Rosin

5- The Other Side

Outside
The Blaze: 628 Days Passed

The last time Rosin had been away from the tribe— properly away, because she didn't consider the occasional flights she took about the trees as anything worth noting— was perhaps two years ago. It had been mid-autumn, when the wind was beginning to turn bitter and the auburn of the leaves was melting away, muddying. The colourless hue of winter. The sun struggled to rise each morning and even then could only stay awake for a few hours past midday, then it would give up and sink back below the horizon, ushering in an early sunset.
Short, cold days. Rosin had never liked winter, or autumn. The trees were wonderful while they were still crisping and yellow, but that beauty never remained long. Then everything grew damp and cold, slippy underfoot and harsh in the face, unpleasant.

That entire trip had been unpleasant. Rosin thought she might have been about fifteen at the time, or just about to age into it, if not. A letter just as dreary as the woodlands had appeared spontaneously outside of her tiny house at the edge of the tribe. It had felt rather like an intrusion at the time. Rosin liked her solitude— the quiet was calming and she was bothered by no one, Azure not included— so that piece of yellowed parchment addressed to her had felt like a knock on the door. Loud and obtrusive. Irritating.

The letter was from her parents.
She hadn't a clue of what to expect when she peeled back the seal of the top. Katteken hadn't quite got it into his head at that point that Rosin was not a child he could boss around, so she half expected it to be a list of jobs from him, or a lecture on her lack of responsibility. That letter, the one about her responsibility and discipline, would actually come almost six months later, which is when she would be forced to begin taking classes with a boy called Kovu Whithorne. Which probably did her attitude more harm than good.
Anyway— if it was a letter from the Elder she would rip it up and cast it into her fire. Stupid man. Of course, it was not from him. The letter was addressed to her, her full name, Rosin Magnolia of the Hollow, and signed off by Eryn Drastwen.

Her mother. Though, she did not sign off as your mother, love from your mother, love mother, no, none of that. Her full name, Eryn Drastwen of the Nook.
She was requesting that Rosin come and visit her and her father. The word she had used was actually 'speak with', not visit. Rosin was not the type of person to visit others.
Naturally she had ignored it. And naturally the Elder had forced her to go. It was perhaps the only thing in the world he could order her to do— simply because if her parents lost responsibility over her, that would mean he, Katteken, would be able to assign her to a squadron until she was old enough to choose for herself.
She would be damned before she was forced into one of those ridiculous groups.

The journey as a whole wasn't unbearable. Certainly unpleasant— the wind nipped at her cheeks until they were red raw, iced the tips of her wings to numbness. But it took no more than half an hour of flying to get her to her parents' home tribe. And it had been nice to stretch her wings.
The meeting itself was pure business. She arrived, walked with her head down through the woven houses, until she came to the door of the house that had been her home for no more than seven years. It was only slightly familiar to her now. Like an echo in her mind. Certainly not welcoming.

Her mother opened the door. She had not changed much. Her skin was still the same dark brown as Rosin's, her eyes the same hazel colour that Rosin remembered, though her hair had grown slightly. She ushered her inside without so much as a hello. That's the way things were though, parenting was a job to them. Rosin knew what she had always known when she sat herself in front of the two adults— she did not have a good relationship with her parents, and she never would. In fact, it was impossible to call the few sentences that passed between the three of them each year a 'relationship' at all.  Purely business, she thought again.