I have failed you, father.
They were the hardest words that Varani had ever uttered.
She had walked into her childhood home - how small and dark it had suddenly seemed compared to the bright wide spaces of her memory! - and found her father hunched up in a chair by the fire. Only ten years had passed and yet he seemed so much older. The fiery red of his thick hair had faded to white, the fine lines upon his face had turned to ravines and his once massive frame now appeared frail. She had taken to a knee, fist placed against her breast and head bowed as she had forced those awful words out into the open.
Forgive me.
The ensuing silence had been stony, cold and hard. Had she been of a more fanciful nature, she might have believed that the very uttering of such a damning admission had turned her deaf. Instead, she just kept her head down, her eyes upon the floor, not daring to raise her gaze lest she see his disappointment.
Now, hours later, she stood by the window in her bedroom. Nothing had changed. Everything, from the stuffed straw doll he had made for her to the awful pink dress her mother had made her wear to special occasions, was exactly as it had been upon the day she had departed. It was touching in a way.
She winced as she recalled the tone in which he had demanded that she explain herself. She had tried. She had given him a factual account of proceedings, of how Sairona had refused to come home and disarmed her when she had sought to take back that which had been stolen. That he had not wished to know how her elder sibling had managed such a feat had been a blow to Varani. Had he ever really had faith in her abilities? After all, Sairona had never been given the same training as Varani, she should not have been able to best her younger sister. But best her she had.
How?
In hindsight, Varani had not put up much of a fight. Had she faltered? Had she lost her resolve? No. At least, not initially. But the things that Sairona had said, the memories she had stirred, her bitterness, her pain... she had feigned none of it. Had she been correct about the rest, then?
When she had asked her father, he had taken too long to respond. He had denied it, of course, but her doubt for his honesty had already begun to surface. Had that been a shifty look to his eyes? Had that been anger for the accusation itself or for its accuracy?
Had Sairona - no, Silver - been right about everything? Had the last decade of Varani's life been based on naught but the greed of a man disgraced by his own actions? Had she truly been sent on a ten year trek across most of the known world not, as she had been told, in an effort to reunite a father with his runaway daughter, but merely to retrieve a trinket that rightfully belonged in the hands of the one who now held it?
Find for yourself the life that his greed has so far denied you.
If she had been right about the rest, then why not this?
Varani felt her hand close about the hilt of her belt knife. Jaw clenched with determination, she sat herself at the small dresser and propped the tiny mirror against the wall. She had to bend and twist awkwardly to see what she was doing, but with her mind made up, nothing would stop her from sheering what remained of her locks into a much more fitting style. She gently stroked the sharp blade against her scalp on first one side and then the other, making certain to remove all of the hair whilst forming clean, even lines. Left with a thick crest on top that could be tied back into a tail, she nodded her satisfaction. The change, symbolic though it might be, made her feel better about what she would do next.
Picking up her saddlebags, she strode out of her room, head held high.
"What are you about, child?" her father demanded. "What have you done?"
Varani paused, her hand upon the handle of the door between herself and the outside world.
"I'm leaving," she told him simply. "Forgive me, father, but I must do this."
His fist slammed down upon the table. At one time she would have jumped at that sound, hidden behind her brother's legs or her mother's skirt. This time she set her shoulders, standing proud and stubborn. She had not been a child for a very long time.
"Don't be ridiculous!" he roared. "It was a mistake to send you out there in the first place. Look at you; twenty five, unwed, and a failure in the one duty ever bestowed upon you! There's nothing out there for you, girl!"
Varani closed her eyes, clenching her teeth at his choice of words. She took a deep breath, turning to fix her stern and steady gaze upon the old man who, she was now convinced, had wasted a decade of her life just to retrieve a necklace that he had stolen from his own daughter.
"I left behind something precious," she told him evenly. "I'm going to get it back. Goodbye, father."
With nothing left to say, she opened the door and walked through it. It took mere moments for her to load and mount her horse, leaving the angry yells behind as she encouraged the beast into a trot. It was only as she descended the opposite side of the hill that she realised her hands were shaking but it was not for what she had left behind. No, it was for what lay ahead.
Would he be there? Would he remember her? Would he still want her? Long months had passed with no word sent or received by either. She had not even said goodbye. Would he forgive her? Could he give her a second chance? She had never led him on, she had always told him that she would leave, but did that make any difference now? In her minds eye, she saw him abed with another, happy and settled with a woman far better than she. She had visions of him laughing in her face, angrily turning her away or just not caring enough to do anything more than shrug off her return.
No! No, she would not think this way. She would not doom the battle before she had even begun to fight it.
Braxdan...
More determined now than she had ever been, she pressed her heels into the sides of her horse, urging it to more speed until its hooves churned up the golden grass, leaving a dust cloud in their wake.
Wait for me, Braxdan. I'm coming for you.
