I paced back and forth in a nook I had found. It was long and narrow, and not good for much of anything but pacing but that was what I needed now. I could feel the anxiety from feeling enclosed spike through me but I welcomed it. It was exactly how I wanted to feel right now. It felt like my insides were finally matching what was going on around me.

Jin had smiled.

I couldn't ask why. Not now. I didn't want anyone to find me. To question me about the story or the outfit or say that I was over thinking everything or that I hadn't thought through my stunt enough before doing it.

I needed to know what Jin had to smile about. I never wanted anything I did to please her; not after everything she put me through shortly after I arrived at the Seedling Palace just because of my background. She hated me on principle and I was content to do the same.

My story had gone well. Everyone's attention had been locked on me, so surely they had gotten my message about using their words wisely. I could see them, feel the crowd, reacting to every word, every gesture. No wonder Grandmothers coveted that part of their role so much. A part of me wanted to do it again—soon—even if the rest was ready to get back to doing my own thing without the weight of a crowd's attention.

But Jin had smiled like I'd given her a gift. Had I leaned too hard on borrowed authority? I wanted to show them what it would mean if their words became reality, if they kept insisting I was the Little Love, and let them choke on the words instead of saying them. But perhaps I had given those already too far gone an "example" of what they thought was true: that I was the Little Love.

A self-fulfilling prophecy.

Where no matter what I did I confirmed the belief that it was true. If I ignored the whispers it must be true because I wasn't protesting, if I did protest there must be something I was trying to hide, and if I accepted it…well, that spoke for itself.

Perhaps people would talk less now. Perhaps that insidious nickname would only be spoken in quiet whispers behind tent walls. But in its place I might have invited conviction. Certainty that it was ill to gossip about me just like it was bad to gossip about the Beloved because to do so no one wanted to be the focus of an angry goddess.

All I had wanted to do was be a little petty. To cause trouble for the rumormongers like they had for me and give them a taste of their own poison, possibly get people to shut up in the meantime, but the stupid nickname was its own poison. One that couldn't be put back in the bottle once it broke free and that had no good cure. I could resist its spread all I wanted but the poison spread too quickly for me. As the source of the poison everything I did only spread it further.

Perhaps I should have heeded my own lesson and kept my mouth shut.

The Little Love.

Storms, I wished I could punch the person who first uttered those words. It made me sound like a toddler or some derivative thing. Something only fully realized in relation to the Beloved and, by extension, the goddess. They could have at least given me a nickname that was wholly my own like Little Diver. One I had earned from things I'd done.

Stolen novel; please report.

It made my skin itch the way this new one tied me down without doing anything to truly earn it. A bless mark and meetings I had no control over hardly counted. It also felt like a slap every time I heard it. A sharp wake up call of everyone else's expectations against my own. I wanted the freedom to explore that Ingrasia's teachings offered me, but that opportunity was likely to be taken from me if the nickname stuck. The more closely you were tied to the goddess the less you left the Seedling Palace, much less Her territory.

Trapped.

Another tent with someone monitoring the door flap, if on a grander scale. And every time you finally got to step outside those confines it didn't matter because everyone knew who you were anyway and the whispers never stopped and never left.

It was a situation I should have been more than used to, but this chafed differently than wearing healer's beads. Those I had some pride in and this was just someone else's words. Someone else's decisions.

And yet that taste of borrowed power had been sweet. Everyone's attention and not a single person saying I should know my place. Not one snide comment about 'too much life' or that I was just a seedling who shouldn't cause trouble.

It had pushed me to play into it even more and give that last hint while gesturing to my tattoos. Originally, I wasn't going to do anything so drastic, but the dress had presented an opportunity that I couldn't say no to. An opportunity to test for myself if being the Little Love was something I could get used to. A test to see what having some measure of authority would be like and an opportunity to tell the story rather than just being part of the audience.

The trouble was that the test had gone farther than I intended in front of an audience that didn't know it was a test and likely wouldn't care that it was, unless it suited their own story. The taste of power had been sweet but it also had been hollow. No real respect and the crowd's silence might have been due to surprise as much as the intimadation I'd been going for.

And Jin had looked pleased about something I did.

I had ignored her for years. We were in different circles even when I followed Mishtaw around and she got pulled into Peacekeeper things because of Eliss. I knew Jin wanted to get rid of me, but I never gave her an opportunity that she could use by the time she heard about it. Someone else tended to make a decision first that she didn't have the authority to dispute despite being the Peacekeepers' second-in-command.

Now I had paraded about in front of her, but I wasn't sure what she had to smile about. If I became the Little Love in truth then I'd be above her in authority and if the rumors miraculously faded into nothing then I was just a seedling telling a story. She couldn't get me on charges of healing and I hadn't attacked anyone, so my past offenses were out.

Still, I'd have to keep my guard up. Something would come of this, it was just a question of what and when. Even if I hadn't told my version of Grislander in front of the entire evening meal crowd in this ridiculous dress, something would have happened. I doubted she'd let me become a whisper woman, much less one of the Chosen or anything else, without protest. I might not be her first concern, but our animosity was too strong for her to forget and give up.

Perhaps she smiled just to mess with my head. That'd be the easiest answer but I didn't want it to be true, because then she'd be correct. My mind kept spinning back to that point as I left the platform. Fretting, wasting time.

I couldn't do much with the information I had, but I wasn't ready to face anyone else yet and I wanted to figure it out myself. She could call me a liar for the implications I made or misleading the whisper women. Maybe she'd complain about me causing a disturbance. I couldn't know until she did something even if I wanted her accusations to happen now, just to get it over with. In the meantime though I'd have to settle for the fallout of my own actions.

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