Servitude: The Hydrangea Chapters

Chp 14: The Fugitive with Great Magic

With the secondary chamber a decent space for the two of them, Marlina would help pass items through the gap before Elek helped her get through it. He unrolled a sleeping mat and made a small fire to brew tea and cook a simple meal with vegetables from Englias. Marlina noticed that he also wanted the personal items of the first set of remains. Sitting on his sleeping mat, having one out for Marlina as a kindness for her to sit as well, she would patiently wait as he ate, feeling a little uncomfortable from her watching him so intently. Was it because she didn't have anything to do? Or was she that interested in knowing? It was hard for him to tell. Despite the hindrances, she had been quite helpful, she just needed detailed and specific instructions. As for holding up to his word, he was reluctant at first. Opening the package with the personal items, he would start to organize and catalog them as he spoke.

"When I was a child, my mother had left to earn her wages as an escort, but never came home."

"Was she an attendant to a noble? A guard?"

Elek sighed, dismayed with having to specify. "No, she'd be company for men. For pleasure."

Marlina's posture sank a little, deciding to be quiet for the moment to let him speak.

"With her gone, it left my brother and I to fend for ourselves for months, having to do whatever we could just to have our roof remain over our heads and some food in our bellies each day." Taking a moment from his rummaging and organizing the archeologist's things to look up at Marlina, he could see the sympathy in her eyes. His gaze returned to the items, he'd resume.

"After a while, a man came to our home and took me and my brother in. He told us we were his sons, and all I was told of my mother's fate was that she came out here, to the Everlasting Expanse, and never returned. By the time I was old enough to know that she wasn't coming back and must have died out here, I had learned over the years that my father wasn't the most honest of men. I wanted to find the truth, knowing our mother never would have just left us for no reason. So, knowing it wouldn't come from my father, I decided to find out for myself. I wanted to find her."

There was another pause while he would take a few sips of tea, keeping his gaze down. "My father gives funding to guilds like the Seekers of the Forgotten, so all I had to do was say that I had an interest in those fields, and he made it happen that I was taught whatever I wanted, as long as I did whatever he wanted. Knowing how to read bones would help me find and identify her if she had been reduced to bones. Especially since by the time I was properly taught, she would have been one if she was dead." By now, it showed that recalling these things was starting to weigh on him.

Marlina sitting, her posture showing her interest in the finer details of his life, had plenty of questions. But from a long day in the desert and with a sensitive subject that she wanted to ask, she wanted to know this above anything else, and sure it was the only question she would have answered before he may not wish to speak of anymore. "Did you ever find your mother?"

Some more sips of his tea, he would finish it and begin neatly putting away the items back into the package, but leaving two in particular out. The first was just a small pouch, a sound like marbles in the bag when shifted. The second was a small magnifying glass with carved symbols in the frame. Elek holds it up and inspects it, but still answers her question.

"Eventually, yes. Once I was ready to face the Everlasting Expanse, I hired Tessa to help guide me into the desert and accompany me while we searched for my mother's remains. We found them not too far from the Colonies border of the desert. Her bones told me that she didn't end up there on her own..." Though he stopped speaking like there was nothing else to be said, lowering the item in his hand and his gaze to the ground said otherwise. He was done talking about it.