pia. I giggled. How was I supposed to keep their names straight? Maia was in charge of my makeup, Mia was in charge of my hair, Leah was in charge of my style, and Pia was in charge of my nails.

Mia began by pouring a sharp smelling substance into my hair and letting it sit. As I was waiting for her to come back to continue with the next step of the procedure, I looked around the room and began to soak it all in. Besides for the 12 beauty stations lining the center of the room, there were many Chinese folding screens scattered about the edge of the room.

Although the room was littered with multiple beauty mechanisms, I could tell that it was not a beauty salon full-time. There were baseboard moldings, chair rail moldings, and crown moldings, all done in white plaster in the most elegantly detailed way. There was a fireplace on the West wall of the room, and there were elegantly embroidered chaises and couches dispersed throughout the room. It seemed to be a lounge room, but I wasn't sure.