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| ����� Slowly I stood up from my wicker chair at the modest family table in our cottage. Glancing over at my mother, sitting in her own chair and bent over, working on the evening's meal, I smiled to myself.� She is so beautiful.. I thought as I watched her luxurious auburn hair fall across one side of her delicate face.� I remember when I was much smaller then my now tender age of 7, she would rock me in her chair, holding me close to her heart so I could listen to the steady thumping beat, stroking my face as I twirled one small finger in her hair. Somehow it comforted me and for a moment, watching her now, I wanted to go to her and crawl into her lap, twirling that same finger into her hair and closing my eyes, pretending that the world as I know it now didn't exist.. That things were as simple as they were before the concerned whispers and fearful thoughts swept the Turamzyyrian Empire.� Before my father had left to do the dangerous work he was asked to do for the local resistance group, my mother didn't have those frown lines crippling her once shining and wondrous smile. | |||||||||||||||
| ����� Blinking slowly, I shook my head and brushed the thoughts away of those comforting times. Silently I walked to the small demure window my father had built into our cottage for me to watch the birds from and leaned against the splintered frame, gazing out onto the front yard. A large, magnificent modwir tree stood there, shading our home from the harsh sun, giving us some respite from the heat in the middle of the summer when it was so hot that you could feel the sweat sizzling and drying up on your skin as soon as it formed. Looking at the leaves, dancing and twirling around on the outstretched limbs as the wind touched them, I wondered to myself when my father would come home this eve. My kind, strong willed and intellectual father.. | |||||||||||||||
| ����� It seemed that more and more often these days, he was gone late into the eve. He would come home tired, a deep crease in his brow from worry, his once bright blue eyes darkened with the thoughts of his work.� My father had been a craftsman for as long as I could remember, always fiddling around with different woods and metals, making toys for me, building furniture for our family, and selling odds and ends that he had made to the local townsfolk and traders as they passed through our town. In his spare time, he would ponder over books he managed to pick up from the local market, reading them out loud to me at times; filling my head with images and dreams of things I had not yet seen or heard of. Late at night however, I would hear him reading different books to my mother, his voice a different tone and her soft gasps and responses loaded with concern. For a time, I thought that he read her books as he read to me, filled with tales of far off places and creatures, journeys and bravery untold from warriors, people of the trees, even the great elven mages of the lands. However, the more I listened to them from my bed in my small room, the more I came to realize it was not the same at all. It was something completely different and it had my parents worried and fretful. | |||||||||||||||
| ����� As days passed and the faces of my parents changed, my fathers work also changed. He no longer tinkered with wood and metals as much as he did before and there were not so many smiles and pleasant relaxing evenings as there had been before. My once cheerful and radiant mother's face had changed to frowns and her bright green eyes were now sorrow filled and darkened. She stood at night at this same window I stand at now, and watched into the fall of the sun, twisting her wedding ring around on her finger and tugging at the edge of her apron almost absentmindedly, a furrowed brow and a heavy sigh escaping her lips from time to time.� Sometimes she would pace instead of waiting at the window after she had tucked me into my bed and thought me asleep. I would hear the soft sounds of her small feet treading back and forth across the floor, her sighs of frustration and worry echoing through the walls of our small home. When the sound of the door opening came, I began to expect to hear the relieved exhale of her breath as she cried with happiness and worry, murmuring to my father over and over that she was glad he came home to us. | |||||||||||||||
| ����� Staring out into the yard now, I watched as the sun started to grace the horizon with its descent, my eyes drawn to the warm oranges, reds and golds as the rays touched the ground and started to fade. I almost forgot for a moment that my mother was there until I heard her quiet voice, "Jolena? Honey, come away from the window and help me with the dinner. I want it to be prepared for your father when he comes home tonight. Ye know he is weary from the long trip he has made this week and I wish to give him a pleasant relaxing dinner to come home to."� Startled slightly, I nodded and turned to face her, clearing my face of all expression of worry so as not to escalate her stress on this already anxious eve. | |||||||||||||||
| ����� My father has been gone for a week now, doing something for the local resistance group that I am not able to know about as my mother said "It's just too much for such a pretty little head to worry over;". He is to return tonight and the house has been in a bustle all day long, preparing for his arrival. Sheets were washed in the creek, using the best soaps silvers could buy so they smell good. Candles have been burning all day long to give the house a lovely jasmine scent, my father's favorite. Fresh eggs were bought from the hobbit who passed through on the trade caravan this morning, even though we were overcharged, my mother wanted the best for my father. Milk was freshly taken from the neighbor's goat and had been placed in a bottle in the spring running through our back yard so as to keep it cool for his lips. Vegetables were being stripped of their skins, seasoned by salt and local herbs for flavor and were being cooked in a pot over a fire in the small fire pit we had in the cottage. Rolton meat, freshly slain and seasoned, was being stirred into the vegetable soup. The smell permeated the air and my senses as its flavor filled the pot and mixed with the vegetables.� | |||||||||||||||
| ����� Walking over to my mother beside the table, I smiled up at her and kissed her cheek, looking into her eyes.�"Daddy will love it mama.. have nae fear. Ye have made this house smell like the Empress' kitchen must smell before a great feast. Daddy will be pleased, I know it." Stopping her hands from their work, she gazed at me with love in her face, her eyes brightening from their now normal darkened state for just a moment, softly responding to me, "I hope so.. I know ye miss him Jolena.. I miss him too. But he will be home tonight and we want to show him how happy we are to see him aye?" Nodding slightly I tilted my head down a bit, quietly responding "Aye, we do mama..and he will be here soon so we must hurry."� My mother nodded and smiled at me before returning to her work on the meal but something didn't quite settle right in the pit of my stomach, a feeling settled there that was unnerving, a premonition if you will, of something not being as it should be.� I would soon come to realize that my premonitions were usually right and should be heeded when felt as the evening rapidly changed along with the rest of my life. | |||||||||||||||
| Chapter Two | |||||||||||||||
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