Jenny: Things Unsaid, But Felt

The Guttersnipe paused before she reached the doorway, noting Cu's loving antics and Frip's cool regard. The spilt water ran down the bucket's sides and made speckles in the dust. "It is a thing easy to me to understand," she told Domitia, "because I have been here among these people since I was very young. And when you are that young, this sort of life comes easily, so easily that you do not realize it is your life, and that there may be anything else outside of it.

"Artos was telling me something," she went on slowly, "something he had done, oh, a while and a while ago, and he left a thing out, knowing that it wasn't for me to know. But this is my life, my world, and I saw the thing missing in the gap. Perhaps you are not seeing the thing missing in the gap - though you are feeling it - because it is new to you. I saw it, but he left it out for my good, so I will not for the world tell him that I saw it missing, even if he should realize I know. He will not say, and I will not say, and it will lie so between the two of us." She smiled mirthlessly. "So, that is our life here. There are things that we don't say to each other, though we feel them missing, and we know it is for the best. That is the way things are."

She looked into the gloom of the atrium. "As for the boy, they say that the wisdom of God comes out of the mouth of young ones. If he lies, he is keeping you safe. When he tells the truth - well, perhaps only a bard can sort out what he means." She smiled, gaily this time, and went up the steps to the vestibule.