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“I’ll be right back.”
The lie burns at the back of her throat but she forces it down. Seconds, minutes – they meld together and she cannot differentiate. The jagged earth spins beneath her racing feet and the sky and wind warp around her. There is no up, down, sideways or behind, only forward and she cannot afford to stop now.
The metronome of her rising heartbeat pushes her forward and urges her to keep running past shivering branches and over rugged terrain. Her mind is a buzzing hive of thoughts – none of which are discernable but they all come back to one point: papa, papa, papa, papa…
She murmurs this name like a silent prayer.
She imagines strong arms pulling her into a tight, long sought-after embrace and of raven locks and onyx eyes mirroring her own and she would think, yes, yes, yes, she is her father’s daughter. She dreams of shared tears and laughter pent up from time unspent, and a hug so tight she’d think he’d never let go – and she wishes he never will; never again.
Unshed tears hang on the tip of her eyelashes and she does not realize when her eyes whir to life; a single newborn tomoe bobbing in a sea of red.
Her footsteps are slow and careful as she enters the rendezvous tower and it isn’t until she hears the nearby flapping of cloth and approaching footsteps that she turns around to see him.
She cannot fathom what is standing before her. It is the living image of her father that she had yearned to see in every fiery sunrise, which plagued her throughout the day and drenched her pillow in tears at night. He stands before her - cool and aloof - and she sees the heirlooms she had inherited from him and a sense of pride wells from deep within her.
“Well done finding out about this place…”
What she thinks is praise fills her with more joy than she could’ve imagined.
“Papa…”
“Are you another one of his comrades?”
There is the sharp glint of pointed metal and the slate of her mind is blank – jarred by the drastic chasm between dream and reality.
Papa, papa, papa, papa…
She is trembling and her body is numb from the shock of serpentine electricity coursing through her nerves. Something white-hot and hateful licks through her veins and she feels it burn in the lids of her eyes in scalding tears and smoldering embers.
She is on fire; raging tendrils of love, hate, and anger eating away at her from the inside out. She is corroding. She is disappearing. The agony twists and churns within her until she is ash and her hollow bones rattle with the curse of her ancestors.
Her eyes are his eyes; three spinning tomes burning against the light and swimming through fast currents of darkness.
She is her father’s daughter and it does not hurt – she does not even realize – when she steps into the raging inferno.