The Dark Side of the Moon

Eight years later. 1888-Ellie!Aunt Margaret's voice would have been a wonderful addition to the flock of birds that crossed the sky each morning, whose cries echoed through the house without pause for several minutes. The difference was that Eleanor appreciated the sound of birds, while just hearing her aunt's voice made her feel the irresistible urge to hide under a table and pretend she hadn't heard her.
Of course, that wasn't an option, so that afternoon, as she always did, she stifled a groan and abandoned her cozy refuge in the armchair by the fireplace in the family room, which, at that moment, except for her, was unoccupied. Uncle Aeneas must have been out on his daily walk, while Gabriel had been in London for several weeks, leaving her as Aunt Margaret's only companion. Not for the first time, she regretted that Cecily had decided to remain in the city once she was widowed; she would undoubtedly find spending time with her mother much more pleasant.
Her steps stopped abruptly as she thought of her cousin, and her gaze was irremediably drawn to the large mirror in the hall. Without thinking, and ignoring her aunt's new call, she approached until she was a foot away from the glass surface and examined herself critically. The promises that she would eventually become more like Cecily had not been entirely fulfilled. It is true that there was a certain air offamiliar, but not very different from the one she shared with Gabriel, for example; otherwise, she had grown into a beautiful creature, but not far removed from the ideal of beauty that her cousins embraced so well; especially Cecily.
She was blonde and endowed with a clarity reminiscent of sunlight; her large blue eyes radiated all kinds of promise, and the smile always ready on her lips invited one to admire her. Little Ellie, as her aunt continued to call her, was the complete opposite. If her cousin pretended to attract all the light towards her, Eleanor seemed made of absolute darkness. While Cecily's beauty evoked a sunny day, hers could have passed as the portrait of a moonlit night.
With her hair as dark as a raven's plumage, her gray eyes shaded by long lashes, and her red lips contrasting with her almost translucent skin, she imposed a certain distance. She didn't smile much, either, but that was because she didn't have much reason to.-Ellie!Eleanor placed a hand over her face and exhaled a deep sigh as she abandoned that brief moment of vanity in front of the mirror and resumed her walk toward her aunt's parlor, a place she preferred to avoid as much as possible, but where she always ended up every other day.
After all, it was there that Aunt Margaret spent most of her time and from where she used to call her. Before knocking on the door to announce her presence, Eleanor did the same thing she did whenever she felt she was about to lose her patience. She reminded herself that, no matter how much her aunt's manner and the fact that she thought she was always there for her, she owed so much to her and her Uncle Aeneas that it was only right to put her anger aside and be as grateful as she undoubtedly should be.
Not many people would have taken a child who was little more than a baby when orphaned under their wing and raised her as one of their own. Well, not exactly one of their own, not really, but they had been loving and more than fair, and that was far more than could have been expected in her circumstances. If it weren't for them, she would have ended up in a workhouse, as Aunt Margaret often said. With another sigh, she knocked softly on the half-open door and didn't have to wait long for her aunt to invite her in.