Nightingale [open]

[Tovah]

Alecto had heard nothing from the higher court regarding her demotion. It was as much torture as having to listen to the Niceven threaten her without retaliating, but the once-Denwyr managed not to show her discomfort, except in rare moments she had alone. And until she was told otherwise -- directly told by the king, she would growl to herself -- the Fury would continue to fulfill her duties as guardian of her court.

Some days, Tovah went with her. She was very small and very quiet, and the other courtiers barely noticed her as she trotted along beside her mother, her moon-like eyes searching everything, wondering at everything. People noticed her even less when she was a bird, perched on Alecto's shoulder. The Denwyr preferred her this way on her rounds, because the child was unable to pick things up as a Nightingale, but Tovah often resisted, because she was unable to pick things up as a Nightingale. It was, so far, the only subject over which the mother and daughter quarreled.

That tired argument had surfaced in the morning, as Alecto prepared for a patrol in the deeper Unseelie tunnels, near the entrance to the Underdark. Tovah could not comprehend why her mother was so unwilling for her to be seen down there, and had stubbornly insisted that she would not be a bird today. The Fury's response had been to leave her in the care of her underlings. Tovah enjoyed arguing, but accepted her defeat without any outrage; she enjoyed the places Alecto picked out for her, especially the gardens filled with trees and flowers.

She sat in the approximate center of the room, her toddler's legs splayed on the shaded grass beneath a monstrous strangler fig, their spindly muscles giving her an appearance of porcelain fragility. Beside her stood a menacing-looking lycanthrope guard, whose mantel appeared to be some variety of giant, aggressive lizard; a Nile Monitor, perhaps. It was clad in boiled leather, armed heavily, and seemed to be neither male nor female. It watched the child with an inscrutable expression. The child was either wholly unaware of its presence, or too immersed in the puzzle her mother had given her to notice anything else.

The puzzle was, by all appearances, impossible to solve. Made up of tiny parts that rotated and slid in groups, the goal was to flatten it into a single sheet, silver on one side, black on the other. Tovah had been absorbed in its solution for at least an hour, and while she occasionally expressed surprise that her attempts were not working, she did not seem to be frustrated. The guard, on the other hand, was frustrated just watching the process, and again had to avert its eyes, perfunctorily scanning the entrances to the room and sniffing for magic. "Would you like to play something else Tovah?" it asked in its gruff, gravely voice.

"Nothankyou," she chirped sweetly, without looking up. The guard either grimaced or smiled -- it was difficult to tell. Tovah continued to slide and rotate the puzzle pieces. There was a beat of silence, then the sound of the second guard at the far door demanding "who goes there?" of some stranger in the hall. Tovah paused, lifted her eyes from the puzzle to peer into the distance. "Is it mother?" she asked softly, and glanced up at the guard.

"I do not think so," it answered.