a woman like that is not ashamed to die.

[ipseite]

WHO: Petrana, Julius, Melys.
WHAT: Nightmares, of a sort.
WHEN: Concurrent to the rifter arrival.
WHERE: The Gallows.
NOTES: Per this.

( petrana wakes abruptly, a start—

a heartbeat. another. her hand presses to her chest and in the dark, nothing makes sense; blinking through shadows when she had been (falling) in broad daylight, the psychosomatic ache in her head, her shoulders, her neck. a second body, warm and heavy with sleep beside her, a comfortable bed. thaïs—

thedas. she is in thedas. this is julius's bed. she is in the gallows. she is (thirty-five) twenty-nine, and has never borne a second daughter, and is going to be sick. she doesn't mean to wake julius but it seems unlikely he will somehow sleep through being climbed over, suddenly, scrambled over in her haste to find the basin and empty the meagre contents of her stomach into it, clinging to the edges of the table beneath. heaving great, ugly breaths.

i have died, she thinks, and then, no, and somehow, that's worse.

petrana de lammorraine is dead. alone and afraid and having known no life but the one stolen from her. and petrana de cedoux is—

weeping. )