A crash.

Glass shattered, metal trays clanged, and a weak body stumbled to knees.

"Silvia!" someone yelled, "Kristoff, go get a rag! Deanna, you too. Silvia, are you alright? Silvia!"

Coughs wracked her body. She didn't see much. She felt the sores, the burn, like acid, in her throat. Then she tasted the iron that came with the tear in her lungs.

The rift in her breathing that never really stopped.

(There was no cure.)

"I'm fine," she wasn't too sure why she said it so naturally, or how she had the energy to bring the words from her throat.

Her world swayed and swirled and churned with bitter bile. Were her hands always so old, thick, and wrinkled? Was she always so unstable and was the world always so fragile?

(She wasn't too sure.)

She looked up.

And there, by the turning, staring at her with wide, horrified eyes— was her little princess. Neglected by her mother and never favoured by her father... Silvia raised the girl, so bitterly from young— how could she not love her?

How could Silvia not love her little Avelynn?

She only wished Avelynn wouldn't look at her so terrified. She didn't want Avelynn to cry at her bedside—

"Please don't die, Silvia," she begged, but couldn't do a thing.

Silvia didn't like it. Avelynn was prideful and headstrong, egotistical, but a lady. Not a crybaby like this. Her Avelynn was cheerful, lovely, and adorable.

Not like this.

"I won't die," Silvia promised her, cradling Avelynn's cheek so gently, "how could I when I haven't sent you off for marriage yet?"

But SIlvia knew.

(The person who was before Silvia knew.)

Her sickness was incurable. She would not last long. If she were not fired, she would simply die one day in the companionship of her junior maids, peacefully passing within the grounds of the mansion. And everyone would cry.

(Silvia would live to see Avelynn wear a uniform, but nothing beyond.)

In the same way little Avelynn could know, Silvia knew.