Has the memory gone? Are you feeling numb? Or have I become invisible?

Ella stuck her head into the Banquet Hall, checking to see if anyone was there. If they were, they wouldn’t have noticed her- all they would see was the door to the Banquet Hall crack open slightly.

She was using her boon; she had been for a few days now, to turn herself invisible. She made sure to use it sparingly, to make the most out of her hour- only in situations like this one.

Seeing that the coast was clear, Ella let out a sigh of relief and turned off her boon, turning visible again. She stepped into the Banquet Hall, eyes on the dessert table, when…

“Oh.”

“YEEEEK!” Ella let out a scream and jumped five feet into the air in surprise. She stumbled when her feet landed back on the ground and nearly tripped, but managed to pivot, turning her clumsy momentum into a turn to face the source of the voice that had startled her in the first place.

Amelia Campbell was standing in the doorway. The only trace of emotion on her face was an eyebrow raised curiously in appraisal of the girl standing in front of her.

Ella started to sweat.

“Ah… ah…” Her hand instinctively reached for her wrist, and she snapped her rubber-band with a loud “Thwap!” to fight off the burgeoning presence of Cinder in the back of her mind. Trembling like a leaf, she considered turning invisible in the heat of the moment, but what would even be the point?

She’d already been spotted.

“What is the matter with you?” Amelia’s concern for Ella’s wellbeing came off as a harsh chastisement to the poor girl, and she could see the young lady wilting in response. She tried to soften her tone before Ella freaked out completely. “Are you alright?”

“I… I… I’m sorry!” Ella blurted out, her eyes flickering around behind her bangs. “I didn’t mean to! Really, I-I didn’t-!”

Amelia sighed and pushed her glasses up her nose. “I apologize for startling you like that. I am not upset with you.” Her therapist had emphasized the importance of explaining that whenever there was a communication issue. Unfortunately, Amelia’s shortcomings when it came to expressing herself all too often manifested as anger towards others.

Ella gulped. But she stopped babbling. She straightened up and looked warily at the other woman, regaining her cool.

Amelia tried again. “I was surprised,” she explained. “I did not expect to see you appear in front of me. I was simply coming for an early dinner, that is all.”

“Oh… uh… I-I see…” Ella nodded slowly. They’d had the same idea. Only Ella had been trying to avoid exactly this situation occurring.

She swallowed. “Well… I’m… gonna go, then… I have to be at the Master’s Suite soon, so…”

Amelia raised her eyebrow and checked the time. “It is not even 4 o’clock yet,” she pointed out. “Your shift does not start until 5.”

Ella flinched, caught in a lie. “…Yeah,” she admitted, lowering her head. Of all the people who could have caught me… why did it have to be her!? Why?!

Amelia was the worst person for Ella to deal with. The harsh, older woman reminded her far too much of Ella’s stepmother. The woman who…

…

…And Amelia was a stepmother herself. That made it worse. Not to mention her cold expression and golden hair also reminded Ella of the lead prosecutor of her criminal case. Terrible association after terrible association, Ella couldn’t stand it.

“If you’re hungry, you should eat,” Amelia said bluntly. “That is why you came here, is it not?”

Ella winced and peeked up at the other woman from behind her bangs. She really couldn’t get anything past her, could she?

“I… yes, that’s why,” she admitted sullenly. An exasperated sigh escaped her lips. “Look, just leave me alone, okay?” She asked, a little more snappishly than she intended. The last thing she wanted was for Amelia to think she was talking back to her or something!

But Amelia didn’t seem fazed by the rude tone of her voice. Her expression was completely neutral… but Ella still felt intimidated.

She gulped. Loudly.

“…If my presence is a bother to you, then I shall leave once I get my food,” Amelia said finally.

Ella looked at her with wide eyes. “No, uh… you… you don’t have to do that for me! I’m not bothered by you at all!”

Of all the lies she’d told and tried to tell in the last five minutes, that was probably the worst one. While there was nothing Ella hated more than people looking down on her and thinking she was some fragile little snowflake because of her condition, it was impossible to hide how intimidated she was by Amelia’s presence.

And she hated that.

As for Amelia? She may not have ever dealt with anyone who suffered from Ella’s condition before, but she’d met her fair share of difficult young ladies. She could imagine why Ella would resort to using her boon to scope out the Banquet Hall.

“I will leave,” she repeated. “So you can eat in peace.”

Ella winced, and Amelia noted the anxiety flaring across her face. The way her fingers drifted to her rubber-band was another dead giveaway.

What is it that she wants? Even if Amelia wasn’t very adept at communicating her own feelings, she found herself reasonably capable of understanding and empathizing with others. But with Ella, she was drawing a blank.

Ella opened her mouth, but instead of an explanation a whiny noise came out. Not quite a sob or a cry, but more like a gasp.

Then finally she could get out the words. “…I can’t eat in my room,” she muttered, casting a longing gaze towards the food tables. “Rose is there right now…”

Amelia raised her eyebrow. She had observed Ella eat in public many times in the past, including this morning. So why was it an issue now? “You cannot eat in front of her?”

“No!” Ella exclaimed, her eyes widening. She shook her head. “How could I-!? …Urk, never mind.”

The fire in her voice sputtered and died practically as soon as it flared up, and Amelia noted the tone of indignation. As if Ella was actually looking down on her for thinking that she could eat in front of her roommate.

She hides her true feelings behind her timidity, but she is actually quite a presumptuous girl, isn’t she? Amelia considered the attitude of Cinder and how frequently she seemed to leak out into Ella’s way of speaking to others when she wasn’t careful.

Ella always seemed to be able to rein it in, though, as she had done just now. Although her moodiness still remained. She looked at Amelia with barely-restrained impatience, and almost… irritation?

“Look… you can stay if you want, it’s fine,” Ella muttered, looking down. “But if you’re gonna go, then just go. I don’t care.”

Another obvious lie. Amelia could see how troubled the young lady was under the surface; it had nothing to do with her psychological issues and her alternate personality, Ella herself had plenty of communication defects that seemed far too familiar to the teacher.

Or perhaps she’s merely in a foul mood because she’s hungry, she considered.

“I’ll leave,” Amelia assured the other woman. “If I am such unpleasant company to you.”

Ella’s eyes widened behind her bangs and her body jerked, like Amelia had slapped her. She had a look of desperation in her eyes, conveying to Amelia that her words hadn’t been meant to be taken that way at all.

But her voice itself…

“I… look, it’s not what you’re thinking, just… ugh…” Ella rubbed her forehead and sighed. “This is why I wanted to make sure no one was here…”

“So you could eat in peace?” Amelia pressed.

“Yeah, of course!” Ella groaned. “I… I don’t want them to…”

To see me like that. She reached for her wrist and snapped her rubber-band again. “Thwap!”

It almost drowned out the gurgle of her hungry stomach.

Ella gasped and her hand shot to her torso. She looked up at Amelia in horror as the color drained from her caramel complexion.

“I… I’m sorry, that was rude…” she stammered, flushing with shame.

Amelia shook her head brusquely. “It was a natural biological response,” she pointed out. She walked past Ella without even looking at her. “You should not apologize for a growling stomach when you’re hungry.”

Ella’s jaw dropped and she followed the other woman with her eyes. “But… it’s rude,” she mumbled.

“You have said far more impertinent things with your mouth to me already,” Amelia pointed out. That was meant to help relieve Ella’s feelings of embarrassment and guilt. Unfortunately, it didn’t end up going that way. Ella just looked humiliated.

“Uh… sorry.”

Amelia took a banana from the assortment of fruit and tossed it to Ella. The flustered girl barely avoided dropping it, which was one of the reasons Amelia had chosen a fruit with skin in the first place.

“Eat that,” she advised the young girl. “You will feel better.”

Ella just kept it clutched in her fingers. She kept looking at Amelia with that wary expression, like she couldn’t trust the other woman at all.

It made Amelia feel rather uncomfortable herself.

Finally Amelia said, “If you cannot even eat a banana in my presence, then I can-”

“No!” Ella hastily peeled the banana, and nearly crammed it into her mouth. “I can ead id, I jusht- OH!” She hiccupped and covered her mouth, which was still smeared with gunk. Turning scarlet in embarrassment she scraped everything into her lips and swallowed, nearly **** on her gasps.

It was as Amelia expected. The poor girl wasn’t just hungry, she was famished.

“So that is why you do not wish to eat in front of others,” she noted with a sigh.

Ella blinked. A shaky look crept onto her face. “…Eh?”

Amelia took a step towards her.

“I am aware of your living situation growing up,” Amelia said. “If you are concerned with any assumption of impropriety while eating-”

“I-I don’t… impro-what?” Ella squirmed, licking her lips nervously. She could still taste the banana.

That was another reason she didn’t like the older woman. Amelia used a lot of big words that she’d never heard of. Along with that accent it was like she was talking in a different language half the time!

Amelia let out a tired, sympathetic sigh, and adjusted her glasses. “You have been eating small portions of food whenever you are dining with others. Correct?”

Ella’s body signals were more than enough of an answer to Amelia’s question, she didn’t need to wait for a verbal confirmation that would not come.

“If you are hungry, you should eat.”

It was the most obvious thing in the world to Amelia. But it seemed like such obvious advice was absolutely confounding to the girl in front of her.

Ella lowered her head timidly and her face reddened. Her hand stirred against her stomach, almost like she was trying to suppress her hunger with raw ****.

“I don’t want… to be a pig,” she finally managed to get out. The pain she felt from verbalizing that fear almost trumped the pain in her stomach.

Amelia let out a sigh and hung her head.

“…I see. I expected something like that.”

From what she knew of Ella’s home life prior to the “incident” with her stepfamily, and from what she could observe with her own eyes, it was obvious that the other woman suffered from a poor diet. She had been abused terribly by her family, and part of that **** she suspected included substandard nutrition and food deprivation as a punishment.

Sickening. What monsters could do that to a growing girl? Amelia taught at a prestigious finishing school. Not one of her students ever knew what it was like to go to bed hungry. Except of course for the brattiest and bitchiest among them, the ones who would pig out at lunchtime and then **** themselves to throw up in the school bathrooms because they simply had to fit into this year’s swimsuit catalogue.

Ella suffered from an entirely different eating disorder. One brought on not by vanity, or even the low self-esteem suffered by those girls Amelia sympathized with more.

But it was just as unacceptable.

“Eat,” she insisted, narrowing her eyes into a glare that made Ella flinch. “I do not care if you look like a pig. Eat.”

Ella began breathing hard. She couldn’t stand looking at Amelia, so she looked somewhere else. But everywhere else she looked, there was food! Mountains of food that all looked more delicious than anything Ella had ever gotten to eat growing up- and it tasted amazing, too!

That first meal she’d eaten here, it had taken everything she had to limit herself to eating only as much as the other girls. But it had hurt so much… she could only imagine the sort of things girls like Rose would say about her, if they saw her cramming her mouth full the way she wanted to so desperately.

She still remembered the shame from Gina’s party, the one where she’d let herself go and pigged out on the most delicious meal she’d ever gotten. How humiliating had that been?

Ella couldn’t take it anymore, that was why she came here early. Why she’d scoped everything out with her invisibility boon; to make sure no one was around when she finally ate her fill. Before she got this boon, her hesitation and fear of someone walking in on her had always kept her from eating too much, even when she was alone. And it wasn’t like she could stuff her face in her room, with Rose there to see how much of a cerda she was! No, her boon had been a blessing, she’d thought.

…Oh, how she wanted to turn invisible right this very second!

Ella felt her heart ache. She looked desperately up at Amelia, wishing she could say something, anything, but…

Amelia knew.

Ella took a deep, long breath… and let Cinder deal with the hard part. As always.

“Hey!” Cinder snapped, staring furiously at Amelia. The hunger her body was going through didn’t matter nearly as much as her righteous indignation. “Who do you think you are, talking to Ella like that!?”

Amelia was surprised for a moment at the sudden outburst from the other girl. She hadn’t seen the sudden shift to Cinder coming, but perhaps she should have. She had been putting a significant amount of pressure on Ella, after all; was this to be expected?

“I did not mean to offend,” Amelia clarified, adjusting her posture slightly. She was a little flustered. “I just-”

“Me vale madres!” Cinder gnashed her teeth furiously. She got up in Amelia’s face and jammed her finger into the other woman’s chest. “You don’t talk to her like that! Comprende?”

Amelia was flustered, yes, but not so flustered as to let someone violate her space like this, no matter the situation.

“You are the one who does not talk to me like that,” she sternly rebuked the other woman, narrowing her eyes into a glare so icy it could freeze a volcano.

It worked, too. Cinder actually froze, her eyes flickering wider as a shiver went through her body. As if she hadn’t been expecting the other woman to stand her ground so easily.

Big mistake. Amelia might have been a sympathetic and compassionate person, but she was not soft. And she did not abide disrespect.

“You are speaking to an adult, young lady,” Amelia chastised Cinder, straightening her back and broadening her shoulders to appear larger than she actually was. The way Cinder had flinched just now, that was enough to tell Amelia all she needed to know. Behind her bluster and her foul mouth, Cinder was just as intimidated by her as Ella was.

That was something Amelia could use.

Cinder ground her teeth together, and seethed. Every bone in her body was telling her to unleash a wave of vitriol as harsh as she could upon the arrogant woman in front of her, but she couldn’t. Ella was in the back of her mind, and she could feel the other girl’s protest.

Why did she even bring me out if she was going to restrain me?! Que pendeja!

Seeing that Cinder was momentarily cowed, Amelia chose to push her advantage, and picked up an apple from the table.

“Eat,” she said firmly, holding it in front of her practically like a weapon. “Your body did not suddenly stop needing food.”

Cinder’s eyes flickered towards the apple and she felt her stomach growling again. She muttered another string of curses under her breath.

It took everything Amelia had not to rebuke the foul-mouthed girl. A lecture about her choice of words would hardly be productive, especially considering half of them were in Spanish. But out of the words she could understand, Amelia definitely made out “cunt” and “whore” and “puta” which even she knew meant “bitch”.

But again, that would hardly be constructive given the girl’s current attitude.

Cinder didn’t take the apple. In fact, she knocked it away, still muttering curses. But she didn’t leave the room.

She kept eyeing the food. It was so obvious what she wanted, but her frustration and anger and pride kept her from going through with it.

Amelia sighed. She hated when people were this stubborn.

“I wanted to tell Ella that she could eat without worrying about me,” Amelia said, trying her best to use a gentle tone. It didn’t seem to be working. “That last thing I would care about right now is her etiquette.”

“The fuck is an etiquette?!” Cinder demanded. “Are you calling her a pig?!”

Amelia sighed again. “No,” she snapped. “I was only saying… no. It does not matter. Eat.”

Anything she said would just be misinterpreted. She lacked the communication skills necessary to properly talk to the woman in front of her when she was this agitated. And it was clear that any attempt would make the situation worse.

So Amelia decided that the only thing she could do was remove herself from the situation completely, as she intended to do from the start.

“I will be outside,” she said, stalking towards the door. “I will make sure no one comes in. You may eat to your leisure.”

“Hey!” Cinder whirled around, her eyes wide. “Don’t you walk away from me! Come back here!” She growled, storming after the older woman. “Are you listening to me!?”

Amelia stopped at the door and turned back to her. Her expression was completely blank.

“Yes,” she replied. “Do you have something to say?”

Cinder did not. She just stood there stewing until Amelia left the room. Then with a frustrated scream she flipped over a table, sending the delicious food scattering all over the ground.

A few seconds later the table righted itself, and more delicacies magically appeared to take their place.

The gurgle of Cinder’s stomach was the only thing that kept her from repeating her wasteful act, and she grumbled was she jammed fistfuls of fruit into her face. As the delicious juices rolled down her chin, she groaned in frustration that it simply wasn’t enough to satiate her irritation and remorse.