dress torn above your knees, like you've owned it for centuries.

( Relation now means nothing; having chosen, so defined. )

Jaenelle's body sits and stares at nothing.

It's Jaenelle, but it's not her.

She's in the gardens outside the Keep, deceptively still--the witch-storm around her has grown for the past hour and a half, and as much as he wanted to rush out and hold her, safe in the knowledge that she was alive and sane, it was that growing psychic pressure that kept him away. So he's just watching, for now, waiting for her to let him in, but she's not.

*Witch-child,* he calls to her on a distaff thread, hoping that when (if?) she turns to him, he'll recognize what he sees.

She doesn't move for a long time, and when she does, all he sees are the lines carved around her too-young face. She's struggling to contain it, and she's still destabilized half the Keep with the rage she is, with no other outlet, taking out on herself.

She could kill him--he's aware of this, has always been aware of this, because his power is dark but hers is Dark. She could wipe him out with a thought, leave him little more than a whisper in the Darkness, could empty this Realm of everyone in it without a thought--although that had been a lesson that had been long and hard in coming, the acceptance that his daughter had to be more than simply that. Everything has a price, and the price for their power is death.

But Mother Night, she's so young.

So young, and learning things he had stupidly hoped she would never learn.

He doesn't know what angered her so badly he could feel it from so far away, from so deep inside of her, but he knows that if he hadn't been shielding her, she wouldn't have been able to leash the rage. That price feels pulled out of his sinews, leaving him hollow-boned; he feels like he's had all the stuffing sucked out of him, years taken off his admittedly already too-long life. But his pain is insignificant compared to the rage in her eyes when she looks at him and he knows that she is trying so hard not to kill him for being what he is.

Male?

Or dead?

"Witch-child," he says, and holds out his arms.

It's finally his daughter who creeps towards him.

Jaenelle Angelline is one of the major protagonists of Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy. She is the prophesized saviour of her people--Witch, the Living Myth, Dreams Made Flesh, is the strongest of all the Blood that ever was or ever will be. She was created by the hopes and dreams of millions of people (human and animal alike) who prayed for a saviour, for a strong Queen who would unite the Blood and remove the taint threatening their very survival. As such, Jaenelle is not human. Period.

She is blonde and blue-eyed herself, with a pointed, awkward little face that she needs to grow into a bit to be considered pretty. She's precocious, clever, compassionate and energetic. She is not afraid of the strange and unusual. Nothing really scares her, since she's wielded more power than any of the other Blood can ever dream of since she was in the cradle, and hangs out with demons and shit all the time. She has secrets, and there are times that she seems ancient, especially when looking in her eyes--she bears a great sadness with her, a haunted quality. And certain things will trigger her to spiral down into a deep, dark, savage rage--but as she's not likely to encounter those kinds of things in the Nexus, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Shouldn't.

Jaenelle is sweet and loving and she hates killing, but she is not a pacifist. She will avoid conflict if she can, but her world is savage, and she may hate it, but she won't hesitate to kill people who need to be killed. She was abused as a child and was led to believe that she was mentally ill; as a result, she doesn't trust her own judgement and second-guesses herself too much. She depends on others for emotional strength.

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