| Jezanna did not know what to think, what to expect when she stepped into the crowd making their way along the streets. She bled into the spaces between them, a midnight shadow with moonlit eyes, and she carried herself on soft steps with her head held high. Such things, gatherings of this manner, were foreign and new to her. She had come from a young world that was inhabited by scarce else other than the creatures whom she had befriended. There had been no reason for such a thing as this. What, she wondered, could it mean? The young moon’s eyes swept the amassed bodies, spying so few familiar faces. How was it that she had been living among these people for months now and yet knew hardly any of them. She spied Aislinn at the head with a man of ivory and gold that she did not know at all. In the crowd there was only Rostislav that she knew. Where was Reichenbach? Should the King not be present for such a thing? She did not know much, but she thought at least that this was something a king should show up for. The news was hard for Jezanna to hear, a weight dropped in her stomach that was empty with loss. She had barely begun to explore this world and already it was being taken away from her, dragged from beneath her feet like a rug. The girl had nowhere else to go, surely nowhere that suited her as well as the night court, but how was it that they felt imprisoning the ones they supposedly loved and cared for would do them any good at all? And all around her voices rose, most of them in agreement with each other. All of them outraged. She had so little knowledge on the why, as the chestnut woman with golden eyes said, yet she felt impassioned by the ugly truth that had been laid before her. Her silver gaze landed on Aislinn, wondering what had happened in the short time since she had seen her last. What had taken the wandering, gypsy woman and turned her into a jailer of her people? Jezanna felt the beginnings of being trapped curling in around her like the smoke blanketing the horizon, clinging to her hair and her antlers and her heart. How was it that she might finally begin to feel like there was a place for her here, only to find that beneath the facade there had been something darker lurking. With bright eyes on the two figureheads, the girl breathed past the tightness in her chest. “You say that you have closed these gates to stop a cycle, but how are chains to be broken if all you do is allow them to tighten?” She knew so little about the why, but of peace and of hope she knew something about. “To retreat into yourself is to only strengthen the opinions of those who would speak against Denocte and its people. It will not stop them from thinking, or speaking, or believing of you or the Court what they will. It will only prevent you from seeing or hearing it. It will only breed blissful ignorance, but it is ignorance nonetheless.” She took a step forward, though it was not challenging as perhaps the others had been. “You cannot simply lock yourselves and your people away and expect peace to happen. You must make peace, you must go into the world and let peace flourish with warm hearts and open arms.” Jezanna looked around at the gathered crowd, at these she did not know well and did not know at all. And still, she felt for them, ached for the fury and the shock that was like an electric charge in the air. “You say this is best for your people, but your people say they disagree; and you will simply cage them in like an animal?” She shook her head, dark hair swaying, moonshine eyes luminous but wise. So much knowing etched within the youth of her features. “You are right to say that I do not agree with you, but I also do not understand. I was told that in Denocte all were family, wild and free but loyal. This… this is not what family does, this is not how loyalty is built,” the midnight girl finished with her gaze upon Aislinn and the one she gathered was Isorath. So long she had been hiding within the shadows, fearing for her secret to get out, fearing what might happen if it did. But she could not stand idly by and watch a kingdom splintered by one tenuous decision. |
