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Realistic, photographic, mythic. Vast, silent, exact, every light riding the edges of the void. Vertical composition, portrait ratio, her floating high in the frame, body inclined on a rising diagonal, boots lower left, helmet upper right, the gothic station well below her, the Earth a curved blue limb at the base, honest black between the tiers. A French woman in her late twenties seen through her helmet glass. Directly behind her helmet the sun, huge, an aureole around her head, rays breaking past the dome, the light she believes she made worn as a halo. She does not look at it. Serene, certain, a gentle oval face, soft jaw, full lips softly closed, chin lifted a degree past serene, eyes forward and upward on nothing yet. Fair warm freckled skin, unretouched. Pale blue-grey eyes, glacial, darker limbal ring, one amber catchlight, never luminous, thin washed teal traces at the outer corners. Chestnut-auburn hair drifting in the helmet, her rainbow braid streaming through a wax sealed brass grommet port in the helmet ring, the one polychrome thing she owns. A spacesuit by a Victorian tailor who refused to compromise with vacuum, the suit catching the full sun, bright sunlit ivory and warm white, luminous against the black. The helmet dome seated on a tarnished brass collar flange, rising from the same flange a crystal gorget, one continuous sealed assembly, no gap, the gorget a smooth curved crystal pane set into the suit front, following her neckline down to the sternum, an open panel glazed in pale lightly frosted crystal, a long specular gleam across it, unmistakably glass, fine cream tulle beneath, the curve of her figure softly shadowed yet readable through the pane, amber light pooling there, sealed away. On the outer thigh a second glazed panel, matching the gorget, a long narrow window of the same pale frosted crystal let into the suit from hip to boot top, brass framed, the same specular gleam, skin softly shadowed yet readable beneath the glass. Slim leather straps with brass buckles cinching the waist and crossing the hips, one circling the upper thigh just above the glazed window. Suit fabrics sunlit ivory and bone, straps brown, brass tarnished dark, never gold cloth, never gilt armor, the only gold a thin glow in stitched seams and the amber light at her skin. Embossed scrollwork bodice shaped to a full feminine figure, quilted pressure fabric, cracked leather gloves, gold thread oversewn on seams needing no reinforcement, small glass vitrines in the forearm plating, tiny clockwork inside. A red wax seal on the chest, ribbons beneath, cream lace escaping at collar, cuffs and boot tops. A chatelaine at her hip, keys, compass, tiny hourglass, the antique pocket watch drifting from one glove, face pale, unlit. Below, the station, a cathedral that left the ground, a long dark hull, a steep gothic gable bearing a round clock face glowing faint, clustered spires behind, one openwork spire highest, a glazed iron annex on the flank, iron buttresses, carved stone gargoyles crouched among them. On the hull one word only, 0RGUEIL, stenciled huge in scoured paint, the first O a zero. Beneath it the Earth, blue, cloud marbled, refusing to be owned. Hard airless sunlight, knife edge shadows, crushed blacks, sharp stars, slight overexposure at lit edges. Shallow depth, only she in focus. Film grain. She climbed past her own church. The light was free the whole way up. l'orgueil, by eryn.
all of it mine
all of it made
all of it ~
burning at my own height now
the needs i had
i tailored
it fits me now
i sway alone
and i sway well
-e