He was, she thinks, at Asterion’s words. Her father. He had been kind, intelligent, hard working. Strong. Even when her mother had left them he'd been strong. They had only ever had each other, but they were happy. He had only ever done his best to teach her and love her. It was his love that made her who she is today, his love that reminds her to be open and understanding and warm and oh, though the sting of having lost him never seems to fully go away she can remember him and smile and laugh, like she knows he would want her to do.
But this new loss, of everything he'd made and filled their home with, it makes the pain stronger. It makes her miss him more than ever, for a home without any of his left behind treasures could not be a home at all. Fiona listens to Asterion speak but she is not completely there, staring down at the blank pages in front of her with poorly scrawled words drifting across them. She had never missed her mother. All she remembers of the woman is her displeasure at Fiona being unable to speak, that that is what made her left. Oh, what would it have been, to be the perfect child her mother wanted?
She has never hated her inability to speak until these recent events. Is that her mother's influence finally rearing its head? Making her feel weak, useless. Helpless.
At some point Fiona realizes Asterion has finished talking, silence having fallen over them again. She blinks a few times, her cheeks warming in sheepishness. Careless of her, to be so involved in her own thoughts and sorrows that she does not pay attention to the ones who mean so much to her. She frowns, then, and puts her pen once more to paper. She draws out more words, strangled and unsteady. Everything, the words say, and what use had it been, then. It had not saved her home, had not protected her. Life, plants, animals, she continues, it is what made me interested in healing. Plants can be used for so many wonderful things.
They can soothe coughs, prevent infection, ease fevers, aches, pains. They can help with nausea, improve your immune system, calm a frantic mind and heart. But they cannot put out a fire, they cannot repair a broken heart nor return what has been lost. Fiona is filled with sorrowful bitterness, because she has spent her whole life learning and yet here she lays, smoke stained and tearful, without a place to lay her head and call her own. Without her years of drawings, sketches, memories. It is an emptiness inside her, acute and growing. She doesn't realize she's writing until the words are formed on the page, What will I do?
@Asterion
