<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/5/53/Onnecamug3.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 3, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Morning<br/><strong>Location:</strong>The London Royal Apothecary<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Agatha, Elisabeth, Oswald<br/><hr/><br/>Her hand didn't withdraw from Elisabeth's. She nodded with her head down, conceding the point that she ought to stay with Agatha for a while. Better that the edict was handed down from Elisabeth than one of the busybodies who tried to set Onneca up with the eligible menfolk, and better that it was with Aggy, whom she knew and trusted perhaps better than anyone in this town. The line where Onneca would stand up for herself and put her foot down was hard to spot and it often moved around, usually in retreat. Her mother used to call it picking her battles. Others would call it being a doormat.<br/><br/>She'd been to Agatha's house, before. She'd always felt she'd been a little rude as a guest, too distant, not offering up enough of a compliment to her hostess. It wasn't envy, for they'd both come from the same place, and built so much for themselves through hard work and sacrifice. It wasn't the tension, as that urgent teenage attraction was buried under so much sand she would need a map and a compass to find even a drunken kiss. More than those things, it was the feeling of being courted. She liked for Agatha to work to impress her. She liked to hold to the illusion that it was still possible, and that they were both just pining, and that the rumors weren't true.<br/><br/>But so did Elisabeth, and that was what would make this time different.<br/><br/>"Disculpe- they really have a queen?" She'd let herself get caught up in a pulp-fueled flight of fantasy, where the West was won by swashbuckling vaqueros, pluck, and the power of love, and where the collision between pirate queen and generic everywoman was hot and heavy, distressed, and ended in tragic suicide, a pornography written by Shakespeare, where the old English was too oblique to be pornographic to the masses. She had a brief mental glimpse of a beekeeper floating face-down through the Maze, chewed by rats, but surely not- surely if she were good and sweet enough, she could get by on that. Pirates responded well to manners. Onneca's knees wiggled in her Sunday dress. "I will do anything I can to help. Money is not important. If we have peace, business will be much better."<br/><br/>"Si," she answered Agatha, "I mean, yes. I would like to stay. It will be just like before." The hand Elisabeth hadn't claimed touched lightly to Agatha's, to gently draw the tinker out of her imagination and flash a dimpled smile at her. "But, I like to keep busy. You must let me do things for you."<br/><br/>With her gifted flowers close to her chest, she stood and tickled her hostess with the soft petals as she kissed Elisabeth's cheek. "Gracias. I must open the bodega." It was a short morning tea, but Onneca was often guilty of the sin of cutting tea short whenever an unexpected guest sat down with them. Agoraphobia, that was what they would call it a hundred years from now, a social anxiety. Here and now, she was merely known as shy. "I would be happy for you to come by, señor. We can talk. I will look forward to it."<br/><br/>By the next day, she would be getting situated with her new housemates, and her agoraphobia. But for now, Onneca had a business to run, an uncertain future to think about, and wildflowers to put into water.<br/><br/><div align="center"><em>~(scene end for Onneca)~</em></div>