rightly or wrongly i am planning a post-kcd2 longfic featuring jitka very heavily so i'm currently in the figuring-her-out stages. as part of this i'm trying to write a few monologues from her POV and here's today's offering (this is very throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks vibes. it is not polished. i need this to be known):
I don't remember ever in my life curtesying deeper than I did the very first time I curtseyed for Hans Capon.
The journey to Rattay felt thrice as long as my uncle promised, and the carriage half as comfortable. I tried counting each tree it passed me on the road, but found I had no stomach for it beyond the number 'one'. Some part of me knew that it was a childish, fruitless exercise — that these gentle landmarks would not meet my eyes again. That they would slip past me, fleeting, vanish back into a cold white sky.
None of it felt real.
For a long while, I had convinced myself that this was how I preferred it.
When my Uncle Botschek relayed the news a little over a year ago, that same, fleeting feeling washed over me, and I had embraced it. It is not unfamiliar — to be a woman is to learn how to be completely absent, after all. To reach out either side of oneself, and feel nothing but a draft.
I know what the Bohemian lords say about me. And, even if I did not, the truth of it is so apparent that it screams. The dowry my father sent me with was eye-watering. What more could this young lord want than a young, noble wife, with coffers so heavy that four draft horses are barely enough to cart the silver? Somehow, when the door unlatched, fell open, stairs carefully placed before me, and I stepped out to meet the man who was to become my companion in whatever remains of this earthly life, I felt empty-handed even still.
The young lord was only newly a man it seemed, though he was unusually tall. Lean and slender, a face like a fox's, and hair as fair as a February sun. His reputation with women had indeed spread as far as Moravia, and now was no surprise.
Of course, he was not the only person under scrutiny. I knew from the way he beheld me then, as if he was peering through me, behind me, that he was trying to make out where the rest of me may have been stashed. For none of the money was mine to begin with. I had simply fetched what was already owed, and he was searching for a gift that I had seemingly overlooked while packing.
"Lady Jitka," he said, just slightly tipping the fair crown of his head. His voice was gentler than I had expected, especially with cheeks as sharp as those.
And then I began that ungodly curtsey, like God was pulling at my ankles, pressing me into Hell just to see if I might be able to claw back out again. "My lord."
It is a pleasure, Sir Hans.
What a blessed relief to finally reach your lovely holdings.
I pray the day finds you well.
All these words died on the floor. Needful deference knocked them out of me, and the effort to pick some of them up and polish them off, like all things, felt empty and meaningless and wasted.
When I rose up to meet his eyes again, we had the very first of our silent conversations.
And we understood each other perfectly.
