[ Post a Response | Desreal ]
Posted by J on December 19, 2008, 8:22 pm, in reply to "J for Joanna?"
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The desert still clung to J, in the dust on her coat, scented lightly with the spices of the heat. A new perfume for her. But then she changed so much that the winds of change themselves should be her true scent. Her very name hinted at the essences of change, but she revealed nothing. J was her name now, even if it wasn’t always. It was amazing she had even kept that J. Everything was shielded by her mild manners and her unobtrusive way. If she had been more like her mother she might also have been a fighter. That little fifteen hand high Arabian had sure kicked up the dust and surprised everyone, including her, when she had fought the fight. Yet J, several inches shorter, slightly sturdier with a build more in line with cute rather than elegant as her mother had been. A sleek image still treading in the background of J’s mind. She had always been a disappointment, she supposed, to a mother born of royal lines. J was far too common.
But not her name. Her name was different. And so was her religion, her faith which she still had troubles believing in, so much so that she had never truly been inducted as more than a casual follower in the end. Not that she couldn’t be a right posh little b###h, she certainly could be, with her aloof attitude, but it wasn’t as if she purposely snubbed others. She just didn’t have attachments that lasted, as if someone had clipped her foundations and she was free-floating along in this lonely world. Maybe that amputated name was a sad attempt to cut away from the rest of society and stand out, apart from them all, unaffected by anything sinister she saw there, for it had all been cut away with the dead letters of her name. Shaved from her very soul.
“I am sorry about your fate.” If she had been her mother, a warrior princess, though not by her own choosing, she might have offered to practice such fights. But as it was she left such pursuits untouched. Yet it made her glad that this loss was not due to rogues. Not openly glad, of course, as it would be rude to view his captivity as somehow less important than all that had been lost by the collective spies, but it gave her a perspective outside her narrow view from the whispering woods of Ersatz. At first she didn’t know if she was going to answer Voraer, but finally she did, slow to condemn the spies as a group, but neither could she let them off the hook quite cleanly now that she had spoken from anger and frustration. She was slow when she first began speaking:
“It is and it isn’t. We have lost many, it seems… Even to a newcomer like me. I can hardly assess the damage since I knew so little of them all. The names are just whispers. I met Rogue only once before she was gone, though I can’t say we had a pleasant meet,” as with the other spies they were all touchy and agitated, all of them in a ruffle over the recent thefts, “and other hints of names, belonging to horses I’ve never met, are Baraquel, Peyote, a newcomer like me, barely on the sands before he was whisked away, and Anti. Also, a prisoner of ours, Lilium. Two are spies themselves. Can we not even protect our own? We work together badly, stumblingly. All of us, it seems, expected a solitary life as spies.” The very nature of the word spy suggested an aloneness, but spies, too, were supposed to have their networks and use them. Not that J could comment. She was still too new. It would be too offensive for a newcomer to comment on. “It just seems to me that no one is doing anything about it. But what do I know? I’m still learning my way around.” She tried not to sound resentful, but it was difficult. “How long have you been away? Maybe you could at least help me learn about Ni’Srilan, my new and fractious home.”
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