She stood there, caught. The gilded frame of the doorway, a thing meant for passage, now held her fast. The whalebone beneath her skirts—a cage of her own making, of a society's making—refused to bend. It was a beautiful prison, she thought, this gown of silk and lace, of a thousand tiny stitches and a hundred social obligations. Every layer, every stitch, was a promise she had made to her station, to her family, to a life she was expected to live.
Soon, she would be presented. She would smile a practiced smile, flutter a fan, and glide across a polished floor in a waltz that felt more like a performance than a dance. She would be a prized possession, admired for her beauty, her bearing, her impeccable adherence to the rules. All of it a heavy costume she had to wear. A costume that made her large, a spectacle, and yet, somehow, small and unseen.
The heavy air of the hall pressed in on her. She felt the weight of it all—the fabric, the expectations, the future that was not her own. Her mind, a quiet room of its own, longed for the wildness of the fields, for the simple freedom of a dress that moved with her, not against her. A single, silent thought formed, a wish to shed the layers, to simply be able to pass through the door and run. But the door would not open. Not fully. And she would not tear the fabric. Not yet. She would just stand there, a vision of propriety, a beautiful, trapped thing, waiting for the weight of it all to finally give way.
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