She closed the door gently behind her, as if she were a naughty child who had been out long past due. Light crept into the main room from her bed chamber, a shadowy figure of her mother standing in its doorway with that look only a mother can give, one of being concerned, angry, loving and confused all simultaneously.
"Where have you been child? Sun is almost up!"
"Celebrating"
"You smell of strong wine"
"No, I smell of cheap wine, and strong men"
"We have spoken of this, look at what they do, look what they make you!"
"Now you sound like him"
"Who?"
"It does not matter. What matters is that I am in control, I am always in control of these things, you know this!"
"You are a foolish child Dernwynn! Do you forget your father? That bard?"
"I remember each and every betrayal, do not question that!"
"Then why do you persist?!"
"Because I am alive! Alive Mother! Not some dried husk of a woman! Not like you!"
The two looked at each other in silence. Arguing was certainly not new to the pair, their lives so closely entwined until Dernwynns eighteenth year, they knew what would happen next, it always happened. Her mother took a copper kettle and filled it, it was as if a ritual, argue and make herbal tea. The older woman looked upon shelves, in boxes, pots and jars, the younger one directing her as needed until the drink was prepared. In front of the fire, deep wooden chairs, thick stoneware mugs in their hands, the younger woman looked down at the murky depths of the nettle tea and continued to speak in a sullen tone.
"I wish I could tell you everything"
"I am your mother, why do you not?"
"Some things you should not know! Do you not understand? I do this for you Mother, for you!"
As stubborn as the other, the back and forth continued, a bitter and frustrating dialogue with neither giving ground to the other. Time pressed on, the tea grew cold. Worn down like the banks of a river, the younger womans secrets, hidden from friends, lovers, slowly trickled from her lips, until the flow of words turned into a torrent. A wash of almost everything that had occurred to the daughter, mostly ill deeds and dark days. The fate of past lovers, friends and foul folk. Her work, how she was so blessed with coin, though she omitted the darker, less savory of details. Her fears, her hopes and her present. Soon her words ran dry and for the first time in what seemed an age, they sat in silence, the fires spitting and crackling of dying embers the only thing keeping them company.
"A nephew?"
"He was small, very small, peaceful and then gone."
"The man, the monster?"
"Dead."
"I have not met your half brother"
"I have not seen him in an age"
"Did he kill the man?"
"No"
“Did the man hurt you? Child?”
“He tried.”
Tears crept from the corner of the older womans eyes, rolling down the lined skin of her cheeks. In her mind, failure to protect the only one she loved, her only child whom she had allowed to forge her own way in the world, to become a woman and not the small, thin, young girl who would sit by a campfire demanding to be told stories from the travelers that they shared it with. In her minds eye, her daughter was still that fragile child. The one she could not protect from the cruelty of the girls father and his wife as the woman seared Dernwynns skin with a brand when only a tiny child. Sorrow churned in her stomach, the bile rising as the blood in her veins became hotter, a temper grew, not at her child but at herself.
"You are returning with me!"
"I am not! What do you think I am? I am no longer a child. This is my home now!"
"It is not safe here!"
"It is not safe anywhere, certainly not where you dwell! Farms being raided? Ill folk at the door?!"
"That settles it! I am staying!"
"You are not! No, no, no."
"Dernwynn! Until I am certain you are safe, I stay!"
