Disclaimer: Descendants does not belong to me.
There are questions to which answers are not instant - even when one is king. She tries to remember that she appreciates Adam's thoroughness as she makes her way home with Jane with no answers to give her. She tells herself that it is a good thing that the High King of Auradon is willing to investigate and ensure that the information he is receiving is accurate rather than waving off her request and concern as something that is beneath his notice. She dropped rather a lot on him all at once. She can tell that he does not know what to think of what she has explained of Jane's condition. She could almost visibly see him push the information aside to be processed later as he chose to focus on the more immediate problem of the accusations she has sent hurling his way. She likes to think that she phrased things more neutrally than that, but she knows that accusations were ultimately what the words amounted to all the same.
The Isle is his jurisdiction.
If there is something that has gone amiss in the provisions from the mainland that were promised, then the responsibility for not realizing what was happening as well as the rectification rests with him. She does appreciate that he is making the effort (not that she had intended to give him a choice). There was a part of her that knew just how little reason Adam had to feel good will toward at least a piece of the Isle's population. Slipping into apathy toward what might or might not be happening on the other side of the barrier would be very, very easy. Out of sight, out of mind was more than just a saying. The man's expressions when startled were very telling. She was confident that he had had no idea what she was talking about.
He was making it his business to find out the exact details - something he freely admitted to having not reviewed since their introduction (and why would he have - everything had been set into place and there had been other more pressing matters that required his attention).
She just had to wait to hear back, and she attempted to do so as gracefully as she could manage. He truly did not keep her waiting unreasonably long, but that did not change the fact that it felt as if it was taking forever. Jane's expectant expression every time the phone rang or the mail arrived did not help this in the least. (She had told her daughter that the High King was going to find out what was happening, and Jane was still very young and very trusting and had taken her at her word in that manner of children who believe that if a parent tells them something will be then it must be that it will be so.)
The news was unexpected (even though she is not precisely sure what it was that she was expecting). The originally set up shipments to the Isle have been constant since its inception. There have been no disruptions of that nature.
The Isle was always meant to be partially self-sustaining. The agreement had been that the most basic of necessities would be passed along (in deference to it being a prison), and the opportunity to better their lot (so to speak) would remain in the hands of the residents (in deference to it being a colony of sorts). The original balance of the two had been a long discussed and much refined series of decisions and those were mostly still in place. Adam had found that the Isle being designated as the recipient of Auradon's recycling had been interpreted somewhere along the way as the Isle being responsible for the sorting of said recycling if they wanted to keep the useful items - which meant that the entirety of the region's trash was being filtered through the Isle instead of already separated items. (She could not even really argue that expecting the effort would have been out of bounds if someone had bothered to inform the residents that that was what was going on in the first place.)
This did explain Jane's strange insistence that throwing away food would help to feed the Isle children. It did not explain why the Isle children were seemingly dependent on digging through trash for their meals.
The trash barges were not the only ones to arrive on the Isle after all. The monthly stipend (as the initial paperwork named it) for each of the original Isle residents was being packed and delivered on time. It was nothing extravagant - a few personal hygiene supplies and the bricks of officially sanctioned nutritional supplement bars equal to a base number of calories for the month as promised. There were twice a year fabric allotments as well. She wasn't going to pretend that the supplement bars were anything wonderful (she had tasted them and they were not particularly appealing), but they were good at what they were supposed to do which was provide an appropriate vitamin supplement and adequate calories to keep someone functional.
Adam reported that the numbers being used were still the original numbers (because there was no official communication from the Isle so what else would they have used) and had asked her flat out if that was what the problem was. That had been another trip to the capital and a rather lengthy meeting (that had included a rather put out to not have been included from the beginning Belle that time). The problem was that while the increase in population in the Isle had not been addressed in the supply chain that should still not be enough of an imbalance to create the level of suffering that Jane was describing. Everyone who had gone to the Isle had gone with luggage and the ability to turn their hand toward making themselves more comfortable. Those additions added to the base supplies should have kept everyone (if not in the height of comfort) at least away from desperation.
Something else was going on, and it was going on on the Isle side of things.
Adam had some sort of a source, but he would not reveal too many details. Either the damage to the infrastructure had been far more severe during the fires everyone had told her had been visible back when she was still unconscious and the Isle had never recovered enough for people to get their footing or there were people on the Isle meddling with the supply chain (not out of the realm of possibility and not something easily dealt with from this side of the barrier) or there were people on the Isle that were simply not taking care of their children.
What were they to do about that?
She went home with several requests to consider (she had refused to give an immediate answer about anything to do with Jane as she both needed to think and to bite her tongue before she said anything too nastily defensive out of her frustration).
It was almost a letdown to hear that there were no problems with shipments on their end of the chain. She had had a rather large amount of righteous fury built up in preparation for confronting some willful mistreatment or deliberate interference, and the fact that it suddenly had no target at which it could be aimed left her feeling rather exhausted (although, to be honest, she was rather exhausted all of the time these days). She was tired of running up against problems that were beyond her ability to solve. With nothing to channel to vocal indignation or crusading, she was left with an empty almost frantic feeling of failing.
Could she no longer fix anything?
She cannot even fix what is ailing her daughter. The temptation to sink into a depression was great, but she staved it off (mostly) by reminding herself that checking out would only lead to failing Jane further. What she needed was to be doing something. Busy was better (she knew this from experience). Busy was (if not easier) at least a distraction. She could not fix what was hurting Jane, so she set out to find what she could do to mitigate it instead.
She was not going to shout the situation from the rooftops (as far as she was concerned, there were already too many people in the know for her level of comfort), but asking questions about dealing with nightmares was hardly an unprecedented parenting situation. So, she asked.
The answers she received varied from the intriguingly plausible to the blatantly laughable, and she and Jane set out on a grand experiment of seeing what they could find to temper the intensity of the emotional toll.
It was during this period that she first determined that the whole issue of Jane and latent magic and the barrier and connections (the giant, convoluted mess of it all) was even more complicated than they had realized.
It had been suggested that a negative emotional response to nightmares might be lessened by sending her child off to bed in a positive, reassured, and comfortable frame of mind - in other words, she should fill her daughter up with happy stories before sending her off to face the hurtful ones that were lurking in wait. That fell on the plausible realm of the spectrum (and they were a little bit desperate).
Jane had always loved stories, so they began there. Happily ever after tales were consumed by the veritable truckload with little to no change. They tried movies next. She thought that visual reinforcement might help, and they soon found themselves spending the end of each evening watching a musical before tucking Jane into her bed. Jane liked musicals, and she had great hope that things were going to get better the first night that she heard Jane humming in her sleep.
Her hopes were soon dashed because even the humming was followed by tears and waking up shaking in fear - nothing really changed for Jane. She could not say the same for the Isle.
The call was awkward when Adam asked to speak with her about a development on the Isle that his source had apprised him of in recent days. It would seem that the children of the Isle had started exhibiting strange behavior - they were breaking out in song at strange times and even started participating in random choreographed dance numbers in the middle of the streets.
What did she think was happening?
She bit her tongue and assured Adam that she did not think anything was amiss with the barrier.
Then, she sat down and dropped her head in her hands and tried to think. The children on the Isle were not just affecting Jane. Jane was, apparently, affecting them.
What should they do with that?
