#and while she can manage relationships where the other party is reacting to the veneer; she's terrified of being only seen as her polished;

[tortoisesshells]

Fic title: Marmoris

I had never heard marmoris before - thank you for teaching me a new word! ultimately I think this is a little more about marble and polish than the surface of the ocean, but:

I think this is a Customs and Duties prequel, about Nellie's relationship with her new husband's family (chiefly, his very terrifyingly competent Aunt Imogene Bendish and her husband and children) who are all far more educated and polished than the newly-minted Mrs. Elinor Treat, who is nearly nineteen, pretty well entirely self-educated, and desperately unpolished - as well as newly uprooted and replanted in Boston, and newly promoted to "mother" of her seven-year-old sister Mary.

In such circumstances, the last thing she wants to do is resist what help Aunt B will give her towards succeeding in Boston, but there are points in which filing down the sharp edges of her life as Nora Coggeshall does seem a little more onerous than she had ever expected - somewhere along the way, letting go of her life in Newport began to seem harder than she had anticipated, and all the polish necessary to being an admitted opportunist began to seem much more easily found. Who is she fooling by learning to present as someone else entirely?

I'm not sure what the endpoint would be - Samuel returning from sea for the first time? Their first child, Polly? Nellie running into someone from Newport who doesn't recognize her any longer?

send me an ask with a fake title, and I’ll tell you what I would write to go with it!