Collateral Damage (Kaylor)

Chapter Four

Taylor can't even explain to herself why she's decided to extend her time with the princess considering how she's been treated by her for the majority of the night. She tells herself it isn't for as shallow as a reason that her deep emerald eyes are hypnotic to look at, or that her long neck and graceful walk are so easy to admire, and it's definitely not because she wants to overcome the challenge of seeing this girl smile again and maybe even being the reason for it.

After all, Taylor barely knows Karlie, but maybe it wouldn't hurt to try and change that. It has been a horrible first impression thus far, but Taylor felt something shift while sitting beside that frozen Hyde Park pond.

The first thing they do when they walk inside the warm palace is take their shoes off. Taylor has thought that her feet in heels can handle anything the world decides to throw at her at this point in her life, but the journey along those back alleys has changed her mind. It's a sweet relief to set her bare feet on flat, carpeted surface. There's something that feels a bit odd about walking bare foot along the magnificent red wall to wall carpet in as grand a room as this greeting hall, but she follows Karlie's lead. As impressive of a structure that this place it is, it is only home to the princess.

"Are you hungry?" Karlie asks, as she begins walking off without waiting for Taylor to follow. Taylor has come to realize it's a bad habit of hers. Whether it's purposeful or not Taylor has yet to figure out.

"Ah...I mean, did you forget about the feast that was just served here?" Taylor asks with a laugh, thinking that the last thing she wants to do now, or any time soon, is eat more food than she already has this evening.

"I was hiding in the bathroom," Karlie replies.

"Oh, right," Taylor remembers.

Karlie leads them up a different staircase than the one Taylor had gone up before. The staircase is also carpeted with that bright royal red, and when Taylor arrives to the top of the staircase she's impressed to find that the long extended hallway that goes about as far as her eye can see is carpeted as well. It seems like every flat surface in the palace has this red carpeting. She wants to walk down the hallway slowly and enjoy the decoration, but Karlie seems to much rather rush through it. There are four foot wide white columns every dozen feet or so that stretch from the floor to the ceiling, with gold accents. There's probably about a dozen large chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, sparkling and reflecting off of every bright surface in the hallway. Along the walls are gigantic oil paintings hung on the wall, one after the other, with all sorts of bright colors in gold frames. Taylor could spend an hour in this hallway alone, just examining each painting, which range from portraits of important individuals, to landscapes, to domestic scenes, battle scenes, just about about anything one could think of.