Title: Transformations
Fandom: Original/Wild West
Rating: T
Length: 250
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: I've been working as a costumer on a project about the Wild West. The corset in the piece is a real thing, though it's history is entirely my own imagining.
Summary: The brocaded fabric had been nice, once.





The brocaded fabric had been nice, once, when they still lived in the East, and Pa had been Father, Mother still alive. Once it had been intended as upholstery, for chairs and a sofa. Peach Blush the ground, matching the salon walls, the stylized floral figure a deeper coquelicot that went with the formal drapes. The long trip west had done the stuff no favors, but Sylvie would bring it, Sophie's objections notwithstanding. Cut in half and doubled it had served as coverlets for both girls, dressing-curtains, table-cloths. Cut up again, it made a dress for Sylvie's all too hurried wedding, worn only a few times in a marriage abruptly ended by violence and very human greed. Sylvie survived the murder of her husband by only days. The senseless banditry proved the final straw for Pa, and his attempt at frontier justice went as badly as one might expect, leaving Sophie entirely alone in the world. The dress — skirt torn and soiled, sleeves ripped, bodice surprisingly essentially whole — now a talisman of what had been, became Sophie's, and the fabric underwent another transformation. As did Sophie. Bodice became stays, and respectable young lady became different kind of lady all together. Whatever it took, she would survive, and wrest what enjoyment she could from the rough land she found herself in.

And Sylvie, her sister, would be with her in spirit, close as her reflection in the succession of mirrors, as the comfortable embrace of her much-mended corset.