Black Crescent Bay

research including aquamarine

A/N:
No Fucking in this one guys. Don't get your hopes up.

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I forgot to ask if he could take it back. The tail, I mean. And the breathing under water and the webbed fingers.

It would've saved me a lot of worry the rest of the nights filming at the dock. I stayed far away from the water, hiding with my ass in the sand like a dog with its tail between its legs.

"Ms. Kestrel," Madame Karpe said multiple times over the days, "you wanna come over here and adjust this?"

I did, begrudgingly, and tip-toed across the rotten wood. I was annoyed that the dress on the lead STILL wasn't right. Her cup size was ever-changing, her waistline was aways either too low in an unflattering way or so high it shielded the cleavage she specifically requested I keep out so it could flap in the wind.

I spent more time adjusting her clothing then I did sewing the male lead's entire wardrobe. And, of course, that was MY fault. I couldn't exactly look her in the face and say, "Please ma'am, stop having a human body that bloats or loses its water weight or has tits that fluctuate or takes shallow breaths and then deep breaths, or anything at all really."

That wouldn't be right. And honestly it would make ME look like I wasn't skilled enough to put clothes on an ACTUAL human. People changed, their bodies changed day-by-day, only I was seriously struggling trying to keep up with hers.

It was the exhaustion. And my focus on everything else outside of class. I decided on the last day to take the high road and admit my incompetency.

"I'm sorry, Madame Karpe," I started off with an apology because I knew she'd appreciate it, "But I really can't keep up with this. I was wondering if I could take Byrtie as an assistant. I could really use the help."

Byrtie was the only other seamstress on set and the role was going to go to her before I applied. Then she went to hair and makeup with the other stylists.

She was as good as me, maybe even better at conceptualisation.

I was absolute tits and dicks at getting my ideas across, but somehow they always came through by the end. That's what won me the spot: the finished product. The very thing I was flunking at now. It was a wonder that Madame Karpe didn't demote me on the spot.

Instead she waved me off with a finger, barely paying any mind at all to my question. Byrtie walked over, and she explained it all for me. How I needed help, and she should've offered in the first place.

I apologized as soon as Madame Karpe walked away, "I didn't think to ask for help until now. Usually I can handle stressful situations like this, but recently it's been a bit too much."

She smiled and shook her head, "No, no, it's alrigh'. There's no harm in asking for help."

It was a gut punch to be true. I'd always thought I wanted to be a seamstress by myself during production season because that's what my mom did. The weight of the world of theater was on her shoulders, and I thought she liked it that way.

I realized then what should've been obvious. She never asked for help. She never wanted to burden others. She always suffered in silence and waited out the storm, hoping eventually the end product would come through and the stress would have been worth it.

While Byrtie kneeled beside me in the sand and adjusted the female lead's bustier for the third time, I directed the makeup department for the look we were going for on the male lead. Byrtie talked profusely about her life in the Irish theater before she transferred here.

While most of it was sentimentality about the brother she left behind and the drunken father that spent most of his nights at the bar since their mother died, something else she said struck a chord.