Caesaria

IIXX

It had been a week since Lucy had awoken. She was mostly bedridden, although she was able to travel about the house with help. Her broken leg had done little to slow her, although her headache more than picked up the slack. But she was, indeed, regaining her strength. A couple more weeks, and Lucy would've been roaming on her own again, headache or no. She was far too stubborn to listen to the doctor, let alone her mother's pleas to rest.

Amelia knew that time was running out.

Carter was spending most of his days in the village, but he always came home early to see Lucy. Jackson would visit when Amelia wasn't there, much to her grief. She'd tried to speak to him, but every time, he ignored her. Every visit Jackson and Lucy shared, Amelia was terrified he would tell her about what she'd said, but Lucy never seemed the wiser. Or, she was very good at hiding it. She was like him in that way. Her iron expression was her greatest defense.

But her daughter had one weakness, a weakness the man who had fathered her never possessed; her heart.

On the morning Amelia would spring into action, she was sitting with her daughter in the reading room. It faced the eastern wood, high enough upon the hill to overlook the trees and face the brilliant sunrise. Musty old books from the world before lined the walls in mismatched shelves, concealing the peeling wallpaper and stained, chipping paint. The smell was of old, pulpy paper, a smell Amelia would recall as one of the few pleasant things about her old world. As far as Lucy knew, that old world was Rom, a place deep in the flooded ruins of Ontarom.

The sun bled through the murky old windows, the glass panes a milky white. Dust particles floated before the rays, embracing the already cozy pair of mother and daughter as they sat together on the old loveseat. The embers of the fireplace flickered dully.

"When will the man go on trial, mother?" Lucy said, placing her own book face-down on her lap.

Amelia had sank so deeply into her story, she'd needed her daughter to repeat herself. "Why wonder about that?"

"He saved my life."

"Sweetheart, Valerie saved your life. Not him."

"That's not what Val said."

Amelia cast her daughter a stern look, and she shot it right back. Lucy was beautiful, incredibly so, with milk-white skin and tresses of curly black hair. Her eyes were a dark mossy green, thickly lashed and wide in gaze. Her cheeks, her jaw, her chin, all were great and strong features. As messy and unkempt as she looked, garbed in her suede shift, she was still a sight. Her tattoos, a thing Amelia would never be allowed herself, snaked down her powerful right leg, in between her toes. They flowed up her right side, down her muscled arm, and up her proud neck. Even when she screwed up her face like she'd smelt something horrible, she still looked striking.

There was a reason the boys had come knocking since they'd heard she'd awoken. Bearing gifts and transparent well-wishes for the chief. Necklaces, flowers, dresses, hides, even weapons. Lucy hadn't been phased by any of it, of course; to the children, went the necklaces. To the young Clan-maidens, went the dresses. To the warriors, went the hides and furs, and to the young boys on the training grounds, went the weapons. She would've made a good Chief herself, or a Chief's wife.

"Don't make faces like that, you'll get wrinkles."

"Mother..."

"One day, you'll need a husband, and --"

"-- mother, don't change the subject. I want to know when daddy plans to put this man on trial."

"I don't know. You shouldn't concern yourself."