SaDiablo Hall, Dhemlan, Kaeleer, Late Sunday Night, Fandom Time
Karla hadn't known what to expect when she arrived. Saetan had warned her that Jaenelle looked bad, had lost weight, wasn't coming down, but she'd known Jaenelle as a child, could remember times when Jaenelle had turned up looking skeletal, with shadows like bruises under her eyes. She'd thought she was prepared.
She wasn't.
Painfully thin. That was Karla's first thought when she'd seen Jaenelle. From the way the trousers and shirt hung on her, she'd probably dropped the weight far too fast to be healthy. She looked--she looked a great deal like Karla had in the other Fandom. The long, loose braid of gold hair looked as dull as her skin, and there were dark smudges under those beautiful, ancient sapphire eyes.
Jaenelle sat in the rocking chair in front of the hearth in her bedroom, just staring. Karla's pause in the doorway had allowed her to taste the emotional currents in the room, and the psychic pain nearly staggered her. The psychic shield around Jaenelle felt deceptively passive, as easy to brush aside as a cobweb. Beneath the passivity, however, lay something that, if unleashed, would extract a brutal price. Karla carefully circled around the shield until she stood in front of Jaenelle, just looking at her in silence. The Black Jewel around Jaenelle's neck glowed with deadly fire.
She shook, not sure is she was afraid for herself or Jaenelle. She closed her eyes and made rash promises to the Darkness to keep from being sick on the spot. Having lived in Glacia for the past several years, Karla recognized someone who had been tortured. She hadn't been physically harmed, but there were subtle kinds of abuse that were just as destructive. And her body had paid a terrible price. Her skin was stretched too tight over her face and looked fragile enough to tear. Her eyes...
She couldn't stand what she saw in those eyes.
Jaenelle sat there, quietly bleeding to death from a soul wound, and Karla didn't know how to help her, didn't know if there was anything she could do to help her.
But she had to try.
"Jaenelle," she whispered.
There was a moment with no recognition. Emotions writhed and twisted in Jaenelle's haunted, bottomless eyes. She blinked. Sank her teeth into her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. Blinked again. "Karla." Neither a question or a statement, but an identification painfully drawn up from some deep well inside her. "Karla." Tears filled up her eyes. "Karla." A plea for comfort.
"Drop the shield, Jaenelle." Karla watched her struggle to understand. Sweet Darkness, she was so young. They both were. "Drop the shield and let me in."
The shield dissolved. So did Janelle. But she was in Karla's arms before the first heart-tearing sob began. Karla settled them both in the rocking chair and held her tight, murmuring soothing nothings, trying to rub some warmth into icy limbs. The storm lasted only a few moments, Jaenelle's body unable to continue to supplying energy for such strong emotions.
"You look like Hell," Karla said bluntly into the silence left by the sobs.
Jaenelle croaked. "Always so effusive with the compliments." Her voice was hoarse from strain and fatigue. "Welcome home."
"Some welcome," Karla snorted. Mother Night--she didn't want to press, not in this state, but she had to know. "Jaenelle, what in the name of Hell happened to you? How is Uncle Saetan not chewing iron and spitting nails? I mean, he said you looked bad, but he didn't say--" you looked broken. Karla kept that last bit on her tongue and behind shields.
"He--" Jaenelle coughed; a spasm seeming to shake her frail and fragile body. "He doesn't know. I looked better when I first came home. Haven't let...anyone see me. If he saw..." Jaenelle shook her head. "The coven and the boyos are visiting the wolves."
Karla knew full well what would happen if Saetan saw her like this. His cold rage at seeing Karla back from the other Fandom would look like a passing temper tantrum. Blood would run before his temper was assuaged.
"I know I look bad, I know. That's why I can't leave the room. He'll want to know what happened and I can't tell him that, Karla, I can't. He'd be so angry, and he'd have another fight with the Dark Council and they'd cause more trouble for us."
Karla wasn't entirely sure there's be enough pieces of the Dark Council left to cause trouble, but she wasn't going to argue. "Then tell me what happened," she urged. "Uncle Saetan said that you came back from your first mandatory visit to Little Terreille and locked yourself away."
"It's like living in Terreille again," Jaenelle whispered. The haunted look filled her eyes. "No, worse than that. It's like living in--" She paused, puzzled.
"I mean, I know socializing with the aristo Blood can be a fine approximation of Hell on earth," Karla said, after it became clear that Jaenelle couldn't finish her explanation. "But even aristos have to eat. And sleep."
Jaenelle's eyes glazed over. Her voice sounded hollow. "Can't trust the food. Never trust the food. Even if you test it, you can't always sense the badness until it's too late. Can't sleep. Mustn't sleep. But they get to you anyway. Lies are true and truth is punished. Bad girl. Sick-mind girl to make up such lies."
An icy fist pressed into Karla's lower back as she wondered what nightmare in the inner landscape Jaenelle was wandering through right now. Capturing Jaenelle's face between her palms, Karla turned her head, forcing her to look into Karla's eyes. "You're not a bad girl, you're not sick, and you don't lie," she said firmly.
Jaenelle blinked. Confusion filled her eyes. "What?"
Would she even understand if Karla told her what she said? Karla doubted it. "So the food is lousy and you don't sleep well. That still doesn't explain why you came back in this shape. What did they do to you, dearheart?"
"Nothing," she whispered, closing her eyes. Her throat worked convulsively. "It's just that boys expect to be kissed and--"
"They expect what?" Karla snarled.
"--and I'm f-f-frigid and--"
"Frigid!" Karla snapped, ignoring Jaenelle's frightened squeak. "We're fifteen years old! Those strutting little sons of whoring bitches shouldn't even be trying anything with you that would even bring up the question of whether or not you're 'frigid.' And where in the name of Hell were the chaperons?" Karla rocked furiously, petting Jaenelle's hair with one hand while the other arm tightened protectively around her. Her thoughts whirled in her head; confusing mixed up thoughts about Glacia, where males would press her into dark corners and hidey spots to force kisses and gropings on her, and Fandom, where she could participate in a kissing booth with males who asked--asked--if she would mind giving them a brief kiss. The juxtaposition was sickening. How could things change so quickly?
Thank the Darkness that whatever blight was creeping over their society hadn't reached everywhere. Here, at least, in Dhemlan, Jaenelle would be safe.
Wouldn't she?
She pushed those thoughts away and stopped her furious rocking. "Enough of this. You need to eat and get your strength back. There's beef soup and a loaf of bread by the door."
Jaenelle paled. "It won't stay down. It never does..."
"Try."
When they sat down to eat, Jaenelle managed three spoonfuls of soup and one mouthful of bread before bolting into her bathroom. Her own appetite gone, Karla vanished the rest of the food. Glancing at the bed in the corner, she saw that the blankets were flung on the floor and the sheets stained with sweat. Jaenelle had clearly been in the grip of nightmares--she could feel the emotion residuum trapped in the walls, though it had been too long for her to get anything in the way of visions.
Hell's fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful. So she'd spent the last two nights trying to outrun the nightmares hovering at the edge of her vision by depleting an already exhausted body that she would mercilessly flog until it collapsed under the strain of no food, no water, no rest. What kind of dreams could drive her best friend to such masochistic cruelty?
She found out that night.
The change in Jaenelle's breathing snapped Karla out of a light doze. Standing up from her nest of blankets on the floor, she reached for Jaenelle's shoulder. She shook her as hard as she dared, but Jaenelle didn't--couldn't--wake. Instead, her body arched like a tightly strung bow. Karla the Healer studied the clenched, straining muscles and cursed. Jaenelle'd be hurting sore in the morning. The tension went out of her body. She collapsed against the mattress, twitching, moaning, sweat-soaked.
That's it. She had to wake her up. If it took throwing her into a cold shower, or walking her around the room for the rest of the night, she was going to wake her up.
Karla reached out again...and Jaenelle began to talk.
Every word was a physical blow as the memories poured out. Her head bowed, her body flinching, she listened as Jaenelle talked about and to Marjane, Myrol and Rebecca, Dannie and especially Rose. She listened to the horrors of a place called Briarwood. She listened to the names of the men who had hurt her, hurt them all. And she suffered with her as she relived the rape that had torn her apart physically and had shattered her mind, the rape that had made her desperately try to sever the link between body and spirit.
Finally, just when she thought it was over--Jaenelle arched and began again.
Tears streaming and barely able to breath between racking sobs, Karla did the only thing she could do. She called in her spidersilk and her frame and began weaving a tangled web. Halfway through the second iteration, she was done. And at the start of the third, she pricked her finger and let the three drops of blood fall, awakening the power of the web.
There--Karla could almost see them; the memories of a trauma so deep and unspeakable that Jaenelle's waking mind could not yet face them had almost taken on a physical form, an evil, lingering mist that hovered over Jaenelle, nearly choking her. Karla breathed in deeply, taking that mist, those dreams, deep within herself. The true memories would remain, of course, buried deep within Jaenelle's psyche, but the nightmares would cease.
At least until the next mandatory visit to Little Terreille triggered them all again.
Jaenelle's breathing immediately eased and she fell back into a deep, dreamless sleep. Karla was not so lucky. She huddled in the corner, hands pressed into her mouth to keep silent as she experienced those memories first-hand. Suddenly, she was there, holding Rose, watching Marjane swing, being held down by Greer-- The faces of Briarwood's uncles morphed and merged with the males from Glacia until Karla was almost unable to tell where her memories left off and Jaenelle's began. She'd tried to keep them separate, but Jaenelle was too powerful, too strong and, sweet Darkness, the pain and the blood and...
Eventually, the spell released and the memories backed down. She could pry them away, set them at the proper remove, keep them from becoming a part of her Self. Karla dragged herself to her feet, stumbled to the bathroom and was quietly, but thoroughly, sick. She rinsed out her mouth and called in a bottle of whiskey--not wine, no wine. Too thick, too red, too much like blood. Mother Night, all that blood, covering me, pooling in my lap, running down my legs, Dannie's leg, oh no oh no, bloody, like Rose's throat no wine PLEASE--and drank straight from the bottle, letting the painful burn of the alcohol wash away the taste of bile.
She'd managed to push the memories away, but that clearly wasn't enough. She needed to do more. She needed to wall them up, keep them away. There was no way she could face Jaenelle, or Saetan, or anyone with them so fresh in her mind, so close to her thoughts. So in the final hours before dawn, Karla wove a net in her mind to hold the borrowed memories. It was a thin and flimsy thing, but hopefully it would be strong enough to keep them at bay until she could be sure Jaenelle was all right. Until she could have time to deal with them appropriately.
Until she could get away.
[Establishy, nfi, nfb, etc. THIS GETS A LITTLE DARK AND COULD BE POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING. TRUFAX. THOUGH THE REAL FUN HORROR HAS TO WAIT TILL KARLA GETS BACK. Text taken and adapted from Chapt. 10 of Heir to the Shadows by Anne Bishop]
She wasn't.
Painfully thin. That was Karla's first thought when she'd seen Jaenelle. From the way the trousers and shirt hung on her, she'd probably dropped the weight far too fast to be healthy. She looked--she looked a great deal like Karla had in the other Fandom. The long, loose braid of gold hair looked as dull as her skin, and there were dark smudges under those beautiful, ancient sapphire eyes.
Jaenelle sat in the rocking chair in front of the hearth in her bedroom, just staring. Karla's pause in the doorway had allowed her to taste the emotional currents in the room, and the psychic pain nearly staggered her. The psychic shield around Jaenelle felt deceptively passive, as easy to brush aside as a cobweb. Beneath the passivity, however, lay something that, if unleashed, would extract a brutal price. Karla carefully circled around the shield until she stood in front of Jaenelle, just looking at her in silence. The Black Jewel around Jaenelle's neck glowed with deadly fire.
She shook, not sure is she was afraid for herself or Jaenelle. She closed her eyes and made rash promises to the Darkness to keep from being sick on the spot. Having lived in Glacia for the past several years, Karla recognized someone who had been tortured. She hadn't been physically harmed, but there were subtle kinds of abuse that were just as destructive. And her body had paid a terrible price. Her skin was stretched too tight over her face and looked fragile enough to tear. Her eyes...
She couldn't stand what she saw in those eyes.
Jaenelle sat there, quietly bleeding to death from a soul wound, and Karla didn't know how to help her, didn't know if there was anything she could do to help her.
But she had to try.
"Jaenelle," she whispered.
There was a moment with no recognition. Emotions writhed and twisted in Jaenelle's haunted, bottomless eyes. She blinked. Sank her teeth into her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. Blinked again. "Karla." Neither a question or a statement, but an identification painfully drawn up from some deep well inside her. "Karla." Tears filled up her eyes. "Karla." A plea for comfort.
"Drop the shield, Jaenelle." Karla watched her struggle to understand. Sweet Darkness, she was so young. They both were. "Drop the shield and let me in."
The shield dissolved. So did Janelle. But she was in Karla's arms before the first heart-tearing sob began. Karla settled them both in the rocking chair and held her tight, murmuring soothing nothings, trying to rub some warmth into icy limbs. The storm lasted only a few moments, Jaenelle's body unable to continue to supplying energy for such strong emotions.
"You look like Hell," Karla said bluntly into the silence left by the sobs.
Jaenelle croaked. "Always so effusive with the compliments." Her voice was hoarse from strain and fatigue. "Welcome home."
"Some welcome," Karla snorted. Mother Night--she didn't want to press, not in this state, but she had to know. "Jaenelle, what in the name of Hell happened to you? How is Uncle Saetan not chewing iron and spitting nails? I mean, he said you looked bad, but he didn't say--" you looked broken. Karla kept that last bit on her tongue and behind shields.
"He--" Jaenelle coughed; a spasm seeming to shake her frail and fragile body. "He doesn't know. I looked better when I first came home. Haven't let...anyone see me. If he saw..." Jaenelle shook her head. "The coven and the boyos are visiting the wolves."
Karla knew full well what would happen if Saetan saw her like this. His cold rage at seeing Karla back from the other Fandom would look like a passing temper tantrum. Blood would run before his temper was assuaged.
"I know I look bad, I know. That's why I can't leave the room. He'll want to know what happened and I can't tell him that, Karla, I can't. He'd be so angry, and he'd have another fight with the Dark Council and they'd cause more trouble for us."
Karla wasn't entirely sure there's be enough pieces of the Dark Council left to cause trouble, but she wasn't going to argue. "Then tell me what happened," she urged. "Uncle Saetan said that you came back from your first mandatory visit to Little Terreille and locked yourself away."
"It's like living in Terreille again," Jaenelle whispered. The haunted look filled her eyes. "No, worse than that. It's like living in--" She paused, puzzled.
"I mean, I know socializing with the aristo Blood can be a fine approximation of Hell on earth," Karla said, after it became clear that Jaenelle couldn't finish her explanation. "But even aristos have to eat. And sleep."
Jaenelle's eyes glazed over. Her voice sounded hollow. "Can't trust the food. Never trust the food. Even if you test it, you can't always sense the badness until it's too late. Can't sleep. Mustn't sleep. But they get to you anyway. Lies are true and truth is punished. Bad girl. Sick-mind girl to make up such lies."
An icy fist pressed into Karla's lower back as she wondered what nightmare in the inner landscape Jaenelle was wandering through right now. Capturing Jaenelle's face between her palms, Karla turned her head, forcing her to look into Karla's eyes. "You're not a bad girl, you're not sick, and you don't lie," she said firmly.
Jaenelle blinked. Confusion filled her eyes. "What?"
Would she even understand if Karla told her what she said? Karla doubted it. "So the food is lousy and you don't sleep well. That still doesn't explain why you came back in this shape. What did they do to you, dearheart?"
"Nothing," she whispered, closing her eyes. Her throat worked convulsively. "It's just that boys expect to be kissed and--"
"They expect what?" Karla snarled.
"--and I'm f-f-frigid and--"
"Frigid!" Karla snapped, ignoring Jaenelle's frightened squeak. "We're fifteen years old! Those strutting little sons of whoring bitches shouldn't even be trying anything with you that would even bring up the question of whether or not you're 'frigid.' And where in the name of Hell were the chaperons?" Karla rocked furiously, petting Jaenelle's hair with one hand while the other arm tightened protectively around her. Her thoughts whirled in her head; confusing mixed up thoughts about Glacia, where males would press her into dark corners and hidey spots to force kisses and gropings on her, and Fandom, where she could participate in a kissing booth with males who asked--asked--if she would mind giving them a brief kiss. The juxtaposition was sickening. How could things change so quickly?
Thank the Darkness that whatever blight was creeping over their society hadn't reached everywhere. Here, at least, in Dhemlan, Jaenelle would be safe.
Wouldn't she?
She pushed those thoughts away and stopped her furious rocking. "Enough of this. You need to eat and get your strength back. There's beef soup and a loaf of bread by the door."
Jaenelle paled. "It won't stay down. It never does..."
"Try."
When they sat down to eat, Jaenelle managed three spoonfuls of soup and one mouthful of bread before bolting into her bathroom. Her own appetite gone, Karla vanished the rest of the food. Glancing at the bed in the corner, she saw that the blankets were flung on the floor and the sheets stained with sweat. Jaenelle had clearly been in the grip of nightmares--she could feel the emotion residuum trapped in the walls, though it had been too long for her to get anything in the way of visions.
Hell's fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful. So she'd spent the last two nights trying to outrun the nightmares hovering at the edge of her vision by depleting an already exhausted body that she would mercilessly flog until it collapsed under the strain of no food, no water, no rest. What kind of dreams could drive her best friend to such masochistic cruelty?
She found out that night.
The change in Jaenelle's breathing snapped Karla out of a light doze. Standing up from her nest of blankets on the floor, she reached for Jaenelle's shoulder. She shook her as hard as she dared, but Jaenelle didn't--couldn't--wake. Instead, her body arched like a tightly strung bow. Karla the Healer studied the clenched, straining muscles and cursed. Jaenelle'd be hurting sore in the morning. The tension went out of her body. She collapsed against the mattress, twitching, moaning, sweat-soaked.
That's it. She had to wake her up. If it took throwing her into a cold shower, or walking her around the room for the rest of the night, she was going to wake her up.
Karla reached out again...and Jaenelle began to talk.
Every word was a physical blow as the memories poured out. Her head bowed, her body flinching, she listened as Jaenelle talked about and to Marjane, Myrol and Rebecca, Dannie and especially Rose. She listened to the horrors of a place called Briarwood. She listened to the names of the men who had hurt her, hurt them all. And she suffered with her as she relived the rape that had torn her apart physically and had shattered her mind, the rape that had made her desperately try to sever the link between body and spirit.
Finally, just when she thought it was over--Jaenelle arched and began again.
Tears streaming and barely able to breath between racking sobs, Karla did the only thing she could do. She called in her spidersilk and her frame and began weaving a tangled web. Halfway through the second iteration, she was done. And at the start of the third, she pricked her finger and let the three drops of blood fall, awakening the power of the web.
There--Karla could almost see them; the memories of a trauma so deep and unspeakable that Jaenelle's waking mind could not yet face them had almost taken on a physical form, an evil, lingering mist that hovered over Jaenelle, nearly choking her. Karla breathed in deeply, taking that mist, those dreams, deep within herself. The true memories would remain, of course, buried deep within Jaenelle's psyche, but the nightmares would cease.
At least until the next mandatory visit to Little Terreille triggered them all again.
Jaenelle's breathing immediately eased and she fell back into a deep, dreamless sleep. Karla was not so lucky. She huddled in the corner, hands pressed into her mouth to keep silent as she experienced those memories first-hand. Suddenly, she was there, holding Rose, watching Marjane swing, being held down by Greer-- The faces of Briarwood's uncles morphed and merged with the males from Glacia until Karla was almost unable to tell where her memories left off and Jaenelle's began. She'd tried to keep them separate, but Jaenelle was too powerful, too strong and, sweet Darkness, the pain and the blood and...
Eventually, the spell released and the memories backed down. She could pry them away, set them at the proper remove, keep them from becoming a part of her Self. Karla dragged herself to her feet, stumbled to the bathroom and was quietly, but thoroughly, sick. She rinsed out her mouth and called in a bottle of whiskey--not wine, no wine. Too thick, too red, too much like blood. Mother Night, all that blood, covering me, pooling in my lap, running down my legs, Dannie's leg, oh no oh no, bloody, like Rose's throat no wine PLEASE--and drank straight from the bottle, letting the painful burn of the alcohol wash away the taste of bile.
She'd managed to push the memories away, but that clearly wasn't enough. She needed to do more. She needed to wall them up, keep them away. There was no way she could face Jaenelle, or Saetan, or anyone with them so fresh in her mind, so close to her thoughts. So in the final hours before dawn, Karla wove a net in her mind to hold the borrowed memories. It was a thin and flimsy thing, but hopefully it would be strong enough to keep them at bay until she could be sure Jaenelle was all right. Until she could have time to deal with them appropriately.
Until she could get away.
[Establishy, nfi, nfb, etc. THIS GETS A LITTLE DARK AND COULD BE POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING. TRUFAX. THOUGH THE REAL FUN HORROR HAS TO WAIT TILL KARLA GETS BACK. Text taken and adapted from Chapt. 10 of Heir to the Shadows by Anne Bishop]