There’s something soft and snoring beside me, and I hear Momma’s voice. She’s singing one of the many hymns I loved as a child.

I smile, wondering if she’s baking her famous breakfast. She always likes to sing while she bakes.

I go to stretch, but my arm catches and hurts something awful. One of my legs doesn't want to move and my ribs feel like they're being stabbed every time I breathe.

I suck in another breath, wondering if I fell off Ran and perhaps this is the reason I can’t seem to remember why I feel like a Bamshee ran over me.

I slowly peel back gritty eyelids. When they’re fully open, it’s not home I see. I don’t see my father's sword hanging on the wall above the fireplace across from me.

No. I see silken drapes set before a large set of doors that lead to a balcony. I see a large chandelier above my head, and the bed I’m sleeping in has pure white, bouncy covers.

And I'm in a silken white nightgown that's soft as a cottony cloud. Plus, there are so many bandages I look like a mummy.

The pain comes back with the memories, and I close my eyes, wishing to forget again. What I wouldn’t give to be back in my own home and my own bumpy mattress from before this all began.

Momma’s singing stops and she wipes a tear from the corner of my eye. Then she kisses my forehead.

“I knew you’d come for us, sweetheart. You’ve always been the bravest of us all.” Her voice is raw with tender emotion; with love I don’t deserve.

I turn my head away from her touch, instead of basking in it as I wish I could. Perhaps if I tell her what I know she’s thinking first... it won’t hurt so bad when she finally blames me. “It’s my fault, Momma. It’s my fault you were taken.” By granny, if my voice for once would just stay even and not end on a choked sob, I could die happy.

I hear her sit back in her chair. “Look at me,” she whispers. “Look. At. Me,” she says in her mom voice. I look at her. The tender and understanding love in her soft eyes, so like my own, just about breaks me. “Sweetie, you cannot take the blame of every bad thing that happens to those you love upon this earth. Bad things happen because bad folk live and breathe the same air we do. But do their choices make you a bad person just by breathing the same air? Does someone else’s sin magically become your own once it happens to your loved ones?” She softens her words with a slight smile. “You are not to blame for what happened. You are only to be commended for not giving up.” She places a hand on my cheek. “For going above and beyond and almost killing yourself to save us. I love you, Aria. And I am so proud.”

Did you learn nothing from releasing those boxes, two-legs? You're as thick skinned as a Bamshee. She rolls over on the bed with a groan, then curls up with her back to me.

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Thanks, Ran. So helpful.

I try.

Momma cradles my cheek in her hand and I lean into her touch with a broken laugh. “I was so scared you’d blame me—“

“Like you blame yourself? No, sweetie, I know your heart too well for that.” She stands, tucking me in. “I’ve known you the last twenty-three years, young lady, and for once I truly believe what your father said of you.” Her eyes grow misty at the mention of Papa.

“What?” I whisper.

“He said you’d be one heck of a swordsmaster and an even better friend. But anyone who hurts someone you love would wish they were never born.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Despite having my looks, you always were your daddy’s child. You have his bravery, his strength, his loyalty, his foolhardiness. But most of all, you have his heart.” Tears trace down a face that looks so much like my own, but with wrinkles and frown lines that weren’t there a scant few months ago. When life was normal, when life wasn’t quite so... broken.

My eyes grow moist as I think of my fun-loving father who was always there for us, in any way we needed. Even when he was so tired he could hardly move from a day at the guard shack, he always took time to train me. He was the best father ever, and now... now I get the chance to mourn him properly, just as he deserves, instead of putting up my feelings and never addressing the pain he left behind.

But he also left his legacy. He left those who knew and loved him to carry on the things he stood for. I will always love him, but now it is time to let him go. He's home, where he belongs, and I will see him again someday. Until then, I have a world to save.

Momma gathers me in her arms, and we just hold each other in the midst of pain and sorrow, but also love and hopefully—eventually—healing.

I went from never knowing if I'd see her again to her holding me. Something unravels within me as I realize this is real. She's really back.

I burrow deeper into her embrace, smiling through my tears. This feels like home.

~~~

“I gotta get out, mom. Please,” I beg as a nurse comes to change the bandages. I've only been awake for a few hours, but this confinement to bed feels worse than the aches and pains all along my body.

The nurse gives me an indulgent grin and pats my head like some dog.

Ran’s lips part in a wolven grin and one ear tilts back as her tail slowly waves behind her. Does the two-legs not like being petted? Hmmm?

I don’t wanna hear it. You love being petted. I don’t.

She sits down on the bed and scratches behind her ear; the nurse shoots her a wary glance. There are times a scratch is good. Never a pet.

Momma gives me a look. “Until you are healed, young lady, there is no getting out of that bed.”

I groan.

The nurse puts a tea into my hands, and one sniff and my face pulls into a grimace.

"There now, little lady. Drink up. It has honey in it."

I take a sip, gagging through the smell. I don't know how Jill always took the bitter herb tea so graciously.

As Ran crawls closer to me on the bed and to the ankle that ended up sprained without my permission, the nurse's gaze turns from wary to a scowl.

She shakes her finger at my wolf. "Don't you hurt her worse, young lady," she says, wagging a finger at my bond.

Ran yawns... but hops down from the bed to curl up in a patch of sunshine.

Don’t know if it was just me, but I believe she’s gotten bigger. When she sleeps with me now, the whole bed sags.

I watch her curl up in the corner and start to purr-snore like some cat. She hates being compared to a cat, but she has a lot in common with one. Don’t tell her I said that, or she’ll get revenge.

My eyelids grow heavy due to the tea, and I allow the sweet peace of the oblivion to take me while Momma hums from the chair at my bedside.