Ferndale Irvassant House and the Parlour That Waited for an Evening That Never Came

The parlour of Ferndale Irvassant House carries the imprint of an evening routine broken mid-gesture—tea cooling at the table, hems waiting for hands that never returned, pens resting where work once concluded every dusk.

The Quiet, Earnest Pattern of Sorella Irvassant

Sorella Irvassant, tutor of domestic sums and disciplined penmanship, lived with her cousin Dalmere, a clasp-forcer whose dwindling contracts left tools idle more often than used. Sorella shaped her days with gentle exactness: morning slips arranged into graded stacks, midday mending completed by lamplight, and evening notes written over cooling tea.

She trimmed quills evenly, folded linens meticulously, and kept her inked margins straight. But as Dalmere’s income shrank and winter stiffened her hands, her patterns slipped. Marked slips remained unfiled, fabric lay folded but untouched, thread baskets sagged into disorder. Mounting debts forced a sudden departure, leaving the rooms to settle into dust-thickened silence.

The Passage Where Her Rhythm First Frayed

Along the inner north hallway, Sorella’s boots stand stiff with disuse, their leather hardened into immobility. Dalmere’s unfinished clasp-forcer blanks lie scattered near the wainscot in a quiet drift of metal and dust. A dropped cloth remains where her fingers lost their grip on the chill of an unlit evening.

The Scullery Drawn Into Silent Suspension

Inside the scullery, mismatched cups cradle pale rings of dried tea. A chalk-rimmed kettle rests beside the smoothing stone she once pressed into her palms. Her linen apron hangs slack, its folds surrendered into formlessness.

At the landing’s far end rests Sorella’s final corrected slip—ink faint, line wavering—beneath the shawl she meant to retrieve. Dalmere’s unfinished clasp blank lies beside it. Ferndale Irvassant House remains dim, unmoved, and abandoned.