Jenny: The Facets of a Gem

The Guttersnipe stood and regarded Domitia after her plaintive outburst, frowning. The gap Domitia was seeing was wider than she had thought. She felt sorry for not knowing that, but what should she do? The place Domitia called shifting and confusing was at once her haven of unwavering reality. When Domitia saw her Lord Ambrosius, what did she see? An enigmatic man with the storm on the sea in his eyes? For surely that was there, even the Guttersnipe knew that. But she reveled in the storm, as one might stand in the tempests of summer's thunder and exalt in the power and rage of the lightning. And what did she herself see, beyond the thunder-wrack? The man at ease in his chair by the hearth, the smile of the sun behind his eyes, arms always ready to catch her as she tumbled into them, laughing at her, leading her. They all saw him in their own way, each differently, but that made no one side of him any less true than the other. She dropped her gaze to the ring on its thong around her neck, looking at the light coming and going from the heart of the gem. She had run round the sides of her world so that she knew them without thinking. Domitia had barely begun.

"There are secrets and there are secrets," she told the other presently. "The boy is not an easy one to know, and I will not say that he always knows himself. But I do know that he knows his God, and think that, for now, that is enough to put you at rest."