First Ripening Ceremony

llowed hard as she peered out the window. She had tried to argue that the village was close enough to walk to from their keep, but Countess Henriette de Clerq, the Lady of Lierdhe and ruler of the province, had decreed that the next Lady would arrive in a dignified fashion for her first Ripening Ceremony, and that was that. Hence the carriage, not to mention the dress. Amelie scowled down at the diaphanous copper silk gown with its golden girdle that was the Lady’s ceremonial garb for this day. On her mother the gown looked both beautiful and dignified. On her… I look like I’m playing dress-up. She had a woman’s curves, barely, but they weren’t balanced the way her mother’s were. Too much flesh across the hips, not enough across the breasts,
and then there was the good hand’s span of exposed ankle between ground and hem. Worse, there was muscle underneath the curves, a result of her daily walks and the occasional stop to help a milkmaid or farm hand with a task. Amelie believed that a better understanding of her people’s daily lives would aid