Mood board for the 1920s Flapper Darcy AU in my head. It was too warm in this party, Darcy Lewis thought desperately. There were so many people here to celebrate her cousin Jane’s success as a liberated New Woman that the Virginia night air was not circulating, even with all the windows and doors open. It was Jane Foster’s debut as a foremost scientific mind of 1925. Jane had been awarded money to go to New Mexico, of all places, by the Stark family of industrialists. The current head of the family, Tony Stark, had a fund to encourage female education and full participation in public life, named after his mother. He had also sponsored successful string of ladies’ sporting events: automotive racing, tennis, golf. Their friend Sharon Carter was the current ladies’s national tennis champion. It was really a pity that Darcy had no swing. She had to content herself with playing second-fiddle to Jane. She was to be Jane’s assistant in Puente Antiguo, just to have–in her mother’s words– “something useful to do with yourself, since you aren’t married or a female genius.” Those seemed to be her only two options: be extraordinary or mind-numbingly ordinary.
Darcy stood up to walk around. Women in short dresses and wide pants were lingering in the windowsills, smoking, while young men with nervous faces offered opinions and took them back again. She could smell cigarette smoke, brilliantine, and Mitsouko. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace, Darcy frowned. Her newly-bobbed hair had gone frizzy and she looked too warm. How she envied Jane her cool elegance and smooth bob! She put down her glass and moved through the crowd of well-wishers. Jane was fending off a blonde Kappa Alpha with a smile like a toothpaste advertisement and rolled her eyes at Darcy. She shook her head. It really was a pity that Jane was the beautiful one, she thought. Jane had no use for beauty whatsoever and Darcy could have used it to great effect. All her life she’d been told she should have been born a decade or two earlier and made a fine-looking Gibson Girl. But she was resolutely out of fashion.
Darcy escaped the house and wandered out into the gardens. She sat on one of the benches and listened to the sounds of laughter, music, and drinking. She had been outside for twenty minutes, when something white appeared to be crossing the lawn. The figure of Sharon Carter emerged in the moonlight.
“Hullo, Shar,” Darcy said.
“Have you escaped the wolves?” Sharon said. “Please tell me you have a flask?”
“Fraid not,” Darcy said. She didn’t even smoke. Her only vices were lip rouge and a weakness for taffy candy.
“Never mind, I do,” Sharon said, fishing under her skirt. “Here, have a drink.”
“Thank you.” Darcy swigged the silver vial. It burned on the way down. She coughed a little.
“Nervous?” Sharon said.
“Yes,” Darcy admitted.
“We all are,” Sharon said. “When you stop being utterly terrified, you’re dead.”
“I thought that was just Jane’s driving?” Darcy said, hiccupping slightly.
Adding a link to the completed fic: Blood Moon, Dry County.
