[center][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/241208/a04161052c56932d95d6bf9168fcef02.png[/img][/center][hr][i]The Eye of the Beholder[/i][hr]
Frankly, Nesna’s head was spinning. Laying down in her little bed in the inn, it all felt unreal—like a hallucination conjured up by a mind that had finally shrivelled away from years of being alone. To feel warm, so truly warm, that she actually needed to sleep in her shift alone again, was this unconscionable luxury compounded by the alien support of a real, genuine bed. Nesna could remember this sort of thing. She remembered her lovely bedroom setup back from back when her world made sense. And this bed, though it was neither as large nor as soft as that previous bed was, felt incomprehensibly better. 

It couldn’t be this easy, could it? To speak to people again, to engage in polite conversation, and then to retire? This human comfort felt somehow as alien as her new appendages had felt when she first transformed. Every muscle and every instinct in her bones was telling Nesna that she needed to pry the window open—to be sure there was an escape—and then to curl up tightly under her wings beneath a shelter of blankets and rags. But that wasn’t possible or reasonable—no sooner had she done so than she’d found herself uncomfortably warm. To be dressed to sleep, to be in a place where one was expected to lay on a bed as a real person, to be [i][b]treated[/b][/i]—if only for a moment—like a real person—to feel like a flicker of a real person again—it was an intoxicating, yet sickening, disheartening feeling.

It felt altogether too real. For years, the world had felt like some endless haze trapped between dreams and nightmares. For years, the world had been shrouded in a silent, mind-bending irreality that let her feel like anyone but herself. Nesna—belonging to the dead—felt so believable as a being. The funeral felt so final and blessédly conclusive until…this moment. Her fingers gripped the blanket tightly as her back tensed and relaxed in a rhythm, demanding that she curl into that protective little ball again. Slowly, her stomach dragged her into submission. Nesna curled up, until her knees were against her stomach. But as she pressed her face into the pillow again, she found herself overpowered by the same thoughts again.

When did it feel so perverse to feel the fleeting glimmer of humanity in one’s heart?

It was all so overwhelming. And it felt too real. Uncomfortably real. Like life was ceasing to be a survivalist haze and mutating back into that painful beauty of the social world. 

Nesna felt her heart skip a beat in horror. [i]Where was she?!?[/i] She fumbled around in her covers for a moment as her heart started to race.

She jerked out of bed and fell to the floor on her hands and knees like a maddened beast. It was too much. [b][i]Where was SHE?!?[/i][/b] Nesna spiralled quickly from worry to panic as she tore into her bags like a starving animal. Spiking from rest to a state of nigh-hyperventilation, she ripped out half the things she’d brought with her before turning every bag but the jewellery bag upside down and shaking them. She clamoured on the floor, tossing things to the side with possessed fervour until she found it.

A soft little coo escaped her lips. She popped up onto her knees and hugged the object of her relief while gently rocking.

[color=DDA0DD][i]“Thanks be—oh thanks be to Seluna,”[/i][/color] she murmured to herself. A black, viscous tear began to push its way past one of her eyelids. [color=DDA0DD][i]“Agnella, my sweet!”[/i][/color]

She cradled the little lamb-blanket like it was a baby, then hugged it again. Nesna sat there for a time, freezing in place after babbling to her toy. 

No, it [i]was[/i] all real. Agnella was here—it could not be a nightmare preparing to be cruelly stolen, or a baffling dream preparing her to be disoriented upon waking. It couldn’t be anything else. Nesna began to softly fidget with the silken folds that made up the blanket-toy’s wool. As she did, she could feel—in the very moment—her heart and breathing slow. It was all real. And all would, maybe, just maybe, be fine. 

In time, Nesna soothed herself more, and brought herself to fold the clothes she’d strewn about and return them to their bags, still holding her Agnella close to her as she did. 

Trying again to get some sleep, she found herself caught up in the thought of the Astaros Prince. Zeph had said he wished to meet with all of the new Blightborn of the town as they arrived, and would be doing so at the earliest opportunity. Pending whatever came of the…disaster…that had happened around shortly before her arrival, that surely meant the meeting was soon.

Oh, and how she had so little to wear! So few options! Her first time properly meeting royalty—royalty who would [i]decide her fate[/i] no less—and she had but the one dress to wear. A nice dress, kindly tailored to fit her, certainly, but how understated it was compared to something that could hope to be fitting for a royal audience! Nesna curled up tightly in the bed, petting Agnella with greater speed as the newest thought consumed her.

She was [i]real[/i]. And she had precious little to wear about it. And she was a freak! A monstrous creature! Like one of the ones that [i]attacked[/i] the [i]Princess[/i].

Nesna produced a faint whimper as the notion set in. How could the greatest honour of her life be so deeply terrifying? But it was going to be fine. It had to work out in the end. Didn’t it?

…

Nesna had tossed and turned, cursed and sat up, and tried all manner of positions to lay in her newfound bed. Were it not for her great fortune of needing very little sleep to begin with, she likely would have slept the day away. But of course, the movements of the other patrons who had awoken at sensible times rattled her awake. And after slowly rising, and spending some amount of time more laying on her right side, with Agnella resting on her left hip so her left hand could stroke the lamb-toy’s wool just so, Nesna finally got herself out of bed. Though wearing the same peacock-blue dress and overall outfit as the day prior, Nesna had managed the forethought of brushing and putting her hair up in a series of tight braids to produce a head full of white ringlets neatly draping about, rather than the barely-tamed white rats’ nest she’d come with. In fact, the effort of the affair was what had at last coaxed her to sleeping. 

Producing her hand-mirror from her bag, if she covered her face…and ignored her skin and horns…and slumped her wings behind her back…she almost…looked like a person. A beautiful…human…person. Nesna dropped her mirror on the bed without another thought to it.

Nesna wrestled with herself for a moment, before finally deciding she couldn’t bear it. She wrapped Agnella around her tail, and then curled her tail around Agnella for good measure. Before she left the room, she grasped for a moment, and then looked back to her bag of jewellery. Earrings! A gift would make everything a bit better, wouldn’t it? Surely the royals must have been missing some of their nicest things?

Nesna returned to the bag and dug through it.

[color=DDA0DD][i]Perfect,[/i][/color] she thought as she tucked the earrings into one of the little pouches hidden in the folds of her dress.

With a final, anxious exhalation, Nesna departed from the room.

…

As Nesna made her way through the inn into the main area of the tavern, her first instinct had been to enquire with Sya about the state of the curfew. But seeing as Sya was nowhere to be seen, and that the place was no longer hunkered down as it had been the night before. her question was answered anyway. At first, she had resolved to simply head out and perhaps make her way to the Aurelian temple to ask a few questions about decorum in anticipation of that meeting. But something else caught her attention, and her gaze settled back on this pair who seemed, at least as best as she could tell from a distance, quite official—surely bearing some rank superior to most of the guards. As she approached, her sense was better confirmed. The woman in particular seemed well-to-do, courtly, something in that range, anyway. Stopping a short distance from them, Nesna cleared her throat.

[color=DDA0DD]“Begging your pardons, My Lady and My Lord,”[/color] she began, [color=DDA0DD]“Could I trouble you for a moment?”[/color]

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Lord & Lady Coswain [@PrinceAlexus]