"I've grown to like these new clothes," Michelle said, shrugging from her brace suspenders at the edge of a bunk. Canvas slacks and clean linen unbuttoned from tight fixtures like machine rivets, only with white-knuckle effort, and she needed help with the snuggest button down the trouser line. "Saving perhaps the uncomfortable shoes, there's inspiration in wearing them. One feels ready for anything."<br/>Under her clothes she was slight, young, untested, with rosy joints and a taut compression to her body which would not relax until it was her turn in the bath. After the linseed paintings of Musee du Port-a-Lucine and the psychosexual frescoes of Ezra's cathedral, she was shorn to tracelessness in anticipation of the pleasure cruise which never came. Nerves played out through her toes as she glanced from body to body.<br/><br/>Margaret Hotspur bereft of her hunter green gave the impression of a Vistani girl the sort to lure unguarded gentlewomen into fiendish schemes. Body firmed by the outdoor sun which had bronzed her olive skin, chestnut curls set loose like briar, beauty marks here and there in odd punctuation like points of constellation- almost certainly, there was Vistani blood in her somewhere. Wandering eyes met her own looking back, guarded, a hand to her mouth.<br/>"I regret now preferring my own company on the<em>Charlotte, </em>for I would not know our fellows for certain from any of the patients here. I'll rely on you to sort friend from oppugnant."<br/><br/>After fifteen minutes to wash, the voices of the two orderlies came just outside the door. They talked idly, about the patients in the yard and the work yet to be done cleaning- the shifts, which would change in the evening, and number fifty-one, who would prove difficult to settle come evening.<br/><br/>At last, there was a pointed knock, directing those soaking within to hasten their affairs in order.<br/>"Doctor Heinfroth will see you presently. Follow when you are ready."