jane
Jane wasn’t exactly a stranger to festivities. She had had them back home, had days to honour her own sovereign. But when the phoenix had landed on the market stall and released its message, Jane was quickly aware that this was nothing alike. This would not be a day of simple lowered responsibility and mildly good food- no, this was a festival. A festival of the sun, blazing with the day. She had been in the market when the phoenix set itself down; had seen the traces of ash that it had left beneath its feet. It was a hauntingly beautiful but still very real thing; feathers sparking and spluttering like far off stars.
This felt like a chance. For nearly a month, she had been living with her relatives, and attempts to make friends were met with very limited success. There were two fillies that had let her into their circle, two chatty high society girls. They were exactly the type of friends that Jane had been aiming to make when she had come here. They were the type of friends she had had back home; Marilyn and Cosiris. They had spent hours in the shade of trees. It had been in their company that she had first met the colt that had changed everything. Ruined everything, really.
But in only a few days, these new friends had turned against her and thrown her out in the way that young, hormonal fillies can oft do. It was colt drama that Jane hadn’t really paid attention to. She didn’t know the name or even what he looked like, but the one chestnut had told her to choose a friend, and too many seconds had passed to hide the fact that Jane didn’t belong to either of them. She didn’t belong to anyone.
Her only true friend was Sebastien, and he was in Denocte now. Days could pass without Jane saying a word to anyone her own age. Although the first days in the Solterran home to her aunt had filled her with the sustenance she had missed, she was shocked by the amount of emptiness that faced her in this land. She felt nothing towards the sun on her flank, naught but a faint, sad appreciation for architecture that could have been as removed as from a painting.
The new sovereign was called Adonai. That meant ‘God’ in some languages, and the idea of him being her ruler chafed at her consciousness. It wasn’t as though she rejected him, but the fact was that she still belonged in heart and soul to a nation far away. She could feel it still in her blood. She had been a Lady in Waiting, had dressed her majesty in the finest clothes, had learned by following her from place to place. Now Jane filled her days with nothing but the most idle nothing. She had no direction, no purpose and although she tried to deny it she wasn’t a child anymore. She was not Solterran either, not yet.
But the words of the king rang in her head. I do not ask for your love, Solterra. I resolve to earn it. Jane thought about it now as the festival blazed into life. She had been made to dress in what could essentially be called ‘peasant chic’, in beige clothes that did nothing to accentuate her appearance or her status. There would be lords and ladies who served the food of this feast, and she would help with drinks and desserts.
Summer burned her. She had had enough time for some definition to come back to her body, although not entirely.
Jane had imagined the parties of her youth. She had imagined drink and a quiet, muted joy at the only times that alcohol was ever allowed past her lips.
But this… this was something else, she soon learned. Everything here had a meaning behind it, a meaning she couldn’t penetrate but a meaning nonetheless. The first she had eaten was a Sun Cake, and it was… nothing like home. Honey stuck to her tongue. She had never tasted it before in this form, and it flowed down her throat like waves from the sea. Jane nearly got drunk on it.
On the other side of the court, Jane caught the vision of a mare, not too much older than herself. Before she knew what she was doing, however, Jane crossed the courtyard and found herself before this woman with a platter of drinks. She herself had indulged in one of the pale gold cocktails when no one was looking, and she found herself compelled without a filter. “Hello, ma’am,” Jane said, “I’m Jane.”
@[Hagar] / speaks / my girls an emo apparently
