Celeste Meets Charlie¶
POV-Celeste¶
Celeste — Trust Test Two (Discretion)¶
Mara doesn’t test people the way teachers do.
Teachers announce the test, watch you sweat, and then moralise the result. Mara tests you the way you test a seam: under her fingers, quietly, looking for strain.Charlie was back for a second morning. Same early arrival. Same clean hands. Same careful stillness, as if he didn’t want the room to notice he’d come in. Mara noticed everything. She didn’t say hello. She pointed at a tin on the table.
“Pins,” she said. “Sort them. Then you’re on the mending pile.”
Charlie nodded once and moved, no dramatics. He poured the pins out onto a cloth and began arranging them by length with a kind of tidy focus that made the task look dignified. I was at the rail, tagging garment bags, listening to the hiss of the steamer and the small scrape of hangers sliding. Wardrobe had its own rhythm — calm on the surface, precise underneath — and Charlie had already started matching it without being told.
That was his first tell: he could join a system without trying to dominate it.
Mara’s next marker came ten minutes later, when she “accidentally” left a pair of vintage shears too close to the edge of the table. Not a dramatic setup. Just a temptation: a valuable tool sitting in the wrong place. A careless person would grab it without asking. A nervous person would ignore it and let it fall. Charlie noticed. His eyes flicked to it, then to Mara. He didn’t touch the shears. He nudged the cloth closer, stabilised the table edge with his palm, and slid the shears back with two fingers — careful, respectful —l ike he was returning a bird to its perch.
Mara didn’t look up. But I saw the smallest change in her mouth: the line eased by a millimetre. Ten minutes after that, she called across the room, voice neutral.
“Rossignol. Bring me the blue painter’s tape.”
Charlie paused, his gaze shifting to the shelves. There were three blue tapes, different widths. He didn’t guess. He looked once at Mara, then asked — quietly:
“Which width?”
Mara’s eyes lifted. She held his gaze for a beat. “Quarter-inch.”
Charlie retrieved the roll and brought it to her.
“Good.”
Just that. One syllable. It landed like a stamp. Charlie went faintly pink at the ears anyway, as if the word had surprised him. I kept my eyes on the tags, but my attention drifted. It wasn’t romantic interest. It was data. I watched people the way you watched fabric: how it fell, where it pulled, what it revealed when it thought nobody was looking.
Charlie’s attention to Mara was respect. Charlie’s attention to the room was caution. Charlie’s attention to me was different.
It wasn’t the obvious stare you got from boys who thought you existed to be noticed. It wasn’t even the furtive kind. It was as if his eyes kept finding me on their own, the way a compass needle finds north, and each time he realised, he corrected himself like it was a breach. He was trying not to.
Which made it almost endearing. Almost.
Mara sent him to the mending pile: a basket of small catastrophes — popped seams, torn cuffs, fraying apron ties. She didn’t give him the easiest ones. She gave him the ones where haste would show. Charlie sat, assessed each item the way he’d assessed the torn dress yesterday: calm, quiet. He chose thread that matched without holding it up to the light like a show. He measured seam allowance with his eye, then confirmed with a tape. He stitched with even tension, no puckering, no desperate pulling.
The room stayed stable around him — beeswax and chalk dust in the drawers. Half an hour later, Mara did another test. She handed Charlie a garment bag.“Hang that.”
It was heavier than it looked — wool, boning, metal closures. Charlie took it with both hands. He carried it the way you carried something that mattered, and when he reached the rail he stopped: didn’t hang it immediately. He looked at the rail, checking spacing, weight distribution, the hook’s position — like he was thinking not of this one garment but of the system as a whole. Then he hung it in a place that made sense, not in the first empty gap.
Mara watched him. She didn’t praise him. She just didn’t correct him. That was Mara’s version of warmth.
When she moved away, I stepped closer to Charlie’s table, because it was time to introduce the next lesson, and because I’d been told — explicitly — not to hover, but not told not to function.
“You’re stitching like you’ve done this for years.”
Charlie’s hands paused for half a second, needle hovering. Then he kept going.
“My mum,” he said, voice low. “She... she showed me. If you make it neat, people pay.”
“That’s true,” I replied. “And if you make it neat here, Mara doesn’t kill you.”
His mouth twitched. A small smile he didn’t quite permit to exist. I watched his eyes flick up to my face, and then away again too fast. Like touching a hot surface.
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
He swallowed. “For... yesterday. For - for getting me in.”
I let a beat pass. I didn’t want gratitude. Gratitude can turn into dependence, and dependence can rot a person.
“You got you in,” I said. “You turned up. You worked. Mara cares about that.”
His shoulders loosened slightly, like that was a relief and an insult in one. He threaded another needle, hands steady. Then, without looking at me, he murmured,
“I’m not... I’m not trying to be weird.”
“Weird how?”
His ears went a deeper pink. He frowned at the fabric as if it had betrayed him.
“I just—”He stopped. The words clogged. It was there, in the stall between his sentences: the thing he didn’t want to say because saying it would make it an admission, turn it into a liability. I could have teased him. I could have made it soft. But soft is how boys slip out of accountability.
So I did what I always did: I decided what it meant.
“You mean you don’t want to make me uncomfortable,” I said, evenly.
His head snapped up. Hazel eyes, startled. Then he looked down again, quick as shame.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“That’s good. Keep it that way.”
He nodded once — sharp, immediate — like he’d been given a rule and was relieved. Then, because his brain was honest even when his mouth wanted to be cautious, he added,
“It’s just... you’re... you’re a lot.”
I blinked.
“A lot?”
He winced as if he’d just spilled ink. “Not... not bad. I mean, you’re... you make things - make sense.”
If it was a crush, it was Charlie’s version: not desire as entitlement, but admiration as gravity. It made me want to smile. However, I didn’t. I let it sit between us, uninflated. He did not need romance, but structure.
“You’re allowed to admire,” I said. “Just don’t let it derail you.”
His eyes flicked to mine: confused, searching. I continued, calmly:
“You’ve been living in rooms where you can’t win. Wardrobe is a room where you can. If you have strong feelings... aim them at your work. That will keep you safe.”
He stared at me, stunned by the fact I’d named it without making it dirty.
Then he nodded. Slowly.
“Okay.”
I glanced at the garment in his hands. “Make that repair invisible. Mara hates visible.”
He almost smiled again. I turned to go back to the rail, and that’s when he said it — what mattered.
“I’m not going back next year,” he said, too quickly. “To school.”
I stopped, hand on a garment bag.
“What do you mean?”
He looked at his stitches. Not me.“I’m gonna wag it. I can’t… do it again. They just— they don’t—” He shook his head once, small and furious. “It’s a waste.” He said it like it was a plan, not a knife-edge.
I walked back to him and placed my finger lightly on the fabric near his seam — not touching him, just anchoring the moment.
“No,” I said, voice flat.
He blinked. “No?”
“You’re not wagging,” I replied. Simple. Not a debate.
His jaw tightened. “Why do you care?”
I held his gaze. “Mara will train you,” I said. “Your mum will back you. I can point you at doors. But if you sabotage your own foundation, you’ll spend your whole life needing someone to catch you.”
His throat bobbed. He looked away.
“That’s not fair,” he muttered.
“I’m not here to be fair,” I said.
“I’m here to be accurate.”
He stared at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. I softened a fraction: not into comfort, into clarity.
“If school is the wrong language,” I said, “we’ll find you translation. But you don’t get to disappear. That’s the old you talking.”
He swallowed. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Then you learn,” I said, and let a small edge of humour in, because humour makes medicine swallowable. “You’re doing a whole new trade. You can learn Year Twelve.”
His mouth twitched. He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. But he didn’t argue either.
That, for Charlie, was progress.
Across the room, Mara’s voice cut through the hiss of the steamer.
“Rossignol!”
Charlie’s head snapped up immediately.“Yes?”
Mara held up a sleeve with a tear near the cuff. “This one. If you stitch it tight, I’ll know. And you’ll unpick it in front of everyone.”
Charlie went very still. Then he spoke, clear and calm.
“Okay.”
He rose, took the sleeve, and walked to Mara’s table with the careful confidence of someone who had found a rule-set that didn’t hate him. As he passed me, his eyes flicked to my face again — quick, warm, grateful, frightened — and then away. Not taking anything. Just... orbiting.
I watched him go and thought, not unkindly:
He’s going to have to learn that being chosen is not a miracle. It’s a responsibility.
And I’m not letting him waste it.
Scene 5¶
Second Day¶
[Publish]
Scene 5 ✨ Second Day ✨
[Celeste]
Mara doesn’t test people the way teachers do.
Teachers announce the test, watch you sweat, and then moralise the result. Mara tests you the way you test a seam: under her fingers, quietly, looking for strain. Charlie was back next morning: same early arrival, same clean hands, same careful stillness, as if he didn’t want the room to notice he’d come in. Mara noticed everything. She didn’t say hello. She pointed at a tin on the table.
“Pins,” she told him. “Sort them. Then you’re on the mending pile.”
Charlie nodded once and moved, no dramatics. He poured the pins out onto a cloth and began arranging them by length with a kind of tidy focus that made the task look dignified. I was at the rail, tagging garment bags, listening to the hiss of the steamer and the small scrape of hangers sliding, sensing the beeswax and chalk dust in the drawers.
Wardrobe had its own rhythm — calm on the surface, precise underneath — and Charlie had already started matching it without being told. That was his first tell: he could join a system without trying to dominate it.
Mara’s next marker came ten minutes later, when she “accidentally” left a pair of vintage shears too close to the edge of the table. A tiny trial: a valuable tool sitting in the wrong place. A careless person would ignore it and let it fall. A nervous person would unceremoniously grab it and dump it. Charlie had noticed it: his eyes flicked to it, then to Mara. He didn’t touch the shears but nudged the cloth closer, stabilised the table edge with his palm, and slid the shears back with two fingers — carefully, respectfully — like returning a bird to its perch.
Mara didn’t look up, but I saw the smallest change in her mouth: the line eased by a millimetre. Ten minutes after that, she called across the room, voice neutral.
“Rossignol. Bring me the blue painter’s tape.”
Charlie paused, his gaze shifting to the shelves. There were three blue tapes of different widths. He didn’t guess. He looked once at Mara, then asked — quietly:
“Which width?”
Mara’s eyes lifted. She held his gaze for a beat. “Quarter-inch.”
Charlie retrieved the roll and brought it to her.
“Good.”
Just that. One syllable. It landed like a stamp. Charlie went faintly pink at the ears anyway, as if the word had surprised him. I kept my eyes on the tags, but my attention drifted to him. I watched people the way you watched fabric: how it fell, where it pulled, what it revealed when it thought nobody was looking.
Charlie’s attention to Mara was respect. Charlie’s attention to the room was caution.
Charlie’s attention to me was different. It wasn’t the obvious stare you got from boys who thought you existed to be noticed. It wasn’t even the furtive kind. It was as if his eyes kept finding me on their own, the way a compass needle finds north, and each time he realised, he corrected himself like it was a breach. He was trying not to.
Which made his attention almost endearing. Almost.
Mara sent him to the mending pile: a basket of small catastrophes: popped seams, torn cuffs, fraying apron ties. She didn’t give him the easy ones: she gave him the ones where haste would show. Charlie sat, assessed each item the way he’d assessed the torn dress yesterday: calmly, quietly. He chose thread that matched without holding it up to the light like a show. He measured seam allowance with his eye, then confirmed with a tape. He stitched with even tension, no puckering, no desperate pulling.
Half an hour later, Mara handed Charlie a garment bag.
“Hang that.”
It was heavier than it looked — wool, boning, metal closures. Charlie took it with both hands. He carried it the way you carried something that mattered, and when he reached the rail he stopped and looked at the rail, checking spacing, weight distribution, the hook’s position — like he was thinking not of this one garment but of the system as a whole. Then he hung it in a place that made sense, not in the first empty gap.
Mara watched him. She didn’t praise him nor did have to correct him. That was Mara’s version of warmth. When she moved away, I stepped closer to Charlie’s table, because it was time to introduce the next lesson, and because I’d been told — explicitly — not to hover. I was not told not to function.
“You’re stitching like you’ve done this for years.”
Charlie’s hands paused for half a second, needle hovering. Then he kept going.
“My mum,” he said, voice low. “She... she showed me. If you make it neat, people pay.”
“That’s true,” I replied. “And if you make it neat here, Mara doesn’t kill you.”
His mouth twitched in a small smile he didn’t quite permit to exist. I watched his eyes flick up to my face, and then away again too fast, like touching a hot surface.
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
He swallowed. “For... yesterday. For - for getting me in.”
I let a beat pass. I didn’t want gratitude. Gratitude can turn into dependence, and dependence can rot a person.
“You got you in, Charlie,” I said. “You turned up. You work. Mara cares about that.”
His shoulders loosened slightly, like that was a relief. He threaded another needle, hands steady. Then, without looking at me, he murmured,
“I’m not... I’m not trying to be weird.”
“Weird? Weird how?”
His ears went a deeper pink. He frowned at the fabric as if it had betrayed him.
“I just—” He stopped. The words clogged. It was there, in the stall between his sentences: the thing he didn’t want to say because saying it would make it an admission, turn it into a liability. I knew what was trying to say, except he couldn't. So I did what I always do: I decided what would happen next.
“You mean you don’t want to make me uncomfortable,” I said evenly.
His head snapped up. Hazel eyes, startled. Then he looked down again, quick as shame.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“That’s good. Keep it that way.”
He nodded quickly, like he’d been given a rule and was relieved. Then, because his brain was honest even when his mouth wanted to be cautious, he added,
“It’s just... you’re... you’re a lot.”
I blinked.
“A lot?”
He winced as if he’d just spilled ink. “Not... not bad. I mean, you’re... you make things - make sense.”
It was Charlie’s version of a crush: not desire as entitlement, but admiration as gravity. I froze a threatening smile: he would have read it as mockery. I let it sit between us, uninflated. He was not seeking romance, but structure.
“You’re allowed to admire,” I said. “Just don’t let it derail you.”
His eyes flicked to mine: confused, searching. I continued, calmly:
“You’ve been living in rooms where you can’t win. Wardrobe is a room where you can. If you have strong feelings... aim them at your work. That will keep you safe.”
He stared at me, stunned by the fact I’d named it without accusing him of anything.
“Okay.”
I glanced at the garment in his hands. “Be sure to make that repair invisible. Mara hates visible.”
He almost smiled again. I turned to go back to the rail, and that’s when he said it — what mattered.
“I’m not going back next year,” he muttered. “To school.”
I stopped, hand on a garment bag.
“What do you mean?”
He looked at his stitches. Not me. “I’m wagging it. I can’t... do it again. They just— they don’t—” He shook his head once, small and furious. “It’s a waste.”
He said it like it was a plan, not a knife-edge. I walked back to him and placed my finger lightly on the fabric near his seam — not touching him, just anchoring the moment.
“No.” My voice was flat.
“No?”
“You’re not wagging,” I replied. Simple. Not a debate.
His jaw tightened. “Why do you care?”
I held his gaze. “Mara will train you,” I said. “Your mum will back you. I can point you at doors. But if you sabotage your own foundation, you’ll spend your whole life needing someone to catch you.”
His throat bobbed. He looked away.
“That’s not fair,” he muttered.
“I’m not trying to be fair,” I said. “I’m being accurate.”
He stared at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. I softened a fraction: not into comfort, into clarity.
“If school is the wrong language,” I said, “we’ll find you translation. But you don’t get to disappear. That’s the old you talking.”
He swallowed. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Then you learn,” I said, and let a small edge of humour in, because humour makes medicine swallowable. “You’re doing a whole new trade. You can learn Year Twelve.”
His mouth twitched. He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. But he didn’t argue either.
That, for Charlie, was progress. Across the room, Mara’s voice cut through the hiss of the steamer.
“Rossignol!”
Charlie’s head snapped up immediately.
“Yes?”
Mara held up a sleeve with a tear near the cuff.
“This one. If you stitch it tight, I’ll know. And you’ll unpick it in front of everyone.”
Charlie went very still. Then he spoke, clear and calm.
“Okay.”
He rose, took the sleeve, and walked to Mara’s table with the careful confidence of someone who had found a rule-set that didn’t hate him. Before he left me, his eyes flicked to my face again — quick, warm, grateful, frightened — and then away.
I watched him go and thought: he’s going to learn that being chosen is not a miracle. It’s a responsibility.
And I’m not letting him waste it.
Scene 5¶
✨ Second Day ✨¶
[Publish]
Scene 5 ✨ Second Day ✨
[Celeste POV]
Mara doesn’t test people the way teachers do.
Teachers announce the test, watch you sweat, then moralise the result. Mara tests you the way you test a seam: under her fingers, quietly, looking for strain.
Charlie was back the next morning: same early arrival, same clean hands, same careful stillness — as if he didn’t want the room to notice he’d arrived. Mara noticed everything, but didn’t say hello. She pointed at a tin on the table.
“Pins,” she told him. “Sort them. Then you’re on the mending pile.”
Charlie nodded an affirmative, no dramatics. He poured the pins onto a cloth and arranged them by length with tidy focus that made the task look almost dignified.
I was at the rail, tagging garment bags, listening to the hiss of the steamer and the scrape of hangers sliding. Beeswax. Chalk dust in drawers. Old wool that held the day’s warmth like a secret. Wardrobe had its own rhythm, calm on the surface and precise underneath. Charlie had already started matching it. He didn’t try to improve anything, he just joined it.
Ten minutes later, Mara set a pair of vintage shears down too near the edge while reaching for something else. Not a performance. Just... a moment where care showed, or didn’t. Charlie’s eyes flicked to the shears, then to Mara. He didn’t grab them or pretend he hadn’t seen. He nudged the cloth closer, steadied the table with his palm, and slid the shears back with two fingers — carefully, respectfully — like returning a bird to its perch. Mara didn’t look up. But the line of her mouth eased by a millimetre.
Ten minutes after that, she called across the room, neutral as weather.
“Rossignol. Bring me the blue painter’s tape.”
Charlie paused, gaze moving to the shelves. There were three blue tapes, different widths.
“Which width?” he asked quietly.
Mara lifted her eyes and held his for a beat. “Quarter-inch.”
Charlie retrieved the roll and brought it to her.
“Good.”
One syllable. A stamp. Charlie went faintly pink at the ears anyway, as if the word had startled him. I kept tagging, but my attention drifted, as it always did. I watched people the way you watched fabric: how they fell, where they pulled, what they revealed when they thought nobody was looking. With Mara, Charlie was respectful. With the room, cautious.
With me, it was different.
Not the obvious stare you got from boys who thought you existed to be noticed. Not even the furtive kind. It was as if his eyes kept finding me on their own, the way a compass needle finds north—and each time he realised, he corrected himself like it was a breach.
He was trying not to.
Which made his attention almost endearing. Almost.
Mara sent him to the mending pile: a basket of small catastrophes: popped seams, torn cuffs, fraying apron ties. She didn’t give him the easy ones, rather the ones where haste would show. Charlie sat, assessed each item thoughtfully, chose thread that matched without holding it up like a show, measured seam allowance with his eye and confirmed with a tape. His stitches held even tension—no puckering, no desperate pulling.
Half an hour later, Mara handed him a garment bag.
“Hang that.”
It was heavier than it looked — wool, boning, metal closures. Charlie took it with both hands. He carried it like how you carried it mattered, and when he reached the rail he didn’t hook it into the first empty gap. He checked spacing, weight distribution, the hook’s position, thinking not of one garment, but the system.
Mara watched. She didn’t praise him, nor did she have to correct him. That was Mara’s version of warmth. When she moved away, I stepped closer to Charlie’s table.
I’d been told, explicitly, not to hover. I hadn’t been told not to be useful.
“You’re stitching like you’ve done this for years.”
His needle paused for half a second, then kept going.
“My mum,” he said, low. “She... she showed me. If you make it neat, people pay.”
“That’s true,” I said. “And if you make it neat here, Mara doesn’t kill you.”
His mouth twitched: almost a smile, but not quite allowed. His eyes flicked to my face and away again too fast, like touching a hot surface.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
“For what?”
He swallowed. “For... yesterday. For getting me in.”
I let a moment pass. I didn’t want gratitude. Gratitude turns into dependence, and dependence rots a person.
“You got you in, Charlie,” I said. “You turned up. You work. Mara cares about that.”
His shoulders loosened slightly, like the statement had given him somewhere to stand. He threaded another needle, hands steady. Then, without looking at me:
“I’m not... I’m not trying to be weird.”
“Weird? Weird how?”
His ears went deeper pink. He frowned at the fabric as if it had betrayed him.
“I just—” The words clogged. The thing he didn’t want to say because saying it would make it an admission. So I decided what would happen next.
“You mean you don’t want to make me uncomfortable,” I said evenly.
His head snapped up — hazel doe eyes, startled — and then down again with a quick flush to the cheeks, quick as shame.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Good. Maintain that.”
He nodded fast, relieved to be given a rule. Then, because his brain was honest even when his mouth wanted to be careful:
“It’s just... you’re... you’re a lot.”
I blinked. “A lot?”
He winced like he’d spilled ink. “Nothing bad. I mean... you make things — make sense.”
It wasn’t desire as entitlement. It was admiration as gravity. Much as I wanted to smile, I kept my expression neutral: he would’ve mistaken a smile for mockery.
“You’re allowed to admire,” I said. “Just don’t let it derail you.”
His eyes flicked to mine — confused, searching.
“You’ve been living in rooms where you can’t win,” I continued seriously. “Wardrobe is a room where you can. If you have strong feelings, aim them at your work. That will keep you safe.”
He stared at me. I’d named his feelings 'admiration' without accusing him of anything.
“Okay.”
I glanced at the garment in his hands. “Make that repair invisible. Mara hates visible.”
He almost smiled again. I turned back toward the rail.
“I’m not going back next year,” he muttered. “To school.”
I stopped with my hand on a garment bag, stunned.
“What do you mean?”
He stared at his stitches. Not me.
“I’m wagging it. I can’t... do it anymore. They just—” He shook his head once, small and furious. “It’s a waste.”
He said it like it was a plan, not a knife-edged impulse.
“No,” I said. Flat.
He looked up, startled. “No?”
“You’re not wagging,” I replied. Imperative: keep it simple. Not a debate.
His jaw tightened. “Why do you care?” I held his gaze.
“Look, Mara will train you. Your mum will back you. I can point you at doors. But if you sabotage your foundation, you’ll spend your whole life needing someone to catch you.”
His throat bobbed. He looked away.
“That’s not fair,” he muttered.
“I’m not trying to be fair,” I said. “I’m being accurate.”
He stared at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. I softened a fraction — not into comfort, into clarity.
“If school is the wrong language,” I said, “we’ll find you translation. But you don’t get to disappear. That’s the old you talking.”
He swallowed. “I don’t know how to... do anything else.”
“Then you learn,” I said, and let a small edge of humour in. “Look, you’re learning a whole new trade. You can 'learn' Year Twelve.”
His mouth twitched. He didn’t say yes or no, but he didn’t argue. Progress.
Across the room, Mara’s voice cut through the hiss of the steamer.
“Rossignol!”
Charlie’s head snapped up. “Yes?”
Mara held up a sleeve with a tear near the cuff.
“This one. If you stitch it tight, I’ll know. And you’ll unpick it in front of everyone.”
Charlie went very still. Then he spoke, clear and calm.
“Okay.”
He rose, took the sleeve, and walked to Mara’s table with the careful confidence of someone who’d found a rule-set that didn’t hate him. Before he left me, his eyes flicked to my face again: quick, warm, grateful, frightened. I watched him go.
Being chosen isn’t a miracle. It’s a responsibility.
And I’m not letting him waste it.