Shelter

[crazedpudding 2139]

SHELTER

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Keep Wilheburg in Reinmar.

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Spoiler

OOC: This post is a look into the mind of Josefina Barclay during the Inferi Siege, it is not common knowledge and your character will be unaware of these proceedings from this point of view unless told by Josefina Barclay IRP. Thank you and enjoy!

 

Josefina Barclay considered herself a cautious woman, if not a particularly brave one. She was careful to always keep her young son close, and able enough to keep herself out of danger. Yes, Josefina would consider herself cautious. 

 

She had not been cautious this day.

 

It was all she could do to keep herself calm when the bells rang, and when she ultimately followed the Princess Royal down into the crypts of the Winter Palace. Crypts that, Josefina knew, would not be safe for long. Calm slowly gave way to fear, and as she held her son close, Josefina knew there was only so much she could do to comfort those around her. Prayer rang out through the catacombs like birdsong on a sunny day as the scent of blood reached them even as far down as they were. Perfume could only cover so much of the iron that permeated the very stone.

 

She had never truly interacted with Princess Analiesa, but Josefina knew that when she all but begged the Duchess of Vidaus to protect her only son should her life be forfeit, that the woman would do all she could for little Manfred. She knew because her own fear, a mother’s fear, was reflected in the eyes of the woman she stood beside. Manfred would live, even if she had to sacrifice her own life for his escape. Her precious son, her only child, would be safe.

 

Buzzing filled the air as it echoed down the stairs, followed by cracks of sound and what could only be explosions raining dust down on their heads. It was silent, almost too quiet as their sanctuary was only very rarely breached by a blood soaked messenger. There was too little news, not enough to make a decision, but she didn’t have to, did she? 

 

Never had she expected to be cradling the too small, newborn heiress of Vidaus to her chest whilst the mother jerked violently in her childbed. There wasn’t enough time in the world to prepare her for this role. 

 

She was never supposed to be here in the first place. 

 

There were not enough prayers, not enough hopes to ever quell the visceral terror she felt when the woman she was supposed to be following, to be supporting, fell unconscious. There was not enough time in the world to ever answer the question of what now? 

 

Josefina had trembled her way through the motions as medics and injured began to flood their sanctuary. As Ser Walton urged them to evacuate, she heard someone’s voice through the ocean that flooded her ears. She had only remembered stumbling up the stairs once she’d reached the top, when she began tearing through the fabric of her dress to cover the yet unnamed infant and a small girl who had asked to hold her hand. 

 

Was this really happening? Was she really here, watching people tear up the carpet and pull drapes down from the windows to cover themselves?

 

Reinmar.

 

That was the consensus they had reached. The safest place they could come up with. Her home for the past six years. 

 

They had fled the burning palace into a hellscape of familiar city streets, streets she had walked down too many times to remember now filled with fire and blood as it rained from the sky. She had been carrying her son since the bell first rang, and the newborn for perhaps only slightly less time, but she didn’t dare slow as she dragged the small girl who couldn’t have been more than eight behind her. 

 

She didn’t dare stop until all who had come with her were safe within Wilheburg’s walls, and then even deeper into the keep’s basement. Even then, she could not stop. There was no time to think, no time to even put the children she carried down. Plans must be made, a place outside the Dual Kingdom where they would not be turned away established, and a route thought of to keep as far from the demonic scourge plaguing them as possible. 

 

Reinmar wasn’t far enough. 

 

It wasn’t far enough.

 

And just before they’d been about to leave, a course plotted south toward Balian, as far as they could get, Josefina received a bird. It couldn’t be true. Surely it wasn’t true. It had barely been a few Saint’s hours, and she couldn’t dare hope. She couldn’t believe that it was true, because if she did and it was false, they were all dead.

 

But a rider approached, crying out that the news was indeed true. Humanity had triumphed. They were safe. 

 

Josefina couldn’t remember what happened next, with relief flooding her so strongly that it seemed to wipe out all but the thought of they’re safe. A fog had draped itself over those memories, the memories of after, that would never lift. Conscious thought had reappeared at Wilheburg, after all had gone, sitting beside the fire in the main hall as she so often did with Manfred in her lap, disheveled and torn but alive and in one piece. 

 

The Duchess broke out into laughter at the absurdity of it all. There had been over twenty people in her basement, perhaps even thirty, a basement she’d very rarely touched. The hilarity had swiftly turned to sobs of relief as she handed Manfred off to a trusted nursemaid. She didn’t know how long she sat there for, first in tears before it turned to silence, before Wilheim joined her. There were only a few thoughts running through her mind.

 

None under her care had died. Wilheburg had been enough. She had been enough. The shelter she had offered had been enough.

 

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