It’s been a bit since I last saw you. I gave you tales of hardship, and tales of regained friendship. That friendship blossomed into love. But what love to one, may not be love to another. Within this story I hope to remember to tell you what Fal told me when Rashnu asked her if she loved Acelin. Now sit and let me began.
It’s said that the past will always come back to haunt you. After living in my own past, and hearing Falra’s accounts of her own. I tend to believe that. No matter how much Fal pushed the past back behind that locked door in her mind, it always found a way to seep out. This time it came in the guise of wet eyes. Rashnu had found the drawings of her past. No matter how many times she burned them, threw them away, she always redrew them. Each time she recalled more detail. But this was but one episode of her past. It was the loss of her son. That wasn’t all Rashnu found though. He had found her old sketch book. For some reason she held onto it. It held her memories, told a tale for her. Showed the faces of many of the men she was contracted to, but the most important ones, it held drawings of the twin brothers who owned her.
They were old drawings. The book was given to her shortly after she had been sold to them. When she’d go into a rage of fright, it was all that would calm her. She became quickly frustrated at what they forced on her. Not only themselves, but how to read, to read lips, even to talk. These were all new things to her. She’d been left in a dark room up until that time. Now she was again in a dark room, but this one filled with light. Only one that was kept in a gilded cage could understand. The semblance of freedom and caring, all at the cost of her body. All of these things rushed into her mind when Rashnu came into the room and wrapped his arms around her. She knew he had seen what she had so carefully hidden away. He had questions, she knew he would. But he was more content to just listen. Falra spilled her heart out to him. Told him of her time in the place where sand and rock melt. Grew quiet when she tenderly touched her abdomen.
Falra told him about the death of the Master’s brother. That he was the father of her child. That he wasn’t the one that sent her off, but he was the one that came to bring her back. She recited the events of that night. The searing pain felt as her scar on her cheek was re-opened, dug into and carved. No sharp knife was used, just stone. There was more to follow, the Master’s brother brought along someone who paid a king’s ransom to break her again. He was given free rein to do as he pleased as long as he left no new scars. He didn’t get far though, Acelin had showed up, rescued her. Killed all of the men and the Master’s brother. It was at this point in the story that Rashnu asked a most painful question. He had asked if she had loved Acelin.
How she told me, she described just how she felt about Acelin. Fal told Rashnu then, that Acelin was, “Safety”, he cared for her, she for him, but he always kept her at arm’s length. She couldn’t say that was love. Drunn had taught her that love was thinking of that person always. Wanting to be by their side, but if that was true, then she loved Drunn too, along with a number of her friends. Drunn had tried to show her in a kiss while he thought of the one woman he had ever truly loved. Fal thought she understood from that. She had to think now, when Rashnu asked, had she loved Acelin, she could say yes, but not in the way she loved him. Rashnu was safety as well, but it went beyond that. She had admired him when she met him. He was like her in many ways, yet different. He was fractured. It was visible that he was. His past had broken him in many ways, where she learned to hide her fractures. Rashnu was someone she could show those fractures to. Falra could never do that with Acelin, it wasn’t a simple hug she’d need, it was someone that had gone through the same thing. Someone that had chains wrapped around their soul as well as his arms.
Ah Falra told me how they spoke late into the night and into the next day. How she slept in his arms when they could no longer bare the pain. How his eyes leaked for the pain she would not show. She learned long ago to not cry. Only once since the loss of her son had she cried and that was a day she forgot. Perhaps I’ll get to tell you if she ever showed her true pain to Rashnu, maybe not. That depends on if you continue to come and hear my tales of Falraenn.
