Kayse (prime)/Vignette: Failed Responsibility

The hall echoed with various voices but the emptiness of the barracks caused the sound to be distorted against the stone walls.  It had been two days since she voluntarily went into custody after Drandea’s death and the constant boredom had only given her more time to analyze and overthink things.  


She had been too late and not fast enough.


She fidgeted on the makeshift cot and mumbled to herself, the guard standing watch shifting his gaze in her direction.  Her pear green eyes met his and her inscrutable features failed to mask the glint of vexation in her return glance.  Raising his eyebrows, he quickly turned away from her.


Kayse grabbed her notebook from her case and flipped through the pages, the creamy vellum brushing against her fingertips.  She perused the writing, stopping now and then to take in what she wrote.  Many of the pages were scrawled with notes from over the past ten months of what she had learned from the Kestrels.  At one point, the writings had stopped when she realized that the secrets she was discovering were too dangerous to be kept written down.  


Her eyes skimmed over a passage and the name “Shinann” showed up.  Exhaling a forceful breath through her lips upward caused wisps of mournbloom black hair framing her face to fly about.   She had willingly let Shinan take her into custody not just because she was her best friend but also knew it was the Captain’s purpose to uphold the law.  Despite the fact she WAS innocent the evidence surely didn’t point to that. 


Did I build up a tolerance?  Was the decanter poisoned as well?  How did the whiskey get poisoned?  


An exasperated look flooded over Kayse’s face as she tossed the notebook aside, its pages fluttering as it landed on a random page on the cot.  She quickly stood and paced the room, her wings tightly closing on her back to show her frustration. 


“Eight months,” the aelotoi hissed under her breath.  The guard turned, jolted by her sudden vocalization. She paid him no attention as she continued to walk back and forth--like the caged animals she had seen at the Solhaven zoo.


She rested a hand on her back and stopped abruptly.  She had been so compliant to Shinann when she was “arrested” that she had even turned over her daggers and the empty sheath against her back was a reminder of how vulnerable she was. 


Drandea was the only one of the Kestrel group that I cared for and I couldn’t save her.  Eight months carrying around an antidote to save someone that I couldn’t.  I never wanted the responsibility of that.


Her eyes narrowed but beneath the frustration was sadness and a tinge of regret.  At least Shinann had a purpose, Kayse had missed hers to truly make a difference.  Perhaps the journal would have been in their possession had Drandea been saved.  At least she had helped rescue Rodnay, but even his future might be jeopardized in the next coming weeks.


Heavily she sat back on the cot as she reached over to grab her notebook and glanced down at the page.  It was the first excerpt that she began writing about the Kestrels coming to Wehnimer’s and it stared up at her as if burning a hole through her soul:


Written at the bottom of the page in beautifully scripted common were the words, “You are not a hero” as three lines underlined the word, “not.” 


Reaching for her quill, she quickly added “...and you were never meant to be” before sharply closing the notebook and tucking it away.