[Fic] [Round 17] The Decision
When he first saw her he thought she was both the prettiest and the most pitiful sight he’d ever seen. The prettiest, with stunning emerald eyes to match her hair, baby soft skin and a delicate little mouth. The most pitiful, because her hair was tangled, her skin smeared with dirt and great tears trembled in her eyes.
A plague had wiped out most of her village. The healers had managed to stop the infection from spreading, but not before many died. Her parents had been among the victims, minor lordlings scarcely richer than the common people they supposedly ruled. He had come to see what needed to be done for the survivors, who had lost first their family to the plague and then their meagre possessions to the fires built to purify the contamination. For the most part they sat, silent and unblinking in a profound state of shock that would likely never leave for the rest of their lives.
She was different.
Scarcely out of nappies, that little girl with her wild hair, lonely and angry. He’d been so moved by her tears that he had picked her up to comfort her. She had responded to this kindness by sinking her sharp little milk teeth into his arm. A bucket of freezing water was needed to make her let go.
The resulting wail was ear splitting. He seriously considered giving her back to the healers and letting them deal with her but when huge sobs began to rack her little body, he was astonished to find himself feeling guilty, as though she were the wronged party, not him. So he fetched a towel and set her on his knee, dried her hair and sang fragments of lullabies from the childhood he could barely remember. When he set her down and stood up again, she had seized handfuls of his trousers and gripped very tightly. He picked her up again, held her in his arms and carried her with him for the rest of the day.
Strictly speaking, she adopted him and not the other way around. He only signed the papers. The decision was hers.
A plague had wiped out most of her village. The healers had managed to stop the infection from spreading, but not before many died. Her parents had been among the victims, minor lordlings scarcely richer than the common people they supposedly ruled. He had come to see what needed to be done for the survivors, who had lost first their family to the plague and then their meagre possessions to the fires built to purify the contamination. For the most part they sat, silent and unblinking in a profound state of shock that would likely never leave for the rest of their lives.
She was different.
Scarcely out of nappies, that little girl with her wild hair, lonely and angry. He’d been so moved by her tears that he had picked her up to comfort her. She had responded to this kindness by sinking her sharp little milk teeth into his arm. A bucket of freezing water was needed to make her let go.
The resulting wail was ear splitting. He seriously considered giving her back to the healers and letting them deal with her but when huge sobs began to rack her little body, he was astonished to find himself feeling guilty, as though she were the wronged party, not him. So he fetched a towel and set her on his knee, dried her hair and sang fragments of lullabies from the childhood he could barely remember. When he set her down and stood up again, she had seized handfuls of his trousers and gripped very tightly. He picked her up again, held her in his arms and carried her with him for the rest of the day.
Strictly speaking, she adopted him and not the other way around. He only signed the papers. The decision was hers.