The day we arrived in Emden it was the brightest day I had ever seen.
I stepped out of the carriage and could not see the seas waters past what was on the port. Countless ships were there, but the grandest and most beautiful stood before our home.
"My god." Edsel whispered as he weakly stepped out and looked up at her. His head fell back completely to see her height in it's full glory. "She is like a-"
"Like a cloud, like a cloud in the skies of the waters." I whispered, papa had named her the cloud in Dutch. The Wolk, the tradesman Maximilian Handelaars ship. She had carried more trade to our city that any other ship, and she was the eldest. Her crown had been in silence for too long, and as I stood before her I would place it back upon her sails. She would return to being the queen.
Our home was empty, and I had discovered that the renter had not sold it off for papa had paid it off. In his will, the home and the ship belonged to mama and then to me. Mama was not there, and so I stepped into the dusty empty home. It's walls were falling down, and animal's traces were everywhere. It would take us weeks to return her to a somewhat home likeness. But we were determined to do so before anything else.
Omer had rented a shop next to the bakery of Maren, it was small and under her control but it was a good start for him. Though the eyes of Maren peered at him in other ways, Omer kept his eyes steady and quiet away from her. Paul had sent me another letter a few days afterward that bought an unnamable joy to my heart. I read it aloud to Edsel who stood beside me on the deck of the Wolk.
You have not been forgotten Bryony, if not it be the opposite. You will soon see those you have missed so much, and meet a new family member; Maximiliane. A little girl with a smile as big as your father, and a will like her eldest sister.
The cold months are coming so we may take a little longer but do not lose any of your hope. I pray for your well being as they do for you.
Paul
"The thought of what they were doing in Braunschweig." Edsel asked me as he looked at me. His face was full again, though his cheeks kept their own shadows and his face's bones were sharp and high. He had allowed his hair to grow, and he held it back in a knot. He looked alive, but the fear lingered behind me of how rapidly it could seize him again. If he walked for far too long he needed to halt and sit. He would get dizzy, and he would have constant aches. Every time I heard him groan or complain from then on became an overcoming dread. I saw him so near to death, I would not bare to see it again.
"We have no family," I whispered knowing my grandparents were both dead and had left nothing but a small inheritance for all of us. Papa knew it would be as such, and was thankful for we would not have so much we believed we would never lift a finger in our lives. We spent it in no less than a month on sweets and lost necklaces', but it was no bother to us. We had mama and papa and needed no more. "I could not know."
"Then may you answer a question I have for you Bryony?" He asked me as he turned away from the watery view to look down at me. I kept my eyes at the sea, knowing that his question was one I was to expect no sooner than later. "What occurred between you and Lord Faerber?"
"You had once spoken to me of how the most beautiful of flowers are at times the most poisonous?" It seemed the only way to answer him was with the warning he had given me, a warning I had ignored and fought against. "If I had come any more closer to that flower Edsel, I do not know what my fate would be. Yet it is not a bruise of a strike from a hand, but the mind of that man that has me here. That when I think of what has occurred my body trembles. For I was wished fates that I have never heard of, he wrote of his desires to end me and watch me rot into nothing. For my pain and ending to bring him his peace of mind again."
