Chapter 3: Recovery Begins
The Light, Where Once Was Rose
I had a vague sense of time passing. Ages seemed to come and go as I drank in the darkness. Or the lack of light? Were they really all that different? I couldn't say, and it really didn't matter all that much to me.
At some point, the emptiness of it all began to dissipate, and I stood in what seemed a dense forest. Around me were trees of metal and light, taller than cliffs and wider than even the greatest oaks. I wasn't alone there. Other people were milling about, bumping each other but never quite stopping long enough to acknowledge their rudeness.
I spied the figure of a voluptuous beauty sat atop one of the lesser trees, watching all the people as they moved about. I barely saw her through the glare produced by her perch, but there she was. Her hair was silver as clouds, her green eyes emeralds that shone loneliness and loss. She was clothed enough that I wouldn't blush, but not so much that the town elders in Powell's Square would approve.
Something told me that the people around me had no idea she was there, and she had no idea I was gazing upon her.
My voice failed when I first tried to greet her, but still she noticed me. Her gaze was curious and welcoming, but otherwise uncertain. As our eyes met, I felt a kinship with her, but still my words were halted. A broad smile from her told me that she was no threat.
"Now tell me, dearest," her voice was light and rain, brilliantly filling the space between us and lightening my heart as it reached my ears. "Which one are you? I don't recall this part."
"Rose?" The word escaped unbidden, a question burdened with fear and loss.
"You are not, and lying to me will get you entirely nowhere, little one." She quirked a brow, considering. "I would remember Rose, but perhaps this is the lesser rose. Roisin?"
I nodded confirmation.
"Very good. But you don't belong here of all places, my dear Roisin." As the words continued filling space between us, the woman alighted from her minor tree and seemed to float across the space between us. "You see, Rose was here. The Rose. And you cannot be here. None other than her can."
The crowd seemed to part as a familiar woman stepped between the bizarre trees and navigated about the forest with apparent ease. I do not recall much of her appearance, but I do recall that among all the people, she was the only one who seemed to shine like the silver-haired beauty.
"Rose?" Again the word surfaced against my will.
"Indeed. She's special, you know." The woman giggled. "Well, perhaps you don't know yet, but you will."
The one called Rose looked up at the tallest tree, and an image seemed to materialise above her. I knew the place. It was Powell's Square. Then Ehler's Cliff. A blue-haired woman who looked vaguely familiar. And me. Everything about the image was so vivid I was certain she'd seen all of it in person.
Almost as soon as it appeared, whatever it was vanished, and she went back to whatever it was she had been doing.
"You see?" The silver-haired woman was just as awestruck as I was. "Special. And she's not the only one, but she's my favourite. It's a pity I never get to meet that one." She looked back at me. "Don't worry little Roisin. You're special too, but in a very different way. You'll understand soon enough, but it's not yet time."
When my confusion was apparently clear, she opened her mouth to speak again, but everything vanished before I heard whatever she was saying.
Amber Eyes and Scars Beneath
My eyes crawled their way to something resembling "open", but I wasn't entirely sure I was alive, so my surroundings didn't fully come into focus for a few seconds. It was my room in my sister's home. Everything was as I would normally expect it to be, except that there was a chair situated at my bedside, which was occupied by a person.
Well, that, and I felt like I had been sleeping under the full weight of the stone that crushed Ehler when it fell from the top of the cliff.
The person was, more accurately, a woman. She was unfamiliar, but certainly around my age. Her hair was a different shade of brown than my own, but she was certainly from somewhere in the queendom. She wore finery of much higher quality than anyone who had ever visited, let alone lived, in Powell's Square, and she was allowing it to be dirtied and rumpled in my quarters.
I would never hear the end of this from Delia.
Perhaps I had truly died in the night. This might be some hellish punishment meted out by the gods. Forever forced to lay beneath whomever this woman was, dreading the moment when my sister would open the door and chastise me for allowing Her Grace to ruin such fine garments in worry for me.
As I considered the thought, I tried to take stock of myself. I knew I should have died when the larabrin, and probably a pack of them, attacked. There was very little chance I wouldn't bleed to death from the first swipe to my arm, let alone the claws to my chest, the trauma to my leg. By all possible accounts, I should be dead.
So what happened?
I must have been stirring somewhat in my discomfort, as whoever was pinning me down began to move as though awake herself. She spent a few seconds stretching without lifting herself from my midsection, then she moved to right herself and tossed her arms up and over her head into an even deeper stretch.
When she finally considered herself properly stretched, she took a proper look at me from toe to head. As her eyes registered that my own were open, we both took a moment to properly observe each other.
If I had to guess, I'd say she was several years older than me, perhaps thirty years old, perhaps more. She had the aged grace of one who had finally figured out how to exist in this world that was adamantly against its people. The hint of gentle forehead and eye wrinkles was beginning to settle a permanent residence.
Her brown hair was cut short in the manner of a young mother at her wit's end trying to save it from being yanked, not that she looked the part of a mother in any capacity. That hair fell around fine skin that likely never saw the sun except during stretches of long travel by carriage, only a few faint freckles marking her face. Her nose was the slightest bit pointed, and her lips were too thin. But all of that was very quickly irrelevant as I noticed she had the brightest golden amber eyes.
To say she was beautiful without qualification would be a lie, but in spite of myself I was drawn to her features, and something about her expression told me she felt similarly. Although that expression quickly faded into something much less admiring, something I'd seen all too many times in my life.
"Do not lie to me, for I shall know the truth of your words." I knew that voice, but I couldn't place it. She was gruff and severe, apparently quite accustomed to that sort of tone. "Are you Roisin, daughter of Tarant the Meek and Omela the Sturdy?"
I had never heard any of the names she gave me, and my confusion clearly gave that away, as she scrunched her entire face before continuing.
"Let me start more simply." She took a slight breath. "Is your name Roisin?"
"My name is pronounced Rah-sheen. Like an undercooked meal and the gleam of a well-polished blade." Her face scrunched a second time at the correction. "And unless I'm wrong, the other two names you butchered were Tuh-rahn and Ah-muh-luh. Is that about the size and shape?"
"Indeed, Roisin. I had only ever seen it written, never spoken." She was embarrassed, but she did well to hide it from me. "The same is true of your parents' names. And while we are both citizens of Lafleur, you and yours seem to speak a somewhat different vernacular than myself."
"More than one. Da's family hail from the furthest phobward district. Ma's from the mornward port district of Blue Stone. They brought their family tongues with them to Powell's Square long before Delia was born, and neither was one to give it up. Apologies if they aren't the only ones like that in town, but we all speak a measure of the Fleurian parlance."
"So I've seen." She stood and pulled the blanket off of me and began inspecting my body closely. Only then did I have an awareness that I was fully unclothed. But of course, I couldn't move to cover myself due to the immense weight in every part of me. "You're not dead, but it was a near one. How did you manage to escape the larabrins?"
"I wish I could say. One moment, I was standing. The next I was under an impressive one, ready and willing to accept my death." I couldn't get my mind to focus on anything after that moment. There was nothing until I awoke in my bed. "And then I was here. I'm certain I'm forgetting something important, but whatever it all is has left me."
"Shame. I was hoping you'd have some insight into how I stumbled upon you in an eerily lit spot in the woods surrounded by dead beasts." She didn't seem nearly as disappointed as her words implied.
"A request and a question, if you would." I was trying to be polite, but she had not replaced the blanket, and I was getting cold. "There is a bit of a draft in here, so I'd appreciate if the blanket you're holding would be returned."
She sheepishly jerked it back into place and stepped back from the bed, holding her hands up as if to show she was no longer causing trouble. "Apologies."
"Thank you." Once the warmth began slowly working itself back into my extremities, I gathered my thoughts to sort what I was wanting to ask. I had to be tactful, especially given her apparent station. "It may be that I must ask more than one question, but I would like to start with, if you don't mind, 'who in the queendom are you?' and if you have a moment more 'what were you doing in the woods last night?'"
Her face flushed the deepest red. "Gracious me, I have failed to introduce myself appropriately!" She made the deepest motion like a bow, but not. As she righted herself, she spoke. "My name is Jasmin Natalia Hawthorne, the Lady Myrtia of Lafleur's first district."
"Forgive my impertinence if I don't stand to bow, my Lady." I didn't mean for the venom to fill my words, but it did nonetheless. Jasmin Natalia Hawthorne seemed not to notice. "You see, I am a bit indisposed due to a slight trauma that befell me recently."
"Oh that's the other thing. It wasn't last night. You've been out for almost a sevensun."