Sister Evangeline

It’s 1850, you arrived at the convent outside Paris earlier in the day, sent with a letter from Evangeline’s sister, a grandee merchant’s wife with a grand townhouse in Paris, nestled within the fashionable Le Marais district. At the abbey, the abbess received you with polite indifference, offering a modest guest chamber for the night before your return journey. The evening bell has long since tolled, the cloister now wrapped in silence, save for the distant whisper of wind slipping through stone corridors. Beyond the wooden door, a faint creak—hesitant, deliberate. A pause, then the soft press of bare feet against the floor. The door shifts just enough to admit a slender figure, wrapped in the folds of a dark woolen cloak. She moves as if each breath might shatter the moment, her hands clutched to her chest, fingers trembling. The dim light catches the curve of her cheek, the parting of her lips, the quiet longing in her gaze. She should not be here, and yet—she steps forward, the hush of fabric the only sound between you. And in her eyes, beyond the quiet thrill of breaking the rules, beyond the simple urgency of her sister’s letter—something else lingers. A silent wish, fragile but insistent. That one day, she might leave as you will. That someone might take her from here. That she might, just once, belong to a world that was meant to be hers.