My Girl

Of all the things in my world that matter, Lei matters the most. Sometimes I wondered if she truly understood that. I was watching her crouched near the waning fire, eating the remnants of a fruit paste smeared bread and humming to herself. It was not music I had heard before but I did not interrupt her to ask. She was using the broken half of an arrow to draw something in the earth.

"Mother." She spoke first and I stopped in my task of hanging wet blankets to dry. I turned to look at her, the breeze tugging at my skirt and the ribbon in my braid. They were still the leaf green ones Cana had given me, they matched the leaf green pendant Tarra had given me. "Yes?" I replied.

"I have decided to claim Also as my mate." She informed of her intentions with the kind of surety most adults (That means you Fonce) can barely imagine having.

To my credit as a mother, her mother, I did not laugh. "Is Also aware of your intentions?" I asked her seriously.

"No, I will tell him when he gets his first scar." Spoken in that Miss Know It All way she had that was more adorable then annoying.

"Perhaps you should.. seek his mothers permission first." I threw Cana under the wagon there, sorry my friend!

Lei was silent for a moment and then nodded. "I will do that. I will tell Fonce too."

Sex roles? Apparently my daughter was going to trash them all to hell. I worried, briefly, of her future and the day when some man would knock her down from her high horse. Some stupid warrior would insist on giving her a lesson on her .. place in the world. My chest tightened.

"Did you ask Daddy’s mother to let him claim you?" She stopped drawing now to look up at me. I hesitated and then put down the washing. I neared her and reached for her hand. When she stood we walked towards the vibrant wagon we had created and I began to, very softly, tell her about the night her father claimed me.

I did not mention what an impossible ass he was or that he had ringed me against my will and taken away any chance I might have had to be anyone else. What I told my daughter was a proper love story. I tried, in vain, to explain the kind of big feelings the paintings made me feel about her father. I explained about the water and the sand.. together and apart.

She seemed so.. sad for me and I hated that. I wanted to reassure her, to tell her that she nor I had died that day with Trayu. That it was okay to feel again. That.. I already did feel again. And if my feelings for Fonce had been any less sincere.. I would have told her. I would have let her be my little whispering birdie.

In the end though.. I only spoke of possibilities and one days. I tied her raggedly sandals on her little feet and took her hand again.

"Lets go see what there is to see at the first fires." I smiled at her.

"We have to hurry up and move to where Also is so we can practice being mates."

"Uh.. right."

Skies, I wondered, how concerned should I be?!