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It was so... empty in this house.
Jenna shook off the thought. It had been three years. She was used to it by now.
They wouldn't have wanted her to keep mourning. That was what everyone else in Vale said. They would have wanted her to move on. And she'd tried. ...the Wise One knew, she had tried.
It was just the little things. The flowers her mother had liked were blooming at this time of year. The traders had visited town recently, and her father should have been there to greet them, offering his finest wares. Isaac and Garet were growing into fine young men (Isaac in particular), and it was so easy to envision Felix standing alongside them, tall and serious, always the voice of reason, always ready to be dragged along on some wild new escapade despite himself...
That was the blessing and curse of no one ever having found the bodies. She'd never had to face the raw brutality of seeing her family's corpses. When she was younger, she would deny they were dead, and go to sleep each night praying that they would turn out to be alive... that she would wake up the next morning to find Felix sheepishly standing at her door, saying that some kindly travelers had pulled him and their parents from the river and nursed them back to health, and this long nightmare would be over... but she was almost a grown woman now. She'd given up on that dream a long time ago. Her family was nothing more than an anonymous pile of bones at the bottom of a faraway riverbed, and she was alone.
Jenna had accepted that. ...once, she had wondered at the cruel fate that had taken her family and left her behind, but she wasn't a little girl any more. She was too old for tears.
It was fine. Really, it was. She still had her grandparents and her aunt. There was much for which she ought to be grateful. She needed to live in the present, not in the past.
The world outside was full of sunshine this morning. She was young, healthy, and an Adept of modest talent. Today, she and her friends would even be going to Mt. Aleph with Master Kraden. If she looked for it, she could find more than enough reasons to hold up her head high and smile.
...even if a part of her still wished Felix could have been there too.