It wasn't the rain that woke Jaenelle late; neither was it the distant howling from the hills. The rain on the windows sounded to her like fingernails, tapping impatiently on the window and roof. She listened, eyes closed, for a few more moments of peace.
No sound had woken her, only an awareness that now was the time. She rolled out of bed silently and walked to the window. Passing through it was easy, and she jumped to the ground, curling her toes into the soil. It was damp, soft and cool on her bare feet. The rain tapped her shoulder insistently, already soaking through her nightgown and reminding her of why she was here.
Jaenelle ghosted through the garden to the little alcove of witchblood. It scratched her arms and she reached to the back and tugged a single pod, blood red, free of its stem. "Sorry," she murmured, standing up slowly. Rain dripped on her nose and she stepped into the Darkness.
A shudder ran up her spine as she looked at the stone walls, wreathed in green. Briarwood…she twitched of the fears like the rain in her hair and strode forward, dropping to her knees by a seemingly unmarked patch of ground and beginning to dig.
The dirt stuck beneath her fingernails, even after they broke and bled on the rocky layer beneath the topsoil. She clawed a pit in the earth with her bare hands, the damp from the wet ground soaking through her nightgown until she could feel the grit on her knees.
She didn't cry until she finished, sitting up after the seed was buried, to bloom another year. Tears cutting through the dirt on her cheeks, she opened her mouth and mourned.
Keening, she stood slowly, the words from deep within pouring into the sky in a flood of emotion.
"Mother Night, what is that?"
The voices, the hateful voices. Rage overflowed in her stomach and she could feel the desire, the need to rise and obliterate them to less than a spark in the Darkness. She trembled between fury and fear, staring as they ran for her, stumbling in the dark.
Not yet. Not yet. The voice was soft, but it broke the ice around her and she gasped on shuddering breath of recognition –
-Rose-
- before she leapt into the Darkness, leaving Briarwood behind.
She cried, continuing her interrupted song as she wended her way out of the garden, shivering with the cold and wet. A window opened ahead and she looked up, staring bleak-eyed at Daemon, her hands beginning to sting. Her emotions were a hollow, thick knot in her chest.
"Jaenelle?"