Merete listened carefully as Diamant spoke, her ears twitching forwards at his words, as if missing one might leave an important piece of the puzzle missing from her mind. When she had set out to visit her homeland she had expected a mild day of reminiscing before moving on with her new life, not this strange encounter fraught with uncomfortable revelations. While Diamant’s family tree was being twisted around and rearranged, Merete’s own was sprouting new branches, while others withered and died. So her father was dead. Inka too. Merete lowered her gaze, a knot winding its way into the pit of her stomach. The fates were cruel indeed, she agreed, although she did not respond out loud. Het Vuur was dead. It was something she knew was coming, of course – no one lived forever – but to imagine her father, the strong giant who had ruled this land for so many years, now nothing but bones… It seemed an impossibility. Even the strongest fighters succumbed to the course of nature eventually, she supposed. It was the one enemy they could not beat or intimidate. Merete was still pondering this as Diamant turned his attention to the question of his mother, and though she was listening the words sounded dull and far away, her thoughts elsewhere. Until she heard that name. Sterre. Merete’s eyes snapped up, back to Diamant’s face, wide with surprise. Het Vuur could have sired a thousand children for all Merete knew, but her mother was no broodmare who birthed a new babe every spring – hell, she knew herself and Rook had been no carefully planned or excitedly awaited delivery. She didn’t know how old Diamant was, but he was clearly young, definitely less than half her own age. If he was Sterre’s, she must have been ancient when she had him – some kind of twisted miracle. Merete didn’t want to believe it, or even know if she should, but when she looked at that star on his forehead and the fire in his eyes, she couldn’t help but think that the resemblance was not insignificant. Besides, if there was only one mare by Het Vuur’s side in his old age, Merete would have bet her life on that woman’s identity. It seemed pointless to deny it, no matter how much simpler it might have been. So her mother was dead too. Somehow that seemed an even greater impossibility than her father’s death. She could not imagine it, her mother helpless and defeated and… gone. Somehow Merete had never really considered it. She almost thought Sterre might have told the reaper himself to fuck off and come back another time when she wasn’t so busy. It was the most fallible thing Sterre had ever done: dying. Merete had not seen her parents for many years now, and they had not been particularly close since she was a child, if ever in the normal sense of the word, and thus their deaths did not reduce her to tears or send her reeling physically. It would only have disappointed Sterre anyway if it had, she thought absently. The pain in her heart and the grief turning in her stomach, was disguised well enough, and the shock of Diamant’s revelations distracted her plenty. She tried her best to focus her troubled thoughts, and return her attention to him… to her brother. “Sterre was my mother,” she said simply, though to Merete the words sounded like someone else was saying them. Her eyes rested on the white on his forehead, peeking through this forelock. So his eyes were Het Vuur’s, and that… “That was hers.” For the first time, she sounded almost sad. She looked away again. “I guess that makes you my brother.” Of everyone she had thought she might meet on these islands, a new brother was not one of them. The fates were cruel indeed. |