In retrospect, Jane really should have seen it coming. For the rest of her life, Jane would ponder at her own foolishness, at the lack of foresight. She had walked away from Vreis with shame bubbling inside her chest, barely even exchanging a scrap of acknowledgement as she had crept back to the festival. She had found Isaar with a fellow ambassador. She had crept to his side, silent and stern even as she felt her sin bubbling inside her chest. The tea had tasted rancid, burning her tongue as it slid down over her oesophagus. Isaar had talked calmly, gently, and then had done the worst thing imaginable.
He has asked Jane what she’d done. If she’d enjoyed herself.
Pulling together all the shreds of her decency, she had halfway-lied and said something about walking with an old friend, that she had watched the performances in the festival centre. She had not so much as thought of Vreis since that afternoon, had continued her life satisfied and proper. She was a true wife now, it was true. Jane had needed that evening of destruction.
It hadn’t taken long for Jane to feel like something was wrong. She wasn’t ill, wasn’t craving, just wrong. But Jane was used to feeling like a stranger in her world. She was used to the wind being too sharp and the water tasting too metallic, and the scent of Isaar singing the insides of her nostrils. It was essential that they have separate bedrooms.
As it were, Jane was in her quarters when she first felt the stirrings in her stomach that would be called dubbed life. While she feared illness- consumption and cancer were no strangers in her family tree- the wise woman who had come to her home had said that it was something else. Something much more simple: Jane was with foal. Oh, how could they call that simple?
It had been a long time since Jane had wanted her mother’s company, but she desired it now. Maybe not even her mother, but a mother. Someone to stroke her sides and tell her not to be afraid. But Jane had not been with her mother in years, not even when she had lived back in the city. Aloysia, Jane’s mother, had made no secret of her disapproval and disappointment in her daughter. This would not improve those matters.
So now Jane was on the hunt for the only person who had ever really treated her with care. The only one who had let Jane come back, even after her absence. So now here she was, in Delumine with her cloak pulled up high over her head. It wasn’t entirely necessary; people were aware of her ties to Novus, ties that were much stronger than those of her husband’s.
She knocked on the door of the Veil Nebula’s lodgings, and felt the clock strike some whole hour, somewhere far away. The rhythm sliced through her body in time with the sense of a prickling that spread from her stomach- from her womb- and up through her entire person. What would Veil say, when she found out that Jane had betrayed her husband? She had always thought that Jane was good- how disappointed would Veil be?
Jane imagined a molotov cocktail, resting in her womb and ready to explode. Ready to strip her life of its entrapments; the husband and the name and the mansion, all of it ripped down by something no bigger than a hoof that currently lived inside her. Something fragile that was so killable- and yet, something stronger and more undeniable than mountains and rivers.
@[Veil Nebula]
i've never felt more alone
it feels so scary getting old
[/b]
