Thread: Southern Girl [ Ariamella & Reydan ]

RE Southern Girl Ariamella Reydan An iron grey sky. Scudding clouds overhead. And pain. It was the same nightmare, Virgil Abernathy knew, the same one that paralyzed him every night. But he couldn't escape from it. Knew it had to play out. Chickamauga. The Indians had called it the River of Death, he had heard, but it had been nothing but an ordinary creek when his unit had hurried into position. The rebels they had been chasing across Tennessee had turned, almost trapping them, and Rosecrans had hurriedly concentrated his army by the creek to prevent the piecemeal destruction of his scattered force. Virgil, unwilling to serve in his native Virginia, had opted instead to go to the Western theatre and, therefore, had found himself amongst his blue-coated company hunkered down amid huge boulders by the stream. A whole company, almost one hundred men, looking to their southern Captain for orders. And then the shells had come. God knew how the rebels had managed to get artillery up into the rocky hills around the valley but they had and, suddenly, the air had been full of that terrible whining drone. Then explosions, shrapnel, and screams. Virgil watched, for perhaps the thousandth time, as his mind replayed the image of his staff sergeant being ripped almost in two by a chunk of whirring metal. He'd stood, screaming at his men to run for the high ground behind and then...pain. He remembered lying on his back, looking up at a steel grey sky that threatened rain and thinking he was dying. The breath rasped in his throat. He awoke groggy and, sitting up in bed, fingered the scars on either side of his lower torso. The shrapnel had torn a hole, the size of a quarter, through his middle, side-to-side, but had, miraculously, missed any vital organs. He sighed, running a hand through dirty blonde hair, and looked about. Alone. Of course he was alone. He maneuvered aching legs out of bed, swinging them down to the cold wooden floor, and sat, still groggy from sleep, on the edge of the bed. Get up he mumbled to himself. Get up. He glanced over at the clock on the mantelpiece. Nine. He knew Camilla would be up and about. Cold air rattled the windows of the single room he slept in and he stood, awake now, to splash some water on his face. Taking his time, meandering before that late Saturday breakfast that awaited him, he ended up stripping down and washing all over from the jug and bowl. He combed out his close cropped beard, a similar sandy blonde to his hair but streaked with a little white despite his young age, and slowly dressed in a powder-grey suit. These suits were his only remaining concession to his Southern heritage, Virgil steadfastly refusing to wear the more somber and darker shades that were steadily becoming the only option in the North. Dressed, finally, he stepped out of the door and, passing Camilla's room, clearly vacant, he stepped downstairs into the main hall. Hoskins, their mild-mannered English butler, greeted him as he stepped down. Good morning Sir he intoned, holding out a tray of post, Mrs Abernathy is in the breakfast room. Smiling politely Virgil moved into the adjoining room. The breakfast room, with its high windows, was usually a delightful sun-trap, but on this horrid November morning it flickered with the light of a series of gas lamps. His wife, Camilla, was sitting at the small breakfast table sipping at a cup of coffee. Smiling at her he sat down opposite and, before he could say anything, a plate of bacon and eggs and a cup of tea was placed before him. Thank you Milly he smiled at the small serving girl, barely fourteen, who curtsied a little clumsily and retired to her place along the wall. He glanced over at his wife as he sipped his tea. Camilla was tall, almost at his own six foot, and raven-haired. She was wearing a demure blue dress, corseted in place, and her hair was piled high on her head in keeping with what, he supposed, was current fashion. She was two years older than his twenty three and they had married when he had only been twenty one. Barely a few months after his honorable discharge from the Union army as a wounded veteran. He had courted Camilla for a couple of years. Others had been put off by her stiffness and formality but Virgil had, at the time, found it charming. She could be funny, in her own way, and very kind. She'd been keen but her parents had had their reservations. Her previous fiancee, a young Pastor's son from their native Boston, had died in the early weeks of the war and here was a renegade Virginian asking for her hand. Yet his wounds and subsequent medals at Chickamauga had washed away any lingering prejudice on their part... She was looking at him, eyebrow raised, and he smiled. Were you up early? he ventured, the air between them as frosty as the morning outside. Yes came the terse reply as she sipped at her cup. There was no need to ask where she had been all this morning. At chapel. Praying for a child. Virgil frowned. He knew the unspoken tension between them. If it was up to him he'd have said that the single bedrooms were the biggest obstacle to their family troubles. But, then again, she never did seem to ask him. You haven't forgotten about this morning? Our guest? My cousin? she asked abruptly, looking levelly at him, but as he frowned and opened his mouth to respond, Hoskins opened the door with a flourish. Miss Lucille Rayne he announced and a figure out of Virgil's past entered the room.