Loyalty

Chap 2.

When I opened the door of my house at the end of the lane I threw my cloak and apron off to the side as I breathed a sigh of relief. My father wasn't home. I was also a teeny bit nervous about that because he could have gone off and hurt his head with his stupidity.

My father was a drunkard and when he came home he was often very hard to handle. My father was a burlier man with ginger tinted brown hair. You could mistake him for a mountain if you had bad vision.  My father was the happy type of drunk. Not the mean abusive type like my stepfather was. That was why mum had died.

I grabbed my sack of vegetables and tossed the market day game in there. As I placed my herbs onto their drying rack I heard a knock on the door.

I headed to the door and stoping to toss the bag on the floor by our cloaks. When I opened the door I saw a Dralkien uniform clad guard tugging at the back of my fathers shirt. His drunk influenced flushed face peering from behind brown locks. A barely recognisable "'Ello Deary." parted from his lips.

The guard shook his head. "Is this your father girl? One more night like tonight and he'll be banned from the tavern."

"Thank you sir." I took my father and brought him inside. Tossing him onto his bed and stripping his shoes and socks off and throwing them on the floor. After so, I made him some herbs to sober him up.

I picked up my needle and thread to begin sewing up socks of ours. I looked up as the sun began to beam off my honey-colored hair. I thought about losing my mother. They say you gain something when you suffer a loss.

What did I gain? 'Adventure?' I peered back to my father. 'No, he's always been like this.'

Xx

The night was particulary rough, and I could hardly sleep on the dry cracked wood floors of our house. The floors were a sandy grain type of wood, the sort that you would find in an old house or something. When I headed off to dream land I dreamed of the strangest thing. My mom.

Now, I'm not one of those sappy people who go on and on about their lost family members because I just knew it would make people feel worse. No one had been there to save my mom and they all knew he was abusing her.

I dreamed of my mom's sunshiney voice and her nice smell. An embodiement of what was good with the world. Her hair had been the color of a raven and her skin as pale as the moon. She was a beautiful person, and I loved her to bits and peices. I was only eleven when she died. It had been nine years since I had seen her last. Shame, but the man who had abused her was named Richard.

I beat him to a bloody pulp with the help of my father, and we never got over it.

The queen couldn't press charges against us because of the greivance policy of the kingdom.

It had been removed aftrer her death.