jane
Autumn was a sigh. Jane was so used to Summer that the change of temperatures hurt as badly as a burn. The cool was like a kiss, an ever flowing current of water around her ankles. As such, the scent of pine stung her nose in such a sweet way that she felt like she could be drunk alone. She could be intoxicated like she had been at the Festival, more alone than she had ever been. Jane was rather glad she had no access to alcohol as it were.
She had learned, in the time she had been here, but not enough. She had learned loneliness in its true form, unhidden by lies and false flattery. A warm pelt and a kind smile did not a lover make. Jane had learned imperfection.
What better season symbolises that? When Jane thought back, Autumn was like nothing else. It felt oh so slightly closer to something ethereal, incorporeal. Things that looked dead, weren’t. Though the leaves of the birch turned to colour of ash, the tree itself simply lay sleeping, waiting for the snows to come and go. She wished that she could do the same.
Beauty.
Jane had met enough of the Novus ilk to know that appearances meant nothing. The strangest, most frightening folk could be kind and give her tea. Those most beautiful could tear your heart out and laugh about it with their friends.
The mare in front of Jane was beautiful enough to make Jane stop. Amid the towering copse of trees, there stood a horned mare, horned in the fashion of Galileo but not resembling in any other way. A set of blue-grey horns curled, ramlike, behind the mare’s ear. Her body was the grey of dew, covered by the mask of clouds. Flowers had wrapped their way around her horns and yet defied the Autumn; their colours as soft and fragile as though they fought against their fate.
She looked to be deep in thought. The mare dipped her head to what appeared to be a blackberry bush- a memory touched Jane’s mind, of getting trapped in blackberry vines as a foal. The sweetness of black juice dripping over her lips, the scolding of her mother at how just one mark could land her a spinster forever, useless. Dichotomies. Her sweetest memories were full of them.
A sign of luck, perhaps.
Jane watched and then spoke. “Where I come from, we give blackberries as gifts of respect and ultimate love,” her voice managed to hide its nerves. “Because we have to hurt ourselves to get them- and they still taste so nice.”
@[Vysanthe] / speaks / here you go!
