Cervato - Girl On Fire (Part 1 of Cervato's Saga)

The Past - Unfair

"Is it so wrong of us to just spend our days dreaming, Cervato?"

The girl reclined in the back of the empty wagon, arms crossed behind her head as she grimaced to herself. The pretty blue dress was wrinkled along the skirt, drawn up past scraped knees, scrawny legs crossed at the ankle. Unruly messy tangles of raven hair were forced back into a long braid that hung between her shoulder blades, now ruined willfully in her tantrum of defiance against her father and mother.

Eric Lindser, the Krytan boy who was the son of her mother's favorite maid at the Caballero Winery and Vineyard, sat upon the driver's seat, tucking the leather reins beneath crossed arms as he kept his back to the stowaway on his wagon. The boy was as close a friend as anyone could be to the Caballero's daughter. They barely spoke to each other due to the fact that it was not permitted for Cervato to be running about the stables anymore now that she had debuted into society. Her mother was grooming her to take over the family business, while her father began to prepare for future alliances with lesser noble families to take on the merchant's only daughter. An investment for the future. That'd she'd be grateful for and live a comfortable life. At least that is what they informed her.

Eric was playing with a pocketknife while he waited for a reply. The seventeen year old's dark brown locks shifted with the wind, tucked into a small tail at the nape of his neck with a small red ribbon. A forest green gaze kept constant vigil over the oxen that were prepared to leave the Winery at a moment's notice by their driver. Eventually, he glanced over his shoulder back down to the stubborn sixteen year old who was pouting in the back of the wooden cart that was meant to go and pick up some more barrels for the business.

"Cervato, you know I can't...." Eric's voice was a little weak.

"Don't go, please...just for a little while longer. I don't want to see them when they get here." The girl spoke in a quiet tone. Referring to the eventual arrival of her betrothed's family. She'd never met their son, but apparently he was a good enough man, or so her parents had assured her.

"He might make you happier than anything, you never know. You could learn to like him, yeah? Or at least get along."

"If I can't even have a say in my future, I'd rather there not even be one." She stubbornly stated openly.

"Don't talk like that. You know your parents love you. The staff likes you. I...tolerate you." He grinned.

"I want to fall in love. I don't want to be forced into loving someone. Or marrying them. Why doesn't he see that?"

"I think your father just is looking out for his little girl..."

"And take away my dream, my life, everything I want...it's not worth it."

Eric sighed.

"I know...."