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Location: The Eye of the Beholder


The frenetic energy of the tavern danced around Elio as he watched Aliseth stride away – people dancing, talking, laughing, the grunt of chairs and screech of utensils against plates, the firelight painting everything in shifting shadows, all filled the air until the tavern was nearly bursting with life. In the center of it all, Elio was still as stone. The music swallowed the sound of the door closing as Aliseth stepped outside. Elio’s eyes narrowed.

What the fuck was that?

Aliseth had smiled at him, cold and detached – and then he’d asked if he could identify Zeph’s body, with urgency he hadn’t had for the entire rest of the conversation.

Elio’s back was stiff, muscles taut. He hadn’t moved from his position of leaning against the bar. His fists tightened, elbows still propped up on the bar’s surface. His mind worked its way back through the conversation, even as he held back the urge to just say screw it and head to the temple to make sure Zeph wasn’t a pasty-ass corpse. There were so few people he tolerated long-term in Dawnhaven.

Earlier today, he would’ve counted Aliseth amongst their number.

He would’ve hauled off on anyone else who’d looked at him like that, after talking to him like that. He’d started brawls over less. Aliseth had looked worse for wear, clearly involved in some sort of fight. What, had it scrambled his brain? Was the trauma of whatever had happened breaking him? And if it was… why did the body of the guard even need to be identified if Aliseth had been there? Unless the feral had attacked at different times, going after guards one by one. And if that was the case, why the fuck was Aliseth lounging around instead of working?

There was movement next to Elio. He didn’t care.

At least… he didn’t until he caught a flash of violet in his periphery.

His firelight eyes flicked over. A blight-born was sitting next to him, trying to make herself as small and unobtrusive as possible – wasted effort, really. There was no way she couldn’t draw attention and take up space, with her eyes and skin and wings. Elio spent another moment looking at her out of the corner of his eye. Then he turned his head towards her to properly examine her, his eyes still flinty, muscles still rigid.

Aliseth knew her. He’d been livid at the sight of her. This wasn’t unusual. Maybe the intensity of his anger was noteworthy, but he’d never been a friend to blight-born. But he’d clearly taken issue with her in a way he simply hadn’t with the barkeep, and that gave Elio pause.

“That guard who left,” he said to her. He didn’t bother with introductions, his usual woven tapestry of words and movement and proximity to edge his way under someone else’s skin. He was no longer interested in games. “Kain. You know him.”

Nesna paused her idle stirrings of the soup and froze for a moment, clearly thinking of her response carefully before speaking. She set her spoon down against the side of the bowl and took a small sip of wine before she responded to the man. After covering her mouth to swallow quickly, she softly offered, “We’ve become acquainted.” After another brief pause, she turned her head slightly to get a better look at the man. Her lilac-purple eyes all widened at the sight of him, and the side of her mouth curled into an awkward, nervous smile, “Why do you ask?”

Elio catalogued the way she moved, back straight, gloved hand daintily lifting to her mouth, voice light and proper – she moved like someone who’d been trained to move this way, with prim etiquette classes and discerning parents.

A new theory: maybe more money meant the more fucked up you looked if you managed to walk out of the blight alive.

He watched her smile waver as she took him in. Useful.

“He hates you.” His words were a blunt tool. Then he forced his muscles to relax slightly, his fists to unclench. His eyes weren’t quite so hard, though they were still intently focused on her. “Don’t take it personally, he’s a prick,” he said, smoothing out the rough edges of his voice. “I’m impressed, is all.”

Nesna nodded skeptically at first, and then seemed to relax. Letting out a sigh, she held a gloved hand up to her chest. It was good to hear that she wasn’t the only one to have gotten such an unpleasant taste from Aliseth’s temperament. But what else did this man mean?

“It’s easy to hate a creature like myself,” she affirmed matter-of-factly, “I wouldn’t have imagined taking it personally. I gather he’s just temperamental. One doesn’t find a profession in bearing weapons without having a bit of a certain…disposition…about oneself, I imagine. But I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. Impressed? Whatever could be impressive? I suppose he’s handled taking a beating well enough. Is that to what you are referring?”

Elio’s eyes sharpened as he latched onto her words.

“Did you see it? That beating he took.” He paused, before finally turning in his seat to face her. “I’ve seen him hate blight-born before. Often. With zeal.” It wasn’t an uncommon sentiment. Elio hadn’t been one for blighters either, until curiosity had gotten the better of him those first few days in Dawnhaven. Turned out sex was great for desensitization.

Elio made a show of looking around the tavern, waving a hand lazily to gesture to the crowd. “A dozen of them here, in this room, and he didn’t spare a glance or a glare at any – except you. Whatever acquaintance you made, must’ve left an impact.” Elio leaned towards her slightly. “So what was it?”

Why was Aliseth acting like this?

Nesna at first leaned away from Elio as he leaned towards her. Her eyes settled into their more melancholy resting expression as her lips pulled into a small frown.

“I’m afraid our disagreement is still rather fresh in his mind,” she lamented, lifting a hand to her face and tracing it down her cheek slowly, “I didn’t see the beating he took myself; I’ve only just arrived. But you see…he saw fit to interrupt a perfectly adequate hailing I was already in the midst of receiving from one Guard Hale, and then dragged the three of us up before the head of the guards. I don’t imagine he—Guard Kain, that is—is in his right mind at this point. Though ultimately our disagreement is only distinct to him, I imagine, because he ventured to overstep.”

Nesna looked back to her soup and gave it an idle stir, before looking to Elio again, and adding, “I will not abide by being manhandled. You know, underneath all of this rot, I’m still a woman. And I haven’t any respect for a man who sees fit to shove a woman. It simply isn’t decent.

“Evidently, he felt otherwise, though.”


Nesna wrinkled her nose in disgust as she spoke about the behaviour, then let go of the spoon in her bowl without eating anything. Instead, she took her cup in hand and sipped.

Sitting in his chair listening to Nesna speak, Elio had again turned to stone. His expression remained unchanged, even as his eyes darkened and anger began to simmer beneath his skin.

“I’m sorry you had such a rude reception in Dawnhaven – shame, too. Zephyros Hale is as warm a welcome you could hope to receive. But Kain – he seems out of sorts today. Surviving an attack, the death of a guard… he was rattled by the time he got to you and Hale, I’m sure.”

Nesna offered a smile as her expression warmed again. She nodded as Elio offered consolation, and her eyes brightened as conversation returned to Zephyros for a moment. She seemed to clench her jaw as Elio commented on Aliseth’s state, clearly refraining from commentary.

‘And I’ve died before, but I didn’t make it anyone else’s problem when I did,’ she thought to herself. It was just typical enough. So much whinging and bellyaching from people who knew very well what they’d signed up for. If one couldn’t handle seeing one’s compatriot die, why go for such a job in the first place? The world could always use more tailors, bakers, and so forth. Nesna’s expression as Elio spoke of Aliseth seemed as unsympathetic as her thoughts actually were, though her expression softened quickly as she offered her own response.

“Yes, Zephyros, I would call him a gentleman,” she nodded. “I’ve heard about all of this fuss. I gather it was quite the incident, wasn’t it? I’m just worried about the princess. I do hope that creature that got up to the attack hasn’t done any lasting damage. Is there any news as to where Her Majesty is?”

Elio’s thoughts of the fresh murder he was planning halted in their tracks.

The anger had turned to rage in his blood when the woman across from him didn’t contradict his timeline – that the attack and murder of a guard had happened before Aliseth had seen her and Zeph together, which meant he knew damn fucking well that Zeph’s body wasn’t cooling on a slab somewhere.

Why tell him that, then? Aliseth’s soft, cold smile flashed in his mind again. Aliseth was a lot of things – cocky, took his job too seriously, had a mean streak when he wanted — but this was different. Elio often did his best to get under his skin (successfully (and in his pants (successfully))), but Aliseth wouldn’t just… lie about Zeph being dead. To what end? To fuck with him? And he’d… what, shoved this blight-born?

…Well, that he could see.

It was only the mention of the princess that cut through his thoughts. Elio focused on Nesna again, his dark eyebrows drawing together.

The princess was the target of the attack and a feral was on the loose. And she was missing? How, in the name of Jericho’s white ass, had they not already sounded a settlement-wide alert?

Well done Astaros, real tight ship you run.

“They’re keeping word about it quiet,” Elio replied, his smile easy even as his fingers started to tap against his thigh. “Lots to deal with, and they can’t have a panic spreading through town. Find the perpetrator, secure the princess, keep everyone else calm and safe…” …Hook up with an old flame, let a feral into town, get a guard killed…

“I wouldn’t worry, though. If there’s one thing the prince excels at, it’s multitasking.”

Another question popped into Elio’s mind: how did this woman know so much about —

She’d said Aliseth had dragged the three of them before the head guard… the captain? Had Aliseth made the incident report in front of her?

“Just such a shame about the princess’ guard,” Elio said, resting against the bar as he watched her pale eyes. “I don’t know if they could afford to lose that one.”

Nesna tilted her head and nodded sympathetically as Elio noted the gravity of the situation—and how imprudent it would be to make a fuss. Her eyebrows bent into a grave, saddened expression and her eyes closed in long blinks as she nodded along. The man seemed so at ease, much more so than anyone else around who had an inkling as to what had taken place. It was strange. In a way, it was comforting, but it was also confusing. He didn’t very much seem like the sort to be some public leader, professing calm in times of strife. But perhaps looks could be deceiving. If looks made one, after all, Nesna imagined she’d have no business bothering with a spoon at all. Or a bowl, for that matter.

“Good help is hard to come by,” Nesna agreed. Her tone was flat as she recited the adage, clearly aware of the cliché but not having bothered to consider another way of saying it. As she continued, her tone returned to the gentler, more restrained pattern she had been taking. The rest of her expression remained unwavering—somewhere between tired, grave, and passively worried. The dull glow of her eyes remained constant as she looked in his direction, endeavouring to make eye contact even despite the lack of pupils to affirm such a thing. Nesna rarely blinked, and when she did, her eyelids seemed to move with an unexpected weight. It wasn’t quite a staring contest, but the static nature of her eyes themselves made it sometimes seem as if she was, in fact, staring, regardless of her intent.

“I gather that even most of the guards who are here already aren’t entirely too keen on staying longer than they must. Finding out about…Abel—I’m inclined to say Abel was the name Guard Kain had said—the death of a guard, a royal guard, in any case, is probably going to dissuade even those who were willing, in principle, to come out to this distant place. I would loath to find myself in the position of recruiting guards to come and work here. I can’t imagine it’s an easy job on the best of days…”

Nesna drifted off, and again, her attention turned briefly to her soup. Steam was still rising from it. With a sigh, Nesna sipped her wine again.

Abel.

Elio’s mind worked. He didn’t know the man personally – just by reputation, and whatever Aliseth and Zeph had said about him. If Aliseth was involved in the attack, then it made sense that Abel had been there too. That the feral had managed to kill him, though…

Yeah, that would’ve fucked Aliseth up. The old man had practically been his mentor. Slowly, a picture was assembling itself in Elio’s mind. Aliseth and Abel had been with the princess, a feral attacked, killed Abel, knocked Aliseth around, hurt the princess… but she was missing, apparently. Kidnapped?

Aliseth had said the suspect had psychic magic. If it’d been used on him, maybe that, coupled with the loss of Abel, could explain why he was being such a dickwad. His thoughts lingered on the guard, and their strange conversation – that smile, before he’d implied Zeph was dead. Something cold sat in the pit of his stomach.

Elio was still missing pieces.

His eyes were still on her though his attention strayed. “Dangerous world out there,” he agreed, his voice softer than it’d been. He refocused on her, looking her over again. She was new in town. Blight-born. Could probably do some damage – but if she was a suspect, she would’ve been locked up in that half-finished jail by now, especially with the venom Aliseth had shot at her. He was a witness. He would’ve just named her the culprit and been done with it, if it were true. No, that she was still out and about with all this chaos apparently brewing in Dawnhaven, meant she was cleared. Either that, or the guards really were piss poor at their jobs.

“All the more reason to be thankful for the guards we have left,” he said, flashing her a smile. Elio shifted in his seat, pushing himself up to stand. “I’d try to keep my head down if I were you, pet.” Unfortunately for Aliseth Kain, Elio would be doing no such thing. He flexed his hands. “But I should be getting to work by now.” Tilting his neck this way and that, he felt the stretch and pop of his joints as he rolled his shoulders back. Energy thrummed under his skin, like ozone building before a storm. He cast a look back over to her.

“Thanks for the conversation. It was just what I needed.”

Nesna gave Elio a confused look at being called a “pet,” but said nothing of it as the man hurried to rise.

“Happy to help…”

Elio strode out the tavern door, steps sure as he traveled over the stone he’d laid with his own hands.

The Eye of the Beholder


Nesna swirled her drink around in the cup passively as Sya dismissed her apology and then asked about styling. After a moment of pause, Nesna responded.

“It’s all well,” she cryptically said. Her tone was a bit wistful, though what she said to conclude had a firm downturn in tone clearly indicating she was not currently interested in elaborating further, “I’ve just never been a Miss before.”

To avoid making an awkward situation of it, Nesna took a small sip of the wine and offered a polite smile. As the innkeeper soon needed to hurry off, Nesna then responded, “Of course, there is no hurry,” though she was unsure if the innkeeper had indeed heard her response. As she stood idly, her attention turned to her bags. Looking at them, at the map, and then around the room, she took a step and flagged down one of the inn’s workers.

“I’ll need these brought to room number six,” she stated firmly. With a flick of the wrist, she floated the bags into the hands of the man, and then reached over and grabbed the smallest of the bags from him—the bag from which she had produced the earrings.

“Never you mind this one. I’ll keep it on my person,” she added. She turned her attention back to the bar for a moment, before adding “Thank you,” as the man walked off with her clothes. Once the worker was properly on his way, Nesna returned her attention fully to the conversations going on nearby. She watched from the corner of her eye as Guard Kain continued to speak to another man—and then that same man prevented him from leaving for a spell.

If there was one small consolation about her eyes, their lack of pupils made it altogether impossible to see precisely where she was looking. And Nesna had forgotten, only now remembering, just how interesting it could be the eavesdrop.

It was making sense, now. Of course Guard Kain had suspected her. Evidently, there were others about who might have borne a resemblance to her in some way. Or at least, it must have to his battered and bruised eyes. How inconvenient. Though it made sense, in the end. Things couldn’t very well have been fully auspicious; meeting Zeph obviously meant an open, waiting hand from fate to receive its proportionate repayment. More than one step forward, most often, demanded at least one step back, if not more steps back than forward. As Nesna’s eyelids and brow sunk in slow resignation to the conclusion, the innkeeper returned with food.

Nesna leaned forward slightly, inspecting the spread. Her expression remained largely the same, though she reminded herself to put a smile back on.

“Thank you,” she replied, then adding, “I’ll let you know how it suits me.”

Nesna took the nearest seat at the bar—the one right next to the man who had been speaking with Guard Kain.

“Pardon,” Nesna said, mostly to him, as she went to sit, setting her drink down as she approached. She swept her peacock-blue dress forward as she took her seat on the stool, and then pivoted to face the bar properly. With three fingers outstretched, Nesna pointed to the food, and then curled them inward, drawing to food in front of her.

Uncertain whether the man was going to rush off or not, Nesna pulled both wings tightly to her, so they would neither rest on the floor nor stick out far back. She turned her attention back to the food, and nudged the bread away from her. It was tempting, certainly, but a terrible idea.

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The Eye of the Beholder

Nesna’s nodded as Sya weighed the little stud earrings. Of course, even here there were charlatans about who would seek to pass off nonsense for gold. Well, of course there were desperate wretches everywhere one looked, especially in this day and age. Why, if that irritating guard were turned, he’d barely even be able to afford death—and it wouldn’t be his words that would sell any Lunarian authorities on him being deserving of it.

Her upper lip twitched as Sya addressed her again. Of course, the other blightborn couldn’t have known. But she had to ask, had she indeed lost so much of her former poise that even well-dressed, she gave off nothing more impression than that of a ‘Miss’? Being Miss Nesna was better than sleeping in a ditch, but how disappointing it was. And here she was, once the eldest daughter with perhaps enough shrewdness to steer proud family lines back off the routes of decay and dismantlement, now a grovelling beast trembling around some pet project of a foreign noble. A decade ago, if only she had found a more decent and concealable vice, if only she hadn’t gotten sloppy again, this would have all been averted and she could look in the mirror, see a proud Marquess, and chase the lower ranked, disgrace-spreading squatters out of her family legacy. And yet, now there wasn’t any legacy to claim anyway.

Nesna nodded along absentmindedly as Sya offered a choice of wine.

“Yes, yes, the Aurelian will do,” she affirmed.

As Sya offered an option for meat, Nesna brought a gloved hand to her chin and rubbed it for a moment. With a sigh, Nesna realized it likely wouldn’t do. Even a tender cut was probably pushing it, but it had been ages since she’d tried it. Had she even tried any such thing since she’d turned? Thinking of it, she couldn’t recall. But a normal cut definitely wouldn’t do the job. Nesna frowned and furrowed her brow as she thought. Her thoughts, however, were soon interrupted as her ears perked up and she overheard the word ‘murdered.’

It was that rude ruffian who called himself a guard again. While she made a point of not looking directly towards the man, Nesna forced a tight-lipped smile onto her face again. At this rate, the innkeeper was going to get the wrong sorts of ideas planted in her head…

But apparently not now. Nesna sighed as Guard Kain rose. It was best to avoid eye contact, or, the implication of it, anyway. Better to behave as if she hadn’t noticed him. Nesna stepped to the side, away from the door and closer to the wall. Once Sya came back around, Nesna gestured for her to come closer.

When she had Sya’s attention, she tilted her head sympathetically and offered a gentle smile, while lifting up the hand that was facing towards the rest of the tavern. She gestured as if she was embarrassed. by pulling her hand up by her face and leaning into it. Conveniently, her hand also hid the movements of her mouth from the rest of the people on that side of her. How many times had her great grandmother, grandmother, and mother all used this same manoeuvre! If she closed her eyes here, it could be just like the old days, all those odd times when she had the opportunity to be a guest elsewhere and request that there be no cheese with her food, or ask for a bit more dessert.

But this wasn’t for propriety, sadly. It was necessary.

“I fear venison may not be suitable for my rather particular needs, Mistress Sya,” Nesna murmured, just loud enough that Sya could hear. Hopefully, anyway! Goodness, she was rusty whispering in a crowded room.

“My affliction is inconvenient in a sort of way which demands I be a bit curt about the matter. Begging your pardon before I should ask if there might so happen to be any blood-based dishes available, would there? I would die if only to eat out of a bowl or drink from a cup like a civilized person again. If such things aren’t possible, I of course understand, and will see if I can manage a broth of some kind as a substitute, perhaps the sort one might give to those in a delicate state of health.”

Nesna let her hand slide down and retreated from leaning forward, offering Sya a tight-lipped, apologetic expression as she stood straight by again. At a normal volume, she then added, “Once again, my most sincere apologies for the bother.”

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The Eye of the Beholder
Nesna cocked her head slightly when Sya confirmed that she was, in fact, the proprietor. Yes, a most curious case indeed, that someone could own property and a business even as a blightborn—on Lunarian soil no less. What else was truly so different about Dawnhaven that even a particularly obvious blightborn such as this woman could be an innkeeper, a tavern keeper, and so forth? His Majesty was hardly inclined to allot blightborn the right to live, and yet here, on Lunarian soil, there was a cyclopian serpent-woman cheerily running an establishment which she presumably owned!

And a harem? Had she heard that correctly? A joke it may have been, but was this indeed what the lower classes tended towards? The servants at home had all been so refined and well-mannered; only that beastly thing who had married her mother had surpassed such speech. What an impression! Nesna tensed her jaw as Sya jested. How many of these patrons were sleeping with her, and why? Why would anyone want to bed a blightborn? Were they so unconcerned with their own wellbeing, or were they simply indifferent or blind to the disgusting reali—

Free food? The Prince had paid for it all?

Well that explained it all, didn’t it. Definitely, it was a nice thing to do, but it was also unnervingly generous for a foreign monarch. And yet were it that he was merely showing off, he surely would have done more than paid for a single day. What a queer, queer place Dawnhaven was indeed!

Nesna idly looked at the available rooms as she pulled her bag of earrings closer.

‘No such luck,” she thought as she hovered her finger past the choicest of rooms, ‘You’re still stuck with cupboards, Nesna. Why would you have imagined this would be any different?

When Sya’s attention returned to her, Nesna placed her finger on Room 6.

“Room number Six will do,” Nesna sighed. Her voice and expression gave off the impression that she was trying her best to be polite, though her smile had still disappeared back into her neutral, tired-looking resting face. She withdrew her hand from the map and reached into her bag of earrings, producing the golden studs she had previously offered to Zeph. She held out a gloved hand and offered them to Sya.

“I trust this will suffice? As for the books, you may call me Nesna. That’s N E S N A. To eat, I would like the juiciest, most tender cut you have available. And to drink, I will have red wine—something fruity, mild, and preferably lower in alcohol content, as my constitution simply isn’t what it once was.”

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The Eye of the Beholder


Nesna stood for a moment, her bags hovering behind her, to take in the scene. What a warm, comfortable sort of place. It held a certain provincial charm, no doubt. It was well-maintained, lit, and loved—something like the inverse of the old family home. There weren’t the drippings of fortune to be lost, but of small wealth to be made. It showed sort of quiet optimism that the day—or perhaps night—had been altogether lacking for some time, certainly where Nesna had lived, anyway. This, really, was a peasant’s providence if nothing else—the sort of place where the servants might have gone on their day off to enjoy a pleasant treatment.

And all the same, it felt strange to be standing here. It was strange to be here, looking at people not from a longing distance, but rather as a person amongst the living, and it was stranger still to see the odd few blightborn going about their business as if there was nothing insane about this entire affair. But then, looking at the bar and who was behind it, the real surprise was all the normal people there. On Lunarian soil, there was a blightborn working at a tavern! What a strange place Dawnhaven was indeed!

Nesna’s ears perked slightly as she heard different bits of conversation from all over the room. How overwhelming camaraderie could be! There was nothing else to be done, then, but to see to finding residence and refreshments. The latter seemed easier than the former, and so Nesna resolved to step up to the counter. Without taking a seat, she stood there and gently waved her hand to get the attention of the woman behind the bar. Despite her best efforts, she could conceal a furrowing of her brow as she got a better look at the woman working there.

Slithering around the place was a cyclops with ears much like Nesna’s own. The way she navigated the bar gave a real sense of familiarity, and with the decor of the place, Nesna had to wonder if this…person?—if she was the proprietor. This woman inspired an odd feeling in Nesna. On some accounts, it could have been worse. This woman was entirely inhuman in her lower body, twisted beyond all recognition. And her visage was changed, perhaps far dramatically, by that one great eye than Nesna’s own was by her four. But on the other hand, it was simply eerie looking back at someone else so afflicted, and a touch stomach-turning to see how…well…the woman seemed to be. It was bewildering, sure, but a question that absolutely could not be sensibly posed so early on.

When she finally got the woman’s attention, Nesna spoke firmly, with a polite smile forced onto her face.

“If I could trouble you, Miss,” she began, “It is my understanding that there are lodgings available. I wish to purchase a room and something to eat and drink. Regrettably, I do not have any coin with me; will gold suffice?”

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Location: Guard Camp > Zeph’s House | Collaboration with @The Muse
Nesna clapped her hands together as soon as it seemed Aliseth was backing off, and her tone shifted cheerier still.

“Oh, and Guard Hale, I have come to understand you are fond of a snack here and there? Would the local inn happen to offer—” as Nesna continued, she seemed to adopt a giddy expression, peaking at the next word, warm baths? If you could be such a darling. could you help me find my way and see to it that I can have a nice drink while I soak this awful grime out? I assure you, I can make it worth your time.”

Nesna blinked and clicked her tongue, as if realizing what she had said, “Pardon my vague speaking. I mean to say that I will pay you for your assistance and trouble. And for permitting me to consult you on the matter of getting something proper to drink and to eat.”

Zeph’s eyes narrowed as Nesna’s tone shifted again, her pedantic tone replaced by a more sugary, almost calculated sweetness. He couldn’t help but feel a slight sting when she mentioned him being fond of snacks. He clenched his jaw but said nothing, keeping his expression neutral, hidden under his helmet. He wasn’t sure what to make of her sudden change of attitude, but it was hard to ignore how quickly she seemed to adapt, almost as if she’d been trained in this kind of manipulation.

“We’re not going to the inn yet,” Zeph finally said, his voice colder than it had been when he first greeted her at the gate. “I have more questions for you. Unfortunately, the jail's not fully finished yet.”

The jail had been close to completion, but it seemed like they were still waiting on a few final touches. That left him with few options. He didn’t trust to leave her loose in town, and he certainly couldn’t drag her through a half-finished jail crawling with construction workers. With that out of the question, he had no choice but to make other arrangements.

He led her out of the camp, pushing past the noise of guards organizing, preparations still being made for the search of the Princess. “Looks like we’ll have to make do with my place instead. It’s just north of the town center. You may have a warm bath there—if you comply with my questioning first. Understood?”

Nesna sighed gently and nodded.

“Very well,” she responded. She paused, and suddenly let out a dry laugh, “And to think of what Mother would think! Oh, but never mind it. At this point, I’ve gone six miserable years without a nice soak. I’d—hah—I’d damn well let you watch and tell you my life’s story at once if it took it to get a damned bath!”

Zeph raised an eyebrow, his curiosity piqued. He was almost amused, but quickly buried the feeling deep within. If these had been different circumstances, he might’ve had something sly to say, but now… he couldn’t afford to be distracted. So he forced his expression into a neutral state and said nothing, his mind reminding him that she may be responsible for Abel’s death. There were too many unanswered questions hanging over her, too much suspicion—she was a suspect. And for all he knew, she might be one of those sex-driven demons. It seemed to be leaning that way, considering the way she tried to lure him in with such a comment. He’d be damned if he let her sway him.

Nesna chortled a moment, clapping a hand to her mouth, wheezed, and then quickly cleared her throat. Returning to her more formal tone, she added, “Pardon. In any case, though, a normal interview and a normal bath afterwards would be my distinct preference. I will happily comply.”

In silence, they moved north, the sounds of the camp fading away, replaced by the bustle of the town—its citizens still blissfully unaware of the attack. He held no illusions about Nesna—she might’ve been complying now, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. He knew how blight-born could be, and understood that he could be walking himself into a trap. If she had decided to turn on him, especially in close quarters, he’d likely lose that battle. One human very rarely won the fight against one blight-born. At the very least, he was keeping her close, keeping her distracted while the rest of the guards figured out this mess.

Yet, despite the cold calculations running through his mind, he couldn’t deny that he was grateful for her compliance—and the way she seemed to have taken to him better than she had with Aliseth. Not pushing her around and calling her names probably helped. In a way, it felt like a win.

“Thanks,” he said, his voice unexpectedly softer than it had been before. “For your cooperation. It makes things easier.” He hesitated for a moment, then spoke again, his words weighted by a flicker of guilt. “And… I’m sorry for the way you were treated back there.”

He turned his head slightly to glance at her, genuine in his apology. His mother would have been livid if she’d seen him do nothing, standing idly by while a woman was berated—blight-born or not.

“It is nothing I did not anticipate as a possibility,” Nesna responded. Her voice seemed calm, but not altogether distant. Rather, she spoke as if she were simply recounting neutral facts, rather than unpleasant experiences.

“I am under no illusions as to what I am. My only surprise is that, even acting according to my current station, I was met with such active scorn. Passive, I’m sure you can imagine, is bearable. But I have never before been manhandled, and I should like to imagine that there is at least a sliver of humanity to me left, no matter how far I have fallen, that asks that I not be treated in such a way without provocation. So if even after doing my best to emphasize my humanity—whatever of it I still have—I am still treated as an animal, I see no reason to continue with pleasantries. I appreciate that you see no need to beat a dog that has collared itself. I am happy to bow lower than I once had to, if only I am not kicked while I do it. Really, this part is no trouble at all.”

Zeph simply nodded in response, though her words lingered in his mind. He said nothing, but wondered what she might have endured as a blight-born. He didn’t dare probe further, though. Knowing how his people had treated them all these years… it couldn’t have been a pleasant story. Instead, he allowed the silence to stretch between them, his thoughts occupied as they continued walking along snow-dusted roads.

After passing through the busy town square, Zeph led them through the northern residential area where many guards, including himself, had been assigned housing. Eventually, they closed in on a modest cabin, its wooden structure tucked among a row of similar homes.

Before reaching his home, Zeph caught sight of one of the squires who attended to several guards in the area, bundled against the cold with a bucket in hand. "Oi, Taron!" his voice carried over the quiet street, firm but not harsh. The young squire froze mid-step and looked over, wide-eyed.

"Yes, sir?" Taron replied, hurrying closer, his boots crunching in the snow.

"Get a bath going, ey?" He jerked his chin toward the cabin. "I’ve a guest that’s in need."

Taron’s gaze flicked toward Nesna, curiosity and confusion plain on his face. Zeph narrowed his eyes slightly, snapping the boy’s attention back to him.

"Understood, sir. Straight away." Taron said quickly, straightening.

Satisfied, Zeph stepped ahead to unlock the door, pushing it open and holding it for her and the squire. For a moment, he hesitated, unsure how she’d maneuver her massive, bat-like wings through the doorway. Nesna simply relaxed her wings, letting them slump straight behind her, like a cape, and walked through the door with ease, then Taron followed. As soon as she entered, Nesna carefully set down two bags and untethered something from around her waist, resulting in a layer of skirt falling to the floor, revealing itself to be another bag that she had been essentially wearing.

Grabbing the torch mounted on the wall outside, Zeph followed them in, warm orange light spilling into the otherwise dark interior. His home was practically just as cold as outside, obviously unused for some time. Its modest size reflected his station—a single living area with a hearth at its center, a small kitchen space, and a door leading to the bedroom in the back. Stacks of dried wood sat beside the hearth, the only clue to show that someone actually lived here. It wasn’t much, but it served its purpose.

Closing the door behind them, he made his way to the dining table and gestured to one of two chairs. “Please, take a seat,” he said, pulling out a chair for her. “Thank you,” she affirmed. She swept her hands under her dress and pulled it forward as she sat. Taron scurried toward the back room, opening the door and disappearing inside. Luckily for Taron, he knew water magic to fill the metal tub—he’d just need to stoke the coals beneath it for a while to warm it up.

Once Nesna was seated, Zeph moved to the hearth, kneeling to toss in a bundle of kindling and arrange a few logs. The crackle of flames soon filled the cabin as he used the torch to light the wood, warmth beginning to spread through the room. He rose and walked to the front door, briefly stepping outside to place the torch back in its sconce before returning to her at the table.

“The bath will take a little time,” he said simply as he began to remove his helmet, black hair falling in messy strands around his face. A sense of relief washed over him as he set the helmet down on the table, the weight lifted from his head. Running a hand through his hair, ruffling it further, he pulled up a chair and sat across from Nesna.

Finally, he had a clear view of her. The soft glow of firelight played across her features now, and for a moment, he allowed himself a brief thought—how odd it felt, hosting someone like her in his home. His hazel eyes moved between her four purple ones, glowing brightly in the dim lighting. Leaning back in his chair, arm draped lazily over the backrest, he studied her carefully.

“Tell me about yourself, Nesna.”

Nesna seemed to pause for a second. Her pupil-less eyes gave no indication as to where she might have been looking, if indeed she was looking anywhere at all. Her expression seemed pensive, as if Zeph had in fact asked a very difficult question. After a moment of this, she seemed to return to the present. She lifted her right hand, slid her thumb up across her second and third fingers, and then flicked her wrist. From one of her bags emerged a quartet of sparkling things which floated quickly over to the table. The larger pair went right into Nesna’s hand, while the smaller ones set down delicately in front of Zeph. While Nesna clutched what had come to her in her hand, obscuring it from sight, what sat before Zeph were little silver rings—too small to be for one’s fingers.

“There are plenty of young people who have their ears pierced. But very few can say that their first earrings were pure silver,” Nesna stated, “Those aren’t my first earrings you have in front of you—I wouldn’t give you those as a matter of sentiment. But those things in front of you are earrings of silver, just as pure as the ones my ears were first pierced with. I used to like those for everyday use, but I can’t get much use at all out of them anymore, so I suggest you take them and pawn them off. Perhaps buy your bewildered friend a few drinks to cool his temper, and keep the rest, though I suggest you either tell him you stole them from me or speak not of money at all. Or keep them, if you’d rather that. Consider it appreciation for the most unexpected decency I’ve thus far enjoyed from you.

But you see, those are probably worth a decent sum even to a scamming pawner, and yet for me, they’re one of a smattering of everyday earrings that I thought absolutely nothing of when I had use for them.”


Zeph's gaze lingered on the delicate earrings placed before him, their metal faintly reflecting the firelight. From his seat, he made no motion to reach for them, though his mind mulled over her words. Pure silver—they’d fetch a decent pouch of gold, enough to cover his expenses for at least a month.

After a pause, he met her gaze, a trace of skepticism flickering in his hazel eyes. Rarely were nobles so generous with their valuables. Sure, she was blight-born now, but when had dire circumstances ever hindered a noble's entitlement?

Nesna shifted her hand towards Zeph and uncurled her fingers, revealing what she was holding. In her hand sat a pair of earrings with large, flawless pearls. Framing either side of them were silver crescents, intricately engraved to depict the phases of the moon. Nesna sighed longingly as she picked one up with her free hand and held it so that it could gleam in the light. As the earring dangled from her gloved fingers, it sparkled vibrantly, catching both the light of the fire and the brightening light from her eyes. Nesna’s lower, extra pair of eyes closed, and she looked at the gorgeous piece silently for another moment before inhaling, and then continuing.

“These belonged to my great, great, great grandmother on my mother’s side. They have been passed down for generations from mother to daughter, as one of our most prized possessions. Aren’t they beautiful? It’s a magnificent piece—a symbol of dedication and love, which seeks to impart its wearer with but a fragment of the beauty and grace of the Blesséd Seluna. An inheritance bonding generations to one another across time and across space, each new daughter a new phase of the ever-continuing cycle of life under the Moon’s loving gaze.”

Nesna suddenly snatched the earring up and put it back in her other hand with its twin.
“Until me, that is.”

Her tone suddenly shifted as she said this, from expressing warm longing to frigid bitterness.

“You know, parents are meant to love their children. And on rare occasion—on rare special occasion—sometimes they may even venture to like the things. I was loved once. I was even liked once, if you can imagine it.”
Nesna’s eyes had all but lost their glow at this point, as the rest of her expression followed her tone in sinking from loving to bitter.

“But did you know, Guard Hale, that nobility are entirely replaceable too? There isn’t much about me to tell. Because I’m dead, of course. As far as anyone who ever needed to know is concerned, my phases ended before I could ever even touch these beautiful things. Have you ever been to your own funeral, Guard Hale? It’s really quite a fascinating thing to see how everyone is suddenly just a little bit nice as they hurry things along to distract from the fact that they never really bothered to look for your corpse.”

Nesna suddenly let out a dry, vicious chortle and suddenly pulled one of her gloves off, enveloping the earrings in the glove as her bare hand was revealed. While her gloves were dark, her hands were pitch-black, as if she were wearing charcoal gloves underneath her woollen ones. Her lower eyes snapped open once again.

I’m a corpse, Hale. You’re all wrong when you say things like me are demons!” she exclaimed as she pulled off the other glove, “We’re ghosts! Idiots who asked for death and were struck down into awful mockeries of themselves for it! Nesna is nothing more than this—a ghost—a creature of and belonging to the dead.”

Zeph listened silently as Nesna lamented over her past, her demeanor shifting as words spilled out bitter and sharp. A slight crease in his brow formed as she declared herself a ghost, proclaiming that all blight-born had wished for death. It was clear she was projecting, lost in the shadows of her own past. He knew that not all blight-born had sought death. In fact, most hadn’t. Though he suspected that many now yearned for death’s embrace, burdened by what they had become—not unlike Nesna here.

But that raised a question: had she entered the blight willingly? His brow furrowed deeper as she spoke of herself in the third person, a telling gesture of detachment, as if trying to separate who she had been and who she was now.

Nesna sighed, set the gloves down on the table, and slumped in her chair, clasping the bridge of her nose as she continued.

“I could waste your entire day telling you about what I was, because there’s nothing to say about what I am. Six years. After slowly tumbling down the rocky slopes of love, grace, and affection, I crumbled, made my landing, and died—except I didn’t get that kindness. No, I am in penance now. And after six years living like some miserable, ugly little fox or squirrel, scratching at life in woods while sneaking my residence from and stealing all sorts of sparkly nonsense from greater creatures than myself, I am here, talking to you, telling you that all that I am is a ghost remembering that it once got to be a human and failed to earn it.”
Nesna looked back at Zeph after her soliloquy and let out a pained wheeze.

“So to make clear my answer, all that Nesna is and has ever been so long as she has been Nesna is a little woodland pest plagued with memories of a better life and the decay thereof. I have, in my life as this phase of myself, done exactly nothing that cannot also be said of a pitiful little animal save for reading the books I stole. But don’t worry, I only stole things that used to be mine anyway. And things that should have, if only I were not already rotting before I died.”

Letting the silence hang in the air between them, the crackle of fire the only sound, Zeph leaned forward and picked up the silver earrings. He turned them over in his fingers, examining the delicate craftsmanship. His eyes flicked toward Nesna, the hint of a sly smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“You are quite the fox, I’d agree.” he finally said, a spark of something teasing in his tone. A playfulness arose in his eyes as he absentmindedly rolled the earrings between his index finger and thumb. “But a ghost? No.”

Reaching across the table, he took one of her blackened hands into his own. Turning them over gently, he placed the silver earrings unto her upturned palm, his movements careful and unhurried.

“You’re here, right now,” he said, his gaze locked onto her. “I see you. You’re no ghost.” He curled her fingers around the earrings with a gentle firmness, returning them to her. His touch lingering for a moment before he withdrew. “You don’t have to keep paying for any mistakes you might’ve made in the past.”

Zeph felt for her, what more could be said? But true to his nature, ever the class clown, he couldn’t resist the urge to pull her attention away from her pain, throwing in a teasing remark or two just to see if he could coax a smile out.

“And for the record, the name’s Zephyros,” he added, his mischievous smile growing. “You only have to call me Hale if you plan on making me put you in cuffs.”

Nesna offered a half-smile at Zeph’s teasing and introduction, and then a soft nod.

“Zephyros…” she repeated, bringing her hand to her chin, “That has quite a well-to-do bearing.”

She clicked her tongue and sat up straighter than she had been before.

“I suppose I ought to explain to you why I imagine it’s a continued indemnity that I’m working with here. Or, perhaps showing would be better. Let’s start simply.”

Nesna opened her eyes wide, and pointed to them with two fingers.

“With all of these four eyes, I would still bet you gold that I can’t see as well as you can. I never had good vision, mind you, but now I can’t very well wear my old spectacles!” she proclaimed, then gesturing at her ears, “Now these, I can hear extremely well with. Altogether too well if you ask me. When I found my little hiding spot on the family property, I found that even without pressing my ear to the chimney, I could get quite a clear sense of what was being said more or less throughout the building. It is generally polite to avoid speaking ill of the dead, one would think, but I’m afraid my name graced lips many a time, and few were terribly kind, so I realized. Much effort was spent convincing Mother that my loss was a blessing, and even more to attempt to cool my dear younger brother’s grief. But that is, in the end, in the past. Other than occasional mockery of the presumed-deceased, there hadn’t been much mention of me by the time the blight forced everyone to leave. What troubles me the most these days is that I can’t bear to sleep on either side. Either I sleep on my stomach or on my back, for my ears will not tolerate anything else.”

Nesna sighed, cleared her throat, and then leaned forward, tilting her head up as she did.

“But that’s no fun. What I’m sure you’re most interested in is this mess,” she continued. She pulled back her cheek with one finger and opened her mouth wide. Molasses-like saliva formed sparkling strands between her teeth as she opened her mouth. Nesna slowly dragged her tongue along the inside of her mouth, all but caressing each of the sharp, carnivorous teeth that sat behind her otherwise inconspicuous incisors.

Zeph’s face betrayed him for a split second, his lips twitching into a grimace before he could stop himself. Out of everything she'd shown him, this was by far the hardest to take in. But, just as quickly, he smoothed his expression back into something more neutral, not wanting to make her feel worse than she already did.

After making a show of her teeth in the light of the fire, Nesna let go of her cheek, sucked back the spit that had started to spill over her lip, and wiped the side of her mouth with the back of her hand with a disgusted expression.

“Not a single tooth in there is any good for chewing anything,” she scoffed, “Even if I could stomach much normal food, I’d need to cut it up into little—tiny little pieces, like a child. Not that it had ever stopped me from swiping cake and other sweets from the kitchen when we had them, and then promptly scarfing them down and puking them up in the woods...”

Nesna trailed off for a moment, then cleared her throat.

“Excuse me,” she sighed, “I really am terribly out of practice in conversation. My tone is all over the place today. What I mean to say is that there really isn’t much that I can actually eat for the purposes of sustenance. I’ve found luck with stomaching meat, but the unfortunate truth is that I’m one of those awful bloodsuckers. But please, don’t worry! I’ve never touched human blood, only animal blood! And I prefer not to kill the poor things, so I generally go after reindeer, moose, and so forth.”

Zeph’s playful demeanor faded the moment Nesna uttered the word "bloodsucker," suddenly reminded of why he’d brought her into his home in the first place. Her assurances that she’d never harmed a human meant little—words alone weren’t enough to earn his trust. Though, if distracting him had been her plan, she was doing an impressive job of it. Damn his wandering mind and empathetic heart. Steeling himself, his gaze hardened, flicking briefly to the edges of her dress where Aliseth had pointed out faint specks of blood.

Nesna scratched her chin for a moment, musing, “What else?” and then snapped her finger.

“There’s wings, of course. You can see those. I’ve a tail—one that looks as demonic as these confounded horns of mine, and the wings. It has that spade-tip and everything. Oh, the thing used to get in the way! I had to make a point of putting on a bit of weight just to find it comfortable to sit again. Though I still don’t find it altogether convenient when I’m dressed and in a chair. Beyond all of this? What I can tell you with certainty is that, as some kindness, I suppose, the blight bolstered my magic. Oh, it really did something for it. And with the Moon gracing us with Her presence all the time? I should weep for the sage I could have been! But that, I remind you, is why I’m here. Could you imagine it? If we could only cure the blight? Fix all who have been afflicted? And perhaps—hah!—perhaps get away without bringing back the sun!”

Nesna seemed to relax as she spoke of her magic, letting an almost calm smile grow on her lips as her eyelids seemed to match her soothed disposition.

“So it isn’t all bad, I suppose,” she mused, “But please, has any of this been helpful? I want to be cooperative.”

Zeph leaned forward onto the table as he listened to her musings, his left elbow propped on the surface, resting his chin lazily in the palm of his hand. “Care to explain the blood?” he asked, arching a brow and gesturing to her dress with his free hand.

“Oh, those stains?” she half asked, looking at her gown for a moment. Nesna looked down at them and looked at Zeph again, with an incredulous smile. She let out a small laugh, and then realized Zeph was serious.

“You do recall that I need the stuff to survive? Some of these are years old…well, this one is fresher, if I recall—oh yes! Right, have you ever bitten a bull moose? I cannot in good conscience recommend it. But it was the only beast I could find when I had started my trip here. I had to pounce on it perhaps, oh, six times if I recall? It shattered my cup! That I should thank the Goddess I can dust myself off after getting slammed into a cliff face, but glass is far less fortunate. So I was made to return to lapping it up from the source like a normal animal. And so I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a new smattering of stains from this entire affair. Really, the only solution at this rate is to burn this thing once I’ve gotten my nicer garments tailored for the wings…But to reiterate, animal blood—the lot of it is. I never intended to give you the notion that I was any good at the thing I need to do to survive. I’ve gotten better, mind you, but I imagine there are a great many newer blight-born who are far better at that sort of thing than I.”

Zeph nodded in understanding, the story believable given her circumstances. It was what he figured she would say, but it was good to hear her say it aloud. She had been as cooperative as any blight-born he had encountered, but still, there was something in the back of his mind telling him to keep his guard up. If Abel could be taken so easily, then so could he.

“Those stains... might not be the best look around town." he said, leaning back in his chair again. “If you need something tailored, perhaps I could help? I know it might be surprising, but I’m pretty good with my hands.” His serious expression shifted, a sly smirk curling at the corners of his lips.

Before Nesna could answer, the sound of boots clicking against the wooden floor interrupted him. Turning toward the hallway, he watched as the young squire reappeared. “The bath is ready for your…. guest, sir.” he said, his eyes lingering on Nesna with uncertainty.

"Just as promised." Zeph said, his gaze briefly flicking back to Nesna before returning to the squire, a small smile tugging at his lips. "Thank you, Taron. Dismissed."

Taron nodded quickly, giving a nervous glance at Nesna as he hurried toward the door, leaving Zeph and Nesna alone again.

Nesna looked to Taron and then back at Zeph as Taron hurried out. She held her hand up to cover her smile as she recalled Zeph’s comment, and then rose quickly from her seat.

“You would?” she asked, “Oh, you’re just the kindest!”

She crouched down before her bags and unraveled one of them, pulling out two garments after a moment of rustling through it.

Standing back up, she held up a pristine white shift, and a peacock-blue dress embroidered with shimmering purple floral patterns not altogether different in color from Nesna’s eyes. The dress almost gleamed in the gentle light of the fire, and Nesna smiled warmly at it for a moment before speaking.

“Truly, you would be doing more than I could dream of thanking you for. All I need done, really, is to have a panel made on the back for my wings,” Nesna suggested, “If I was at all any good with buttons, I’d have attempted it myself. But you see, my wings sit low, and I can’t very well show off my entire back! So I imagined I’d cut two lines down to where my wings sit, and then put in buttons so I could button the back up around them. Do you imagine that could be done? I have a little sack full of buttons I took from clothes I knew wouldn’t fit me any longer that you could perhaps use.”

As Nesna pulled the garments from her bag, a flicker of nerves ran through him. They appeared to be more expensive than he had imagined, and something she clearly cherished. It had been some time since he'd last worked in his family’s shop, but luckily the skills were still there, tucked away in the back of his mind. The knowledge was ingrained, from years of watching his mother, learning her craft as she expertly moved between fabrics. His hands had sewn countless seams, mended rips, and fixed buttons over the years. It was a skill that had always come in handy—especially when the cost of a tailor could be avoided.

Standing, he gave a quick nod, his eyes scanning the dress one last time before he moved toward the kitchen. After a few moments of rummaging in drawers, he found his measuring tape—slightly worn, but functional. He returned to Nesna, holding the tape in one hand. “I’ll just need some measurements from you. And the buttons you’d like to use.”

As he spoke, he moved behind her, hesitating for a moment as he figured out how to best maneuver himself around her wings. After a couple position shifts, his fingers brushed lightly against the fabric of her tattered dress as he made the first measurement across her shoulders. His mind wandered for just a moment, and for the briefest second, he could almost hear his mother’s voice in his head, guiding him as she always had when he’d been a boy—“measure twice, cut once.”

He wrapped the tape around her shoulders, just below the neck, and then down to her back, his movements slow and deliberate. The proximity to her felt strange, and Zeph had to keep his focus, forcing his mind not to wander. He hadn’t measured someone like this in years—especially not someone like her.

As he wrapped the measuring tape around her waist, he wondered how Aliseth and Volkov would react if they could see him now. He’d likely be flogged. The guards would never let him live it down. Hopefully she wasn’t the one who’d killed Abel… that’d be a real problem for him. Another mistake to add to the list.

Shoving the thought down, he finished the measurements and noted the numbers in his head. Stepping back, he eyed the dress again. “It’ll take a little time, but I’ll make it work.”

Nesna gave Zeph a bright smile as he considered his options.

“Consider me in your debt for as long as you see fit,” she responded, “When I’ve finished my bath and cleaned myself off, I can only say that I owe you for such a warm welcome.”



Nesna stood for a moment and looked at the steaming waters of the bathtub. She almost didn’t want it to end—it was right here, after all this time. That providence which she had so long imagined forever out of reach was at last sitting right before her, waiting and ready. Nesna held her breath as she disrobed, nearly tearing the things off and throwing them aside. This first interaction in so long had gone strangely, unexpectedly well, even in spite of that foolish man who had caused such disruption and dismay to his comrades-at-arms. In the end, despite those rightly-espoused suspicions as to the character of a blight-stricken newcomer, there was a humanity about this place, a decency, which she had scarcely imagined. Was it possible, then, that she could be allowed to present more than another willing participant in experiments or some errand-runner able to handle the blight? If, indeed, even Lunarian guards here were willing to swallow their misgivings, then what of the ill-informed Aurelians, to say nothing of their Prince, who was so much more willing to entertain blight-born as worthy of anything at all?

But with all of that, here, in a little bathroom, in a house perhaps only somewhat larger than the chunk of former servants’ quarters that she had made her home in, hosted by a soldier who had every reason not to trust her—here was where she would be getting her first taste of humanity in years? Here, in a village built at the wishes of an Aurelian prince—one who was marrying heir to the Lunarian throne? It was a miracle. A strange, head-spinning miracle.

But was letting all of this hit her right now really the best way to spend time? The coals would cool and the water would follow. Even then, it would be warmer than any bath Nesna had taken in ages—but it was not to be wasted!

Nesna shook her head vigorously. She felt herself lose her balance as she did. Stopping herself, she leaned over and grasped the edge of the metal basin with both hands. Just being in here felt surreal, strange—as if this were all a dream—as if her mind were playing tricks or just plain spinning.

‘Deep breath,’ she told herself.

Nesna inhaled and exhaled slowly.

‘You’re here. It’s real. You can feel it in your hands. There’s no reason to be silly.’

She forced herself upright. Nesna slipped one foot into the water, and then stepped in fully. As she sat down, she grinned. It was real. A beautiful, hot, perfect bath. Already she felt cleansed. As Nesna slumped into the water, she felt the soothing heat slip up around her, embracing her with its inviting waves of warmth.

How could anyone help but to want to enjoy simple pleasures like this forever?

It was so inviting. So soothing. So perfect for a nap.

Nesna felt one of her eyes slump down, as if it was even heavier than the other one. Come to think of it, everything felt heavy. Like she needed to be beneath the water, like those whales beached on the shores—too heavy to sit above the surface. As Nesna sunk herself into the water further, she suddenly felt a drop. It felt like her mind was being sucked dry. She felt nauseous. Exhausted. And most of all, truly, truly awful.

It felt impossible to pull herself back up, though. Was this tub cursed? Was it somehow made to keep her here? A memory flashed through Nesna’s mind.

When the fires were going, she could never sit too long up against the chimney, even though it warmed her up to a comfortable temperature. She had to lay just beside it, with a blanket to bring a gentler warmth to her. It wasn’t even an uncomfortable heat on the chimney! But it made her sick.

Blightborn, just like her, couldn’t survive the sun. She couldn’t even take the heat.

Nesna weakly spun her fingers in the water, getting it to rock in the tub as she pushed. Her head got above the water. She grabbed the side of the tub. Then she hoisted herself out onto the floor. Her legs dangled into the tub as she caught herself on the cold floor. She felt less awful as she sat with her legs raised by the tub. After a moment, she dragged herself forward and sat up with her knees pulled to her chest, totally nude, staring at the water.

‘I can’t even have a bath…’

Nesna sat there for a moment, then shivered. The only choice left? A whore’s bath. She sat by the tub and draped her hair into it.

Irritated at the situation, she conceded to carefully alternate between washing stretches of her hair and using a rag dipped in the warm water to clean herself off.

‘It was supposed to be a reward.’

Years ago, this sort of thing would have had her shivering. It still felt weird to have no need to shiver. It all still felt, and yet it was like her body didn’t respond. Nesna was used to being cold. But she still felt the cold. Even if there were no shivers or even goosebumps to accompany it, there was still this inescapable iciness that refused to retreat from her skin. After all of this time, it was less so uncomfortable and more so maddening. It was the sort of thing that made Nesna at once want to shrivel into a fetal position and also jump, stomp her feet, and scream. It was like her body was both indifferent to dying and indifferent to life. It was hard to feel her heartbeat, even after physical activity. Her core never felt particularly warm, even when, by all accounts, reaching her gloveless hands rendered ice-cold by the snow into her shift and pressing them to her chest should have meant she really felt a proper warmth there.

It was as if her body wanted nothing to do with warmth, even though it was a far more pleasant feeling than this nagging chill.

Nesna did not luxuriate in her bath as she had wanted to. She all but scrubbed herself, as if her hair was laundry and her body was dishes. The bath has turned from a treat into a chore, and Nesna wasted no time getting it over with. She scrubbed every inch clean, ever crevice, every hair on her head, and then squeezed the rag dry into the basin with stern finality. She still felt woozy, but resolved to stand up properly.

She took several deep breaths and hoisted herself up to her feet. After a moment of shakiness, she stood rigid, adopting the posture of a cat that had just been dumped in the water. She grasped the towel, quickly dried her body, and then wrapped it around herself. She then held her hair over the basin and slowly twisted sections of it to remove as much water as possible. She stood for another moment once this was done before finally spinning some hair around her fingers and wicking the water off back into the basin with magic, until her hair was finally dry.

And so the joy-turned-inconvenience was done.
If you are still accepting, I might try to join. Though I am not sure of what to be.


Well, well, well. Look who's followed me here!

The Eastern Gates of Dawnhaven
Interacting with @Dark Light’s Aliseth & @The Muse’s Zephyros

As Aliseth turned away to whisper, Nesna’s ears involuntarily picked up as she overheard the conversation in crystal clarity. At the message of the Princess’ disappearance, Nesna’s eyes clearly widened, while her mouth shrunk from her neutral, if slightly nervous expression, into a tight-lipped little frown. She snapped her head up from her averted gazing at the ground and looked straight at Aliseth, at last with a clearly-discernible expression: wide-eyed concern. She slowly lifted her hand to her mouth as he spoke and swallowed as he concluded his orders.

“Of course, I comple—” Nesna began. She stopped and entirely froze in place as soon as Zephyros contested Aliseth, and looked up towards them. Although her eyes showed no clear movement, she did cock her head slightly in the direction of whoever was speaking. As they both fixed their eyes on her, she subtly pulled back, seeming as if she was slowly making herself look smaller before them. Her eyes slowly settled back into their melancholic, tired expression as she looked between them, still evidently unsure whose orders she was meant to ultimately be following. Once it seemed the two had at last come to a consensus on what to do with her, she hesitantly began to follow their orders. At Aliseth’s prompting regarding weapons, she patted her hips as if looking for something, and then responded once he had concluded his orders.

“No, I suppose not,” she responded. Lifting her head as if remembering something, she then held her hands up, close to her chest, “Oh, yes, my apologies. I do have a dagger—a knife, rather—of the sort one might use for hunting. It must be somewhere in my bags. I had forgotten that I had stowed it, anticipating that I would soon arrive here. If it would assuage any, or at least, some concerns, I can leave my belongings somewhere and collect them later. Please, let me assure you both that I take no offence to such precautions. I am, after all, well aware of what it is that you are burdened with seeing. If there is anything else that might help reduce your trouble, please, do not hesitate to ask me to do so. I intend to comply in every way.”

As she spoke, Nesna clasped her hands together in front of her chest, tilted her head, and smiled softly, while maintaining her otherwise dreary, tired expressions. She clicked her tongue and then sighed, opening her mouth wider.

“That is to say, if a muzzle would help as well, I will don it voluntarily.”

Realizing what she had said, Nesna sighed again as her lips stretched into a thin, tight-lipped frown.

The Eastern Gates of Dawnhaven
Interacting with @Dark Light’s Aliseth & @The Muse’s Zephyros

Nesna froze for a moment as it seemed two separate guards yelled over one another, as if there had been no coordination whatsoever. She tried to hide her confusion until the less intense of the two repeated what they both had said—or rather, attempted to say. Quickly, Nesna cleared her throat and unclamped her cloak so as to make her following movements more apparent. Moving into a full curtsy, Nesna spoke. As she did so, she attempted to keep her mouth from opening too wide and showing any amount of her teeth. Her tone was flat and steady, though not in such a way as to imply that she was particularly calm so much as she was speaking in a well-rehearsed manner, well-accustomed to potentially less-than-friendly questionings.

“Yes, of course. My apologies for the delay in my resp—”

Nesna interrupted herself to steady her stance, having been quickly reminded that she had not entered such a pose since before she had transformed. Backtracking into a smaller, more polite curtsy, Nesna continued with her head sympathetically tilted and a melancholic little smile on her lips, “Please call me Nesna. I have come here from the east of Lunaris so that I may, in some manner, contribute to this haven.”

Fully rising from her curtsy and returning her gloved hands to be clearly in front of her and unarmed, Nesna then added, “I grant you that I may not seem as if I might be of much use at all here, and I fully appreciate your apprehension upon seeing me. If there was anything that could be done about this nonsense you see before you, I assure you that I would have done so already. But alas, this is my lot in life, and I only ask that you grant me the privilege of making the best of it. I am no sage, but I am eager to continue learning magic. Having done my best to continue to learn despite this affliction, I intend to do so here as well. Be it work as a scribe or a maid that you ask of me, I wish only that I be afforded sanctuary here and allowed to contribute as best as I am able. That is to say, my intentions are to find sanctuary in Dawnhaven and be of whatever use can be found for me.”

As she spoke, her attempt at a smile faded, leaving only the melancholic position of her eyes behind. With no pupils or irises—only four pools of softly-glowing lavender—it was difficult to tell what, if anything, she might have been looking at. For her part, Nesna had made an effort in spite of this to avert her eyes from the guards and confine them to the ground near to them, presuming that there might be some other cue they could draw from if so inclined to gather where her line of sight was directed.

The Eastern Gates of Dawnhaven

Never before had Nesna strayed so far from home. It had been some days’ worth of journey from her home near the eastern shores—how long precisely, Nesna realized she had entirely failed to keep track. Thinking of it, after all these years, she had never anticipated that she would again need any real account for the passage of time beyond a rough guess of when the daylight would show. But since the sun’s disappearance, what real matter was it whether she had flown six, eight, ten, or more hours at once? At varying points, Nesna had been utterly certain that she had somehow overshot something. It seemed so sensible back when she had first made the decision to abandon her home. Once it had become apparent that everything she held in any regard could be packed and carried without too much difficulty, there was little more thinking to be done. If she only flew directly west until she reached the mountains, transverse them, and then followed the southern side of the range, she would eventually arrive that way, if it truly was the case that Dawnhaven sat on the northern shores of the great Frostmoon Lake.

But perhaps she had oversimplified the trip. Rarely had she flown so high as she did to keep alongside the mountains and away from any eyes that might see a blightborn such as her and trouble themselves to rid the world of her. Constant winds and sudden gusts threatened to push her off course, while blasts of snow threatened her ability to even see where she was headed. Whenever it seemed like she had found a decent path through the skies that she could follow the entire way to Dawnhaven, it seemed the fickleties of the weather sought to strike her down for having the utter gall to imagine that travelling through the Lunarian wilderness would by any stretch of the imagination be easy, manageable, or even reasonably possible. Fortunately, if Seluna indeed might have had any regard left for Nesna, if Nesna indeed could feel she had any respectable and tangible virtue left within her, her patience seemed to see her through time and time again. There had been close calls—plenty of them—but so long as Nesna landed in the forests along the foothills of the mountains, found herself something to drink, and made no attempt to spite nature by attempting to do anything more but pull her bundles tighter and find a ditch protected from the wind to rest in.

In these times, between her best attempts at diligently following the landscape and pushing forward, and passing out like an undignified, abandoned corpse in some miserable ditch, Nesna thought, as she often did. It was not altogether rare that she imagined herself speaking to someone else—most often, it was a question or musing on something she’d read, seen, or spontaneously thought of, which she liked to imagine in a better world she might have asked of a mentor or posed to a peer—but this time, she faced an unprecedented circumstance. At some point, if she ever did arrive at Dawnhaven, she would for the first time in ages actually have to speak the words she imagined. In her ditches, before her sleep, Nesna experimented, on some lonely occasions, speaking to herself again. She had long fallen out of even the habit of talking to herself, much less to others. After all, there was no-one to talk to, nothing to say, and to speak in a normal voice was to invite someone unwanted to notice her presence. To speak again at any length or volume felt strange. The muscles in her tongue and her lips had their strength still, for she often mouthed things to feel as if she could at least, if she ever had the opportunity, still speak like a real person. And of course, she still breathed.

No single motion—no single gesture—of the greater act felt at all strange. But the feeling of words actually passing her lips, rather than simply chewing on them and imitating the motions of talking, felt entirely alien. Recalling her voice, before she had changed, Nesna had been told that it was nasally and rather high. If anything, it had been a bit grating on the ears. This notion had not been difficult to believe, for the voice she used to hear when she spoke sounded not altogether dissimilar from how it had been described. As Nesna worked up the courage to experimentally recite passages and then to spontaneously speak to herself again, she found that her old voice, too, had died with age and mutation. This new voice of hers, to her own ear, had lost its youth. For how a normal, reasonable effort to speak produced a quiet, hoarse burbling, Nesna could not help but imagine she sounded like someone struggling against death. For a time, she resigned herself to introducing herself as a haggard creature barely-clinging to life. That if she ever, in fact, made it to Dawnhaven, or if she should mistakenly find another place and plead mercy, she would sound as if the blight were already finishing the job of her execution.

Mercifully, her resignation proved temporary. After reaching the ultimate conclusion that her voice would sound as it did, Nesna encountered a new bout of inspiration as the wind dried her lips. Nesna swallowed, cleared her throat, and then held her mouth open for a time. At a certain point, her mouth felt normal. And then she felt her mouth become dry and cold. Impatiently, Nesna dropped from the sky and sat in a snowbank. After a moment of pensive anticipation, she pushed herself to “Just speak.”

“Blessed Moon, may it be—”

Nesna knelt, began in a spontaneous prayer, and interrupted herself for just a moment as she heard herself.

“May it be that in Your divine guidance, You cast Your gentle light upon one so unworthy as I, that I may be led towards providence. I pray that You might bless me with safety and passage this day and tomorrow, that I may be rightly-guided in my travels, and that I might in some way be able to contribute to the spread of good in this world. Thank You, Oh Pale Lady of the Night, for what I have and for what I may come to experience. In all this I pray. Verily, may it be so.”

Nesna sat back in the snow and traced her fingers along the bottom of her jaw, and then her throat. With a pensive smile, she let out a quiet sigh and closed her eyes. She nodded and then stood still for a moment, as if thinking for a moment longer. Slowly, she stood, and spoke again.

“Thank You, Seluna,” she murmured. Nesna could not help but to sigh again and listen to the sound that reverberated through her throat. It sounded…decent. Nesna could not imagine she might herald divinity or contribute much in the way of song to the world, but for all of this, her voice did not grate on her. With a throat that had perhaps never been properly cleared since it became confined at last cleared, her voice indeed still felt different, but not altogether foreign to her. Her voice had sunk and settled from that high-pitched nasality from before she had changed. But it had not tumbled into the mud, rather, it had settled into something which felt, as Nesna tried to describe it to herself, only proper for her current station. It still held some vestiges of the crackle she had worried about, but it wasn’t so much a sickle crackle as the crackle of effort. It felt, perhaps, kindly and experienced more so than ill. And it seemed to erode as she spoke more and with more confidence, as if it were less so a permanent affliction than it was a sort of sediment that needed to be shaken off from her vocal cords.

Looking past that feature she noticed the most, Nesna found herself almost pleased with how her voice had changed as she’d grown up. It wasn’t melodic, per se, but it had a sensible weight to it, and a certain pleasantry that she had not specifically intended to infuse in it. It felt only proper, that her voice leaned towards being acoustically understated and timid-sounding; after all, what right did a monster have to be anything but timid? Perhaps it was in fact Seluna herself who had seen fit to bless her with some small kindness: a voice that would not grate but rather disarm—a voice that suggested neither intelligence, ambition, nor even eagerness—a voice befitting someone entirely cowed and with no expectations beyond being, in some minor way, of use to someone more worthy.

Nesna had often thought like this. It was not, she imagined as she took off once more, fair to demand of herself that she think this way about herself. No, the question of “worthiness” could not be relevant here. Rather, a voice implying a gentle spirit was a necessity here. For a monster to appear ambitious or excessively bright would surely come off as dangerous, and to be dangerous was the last thing Nesna hoped to be considered. So it was, that this sound of hers, was not so much her accurate sound as it was a blessing that she could sound in such a way—a small mercy that might evoke for her some measure of sympathy or kindness from whoever she could venture to encounter at the end of her journey. It wasn’t as if there was anything better to be expected; blightborn were at best unfortunate products of a bad situation. There was no world, so Nesna imagined, where she might be anything other than a monster or a tragically-afflicted innocent.

But the idea that she might have a decent shot at seeing herself considered the latter was comfort enough. With the weather turning for the better, Nesna found herself entertaining an odd sort of relief—a sentiment she had not enjoyed for longer than she had any care to recall. And as if the day could not be filled with any more momentous developments, Nesna had scarcely enjoyed this long-dormant feeling when she saw, in the distance, the vague appearance of guard towards and the shores of a great lake. Squinting and straining to see as hard as she could, Nesna suddenly felt inclined to drop and land. If this was not Dawnhaven, if the apparent bustle was not suggesting a new city, if that was not, indeed, a temple to Aelos—the Sun Goddess of the south—then what else could it be? Nesna landed behind the mountain and resolved to walk the remainder of the way towards the gates.

She pulled out her mirror from her bag, and worked eagerly to groom herself. Or, rather, do the best she could. Thinking of it, there was irritatingly little to be done, in truth. Nesna had not seen fit to try and alter any of her nicer gowns to contend with her wings. Nesna kicked herself as she realized that she would, in all likelihood, meet the resident royals in the loose, drab, poorly-fitted gown that was still the nicest thing she could actually wear, thoroughly battered by the weather as it was. Just as soon as she looked at herself, Nesna shoved her mirror back into her back with frustration. There was no reason to bother fixing her hair or doing anything more than make sure her face was clean and her clothes were brushed off. After she forced herself from tinkering with her hair any longer, Nesna held her hands down by her sides and sighed. Her very first interaction with another person in years, and she would look like she had been sleeping in ditches. The fact that she had, in fact, been doing so was not at all soothing her disdain for her own grooming. All the same, trying her best to avoid making it too obvious how displeased she was with her appearance, Nesna clamped her cloak shut, carefully made her way towards the path, and began to follow it. At long last, she saw the gates in the distance.

Nesna pushed her hands past the cloak and held them in front of her chest before she imagined she’d even been properly noticed. It was only sensible, especially out here and looking as she did, she imagined, that she ought to make clear that she was fully unarmed. Stopping some distance from the gate, Nesna looked to one of the guards and took a breath.

“Begging your pardon!” she exclaimed. Nesna winced suddenly as she felt herself straining to project, but quickly pushed past it, “Is this Dawnhaven?”
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