WARNING: SPOILERS!!! ~A Watty's 2019 Submission!

Saved for A Sister's Quest

Gwendolyn took a deep breath before she knocked on her father's bedroom door. "Dad? Can we talk?" Alexander appeared at the door, smiling at her.

"Of course, sweetie! Come on in!" She walked in and sat on the bed, him going over to his desk chair and sitting opposite of her. "What's on your mind?" SHe took another deep breath.

"What do you know about Great Aunt Hova?" Alexander's face clouded with worry, and his eyebrows furrowed.

"Hova? What would you want to know about her?" his tone indicated to Gwendolyn that something Hova did definitely affected him, and it wasn't in a positive way.

"I want to know about her so I can find out where she went. Maybe that'll help Grandpa feel better." Alexander ran his fingers through his hair, a little worried.

"I don't know, Gwendolyn. I mean, Grandpa and Hova had quite the falling out. I doubt her presence will help anyone, much less him." She sat up taller, her mind racing, but she'd have to tread carefully with this one. She didn't want her dad to send her away for asking the wrong thing.

"Do you know what happened?" She asked, and he shook his head.

"Well, no one knows what happened when she left, Gwendolyn." He explained. "No one but Grandpa. But I have a theory it had something to do with magic, especially after Dad try to ban it again."

"Grandpa tried to ban magic again?" Gwendolyn asked, her eyes wide.

"He succeeded." Alexander admitted. "It was part of why I left Daventry. Grandpa told me that because of Mananan and the possibility of him coming back, he didn't want anyone doing magic anymore. I told him how I felt about it, then soon after, I met your mother and we left for her kingdom. "

"And you didn't see Great Aunt Hova after that at all?" Alexander nodded.

"She and I never spoke again. I was... almost furious with her when she left." He stared at the floor, as if he had forgotten why he was speaking about this. "She taught me almost everything I know, and she made me feel welcomed into Daventry in a way no one else could. I felt alone again once she had left. Of course by then I had grown used to the family, and I was more accustomed to the way they lived, but it still felt like she was the only one who really understood."

"Why do you think that was?" Gwendolyn asked, tilting her head, and Alexander shrugged, pushing his hair back.

"I guess it was because she was different like me. Maybe not as drastically as I had been, but she understood what it felt like to be the outsider. Your grandpa had everything. He was king, he had a wife, a family, adventures, anything he could have ever wanted out of life. She wasn't of much importance in the kingdom's eyes. She was a simple mage, an odd one who used the dangerous magic. She had once found love, but it hadn't lasted very long. Dad was also the cause of that, since he had dragged her beau along for the ride on finding my mother and he hadn't quite found the adventure as enticing." Gwendolyn took mental note of that. Who knew if that information could come in handy?  "So, when I came back and needed help adjusting, she was able to help me, and she still let me do the things I enjoyed doing my way. It was the perfect situation for me. It irritated your grandpa a whole lot, but he was happy that  I was able to adjust." Alexander had a smile on his face now, and Gwendolyn couldn't help but smile as well. Her dad was actually happy thinking about the old times with Hova.

"It sounds like she was pretty great." she told him, taking his hand as he nodded, before looking down at his lap and letting out a sigh.

"It was. It just hurt so bad when she left." He told her. "Your grandma had assured us that we were not the cause of her leaving. I don't know what Rosella was thinking, but I wasn't dumb enough to think that. I knew we weren't the reason. Your grandpa had been the one to come home looking like a war had just begun. And she wouldn't have come back to see you if it was my fault."

"She came back?" Gwendolyn jumped up at that, startling Alexander, who sighed and rubbed his forehead.

"Why did I say that?" He grumbled, but nodded. "Yes, she came back."

"What did she tell you? How long did she stay?" Gwendolyn could hardly hold in her excitement.

"She didn't come back to Daventry to see me, Gwendolyn." He explained. "She went to our kingdom to see you. I wasn't supposed to know she had shown up." Gwendolyn tilted her head.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Well, I told you that you had come early." Alexander started. "And of course, no one had come up from Daventry yet to meet you. And since you spent most of your time sleeping, your mom and I left you in your room to sleep in silence. You slept with us at night, and we had knights patrolling the halls to listen out for you." Gwendolyn shuddered a little at the thought of a bunch of knights listening to her as she slept as a baby. "Well, we had had a dinner date, your mother and I, and we came home late, so you had been sleeping in your room for a long time. When I went to check on you, I could hear someone singing. I assumed that maybe one of the knights were in there with you, and decided to go in quietly. But, when I opened the door, it wasn't a knight."

"Was it... Hova?" Gwendolyn asked, clasping her hands together and looking down at her arms, as if trying to picture Hova's arms wrapped around them, holding her close and singing to her to keep her asleep.

"It was in fact Hova." He told her. "She held you as though you were her own child. You weren't fussing at all, you were even cooing. Even I could see that you liked her, and that she loved you so much.
"She held you close, and when the song ended, she spoke to you."

"She did?" Gwendolyn wracked her brain, trying to remember this moment, but of course, she had no recollection of that day.

"She was telling you how she loved you, and how she promised that even if she was far away, she would still be there to guide you on your next adventure." Alexander told her, brushing his beard with his fingers, his eyes a little glossy as he fought back tears. "She said how she wished she could see everyone again, but it would hurt too much." He suddenly clenched his fist. "Little does she know how much it hurt the rest of us when she left." Gwendolyn stood up at that, thinking it was best that she gave her dad some time.

"Thanks, Dad." She said softly, and he crouched down to her level, hugging her as tight as he could.

"Please be careful, sweetie. I don't want all of this Hova nonsense to go to your head. She's not someone that I want you to be like." Gwendolyn nodded, and walked away, wondering how she could convince her grandfather to tell her who Hova's beau was.