“That’s beautiful,” Kre said with a heavy exhale of pent-up breath. “It suits you.”
She nodded her thanks and smiled shyly. “I miss him greatly,” she said, by way of explanation for her show of emotion.
“You are nobility then?” Kitalia asked cautiously. “To be titled so, would suggest that you are.”
Sapphire seemed to ponder the question overlong, her brow furrowed in thought. When she finally answered, it was with a tentative whisper. “Nobility… what an odd notion for an Ylveryan to possess, let alone label another with. To be titled as a noble. To be labeled with a word that means little more than what one’s bloodline offers or representative of one’s official civic rank.
“I suppose I could, if I chose, claim a certain right of nobility. After all, here we three stand, in the ruins of a people whose time has passed so long ago that the Tehynshin civilization is little more than a pebble to its mountain, that we could claim to be the only residents and therefore the rulers of this lost city.
“But I know you’ll only accuse me of dodging the crux of your question.” She glanced up and caught sight of Kitalia pressing her lips back together after holding back that exact sort of statement. “So, I shall speak as plainly as I can. I can only hope you will understand if I cannot answer all of your questions right now. There are… reasons, and you will simply have to take that with a grain of faith.
“The knight named Terync called me his lady, and thus in his eyes at the least, I was ennobled and honored. I have also worn other titles… many less honorable and some none too kind. Why are these any less important than the title of Lady? In the end, all of these titles are nothing more than ways to label a person’s shadows. They do not define a person any more than your shadow tells us who you are. They simply show an outline… a link to our physical bodies. Still… the titles are a comfort, a way of ordering this chaotic world.
“So yes,” she said firmly, raising her piercing blue eyes to look at them sharply, “I have been nobility. I bore the title of Lady once, but I will not force that title through your lips if you deign for it not to be so. I have had so many names in the past that any other that you come up with will not matter overmuch.”
Both Kre and Kitalia were silent for a few seconds after she finished, unsure of how to respond to such a philosophical answer to what they thought was a simple question. Ultimately, it was Kre that spoke first, to no one’s great surprise.
“I’ve called you the Blue-eyed Lady in my head and in my retelling of… of that night… so often that it is how I have come to know you. Of course, I can’t keep calling you that.” He scrunched up his face and scratched at his ear. “Perhaps… I can call you Bel… or, uh… Lady Bel?”
“Bel,” she mused, “Short for Blue-eyed Lady.”
His clever naming trick thus revealed, Kre turned his face away as his cheeks reddened. “It’s dumb, I know.”
“It’s different. I have never been known by that name in all of my years. You would be the first to call me by that and I think that is fitting.”
“Bel then,” Kitalia confirmed. She seemed none too happy about the situation, but Kre could not tell from her face just what exactly had her upset. “Well Bel,” she said, turning in a slow circle and looking about, “can you tell us where we are without going into a discourse on how none of us are where we think we are?”