Zibrija, the desert flower, the nickname Niraj had placed on his beloved daughter two decades ago.
Catti-brie held her arms out wider and shrugged, the sleeves of her magical garment dropping loosely above her elbow, revealing her spellscars. He sprinted at Catti-brie and crushed her in such a hug it lifted her from the ground and sent them both a few steps back the way Catti-brie had come.
“Zibrija, my child!” he said, his voice thick with emotion, his cherubic brown cheeks already wet with tears. “Zibrija!”
“Father,” she replied, and she hugged him back just as tightly. She loved this man, her father, with all her heart.
“Oh, the tales I have to tell you,” she whispered in his ear. She could tell he wanted to respond, but didn’t dare try to talk for fear that his voice would issue only a happy wail. He hugged her all the closer.
“Tell me that my mother is well,” Catti-brie whispered, and Niraj squeezed tighter and nodded emphatically.
Finally the brown-skinned man took a deep breath and steadied himself, and managed to push Catti-brie back to arms’ length.
“My Ruqiah,” he whispered, using the name she had been given at her second birth. “We never surrendered hope that we would see you again, but still … I cannot tell you how my heart wants to push right out of my chest!”
“You need not tell me,” Catti-brie replied. “I know.”
Niraj pulled her in close for another lengthy, tight hug.
“My mother,” Catti-brie whispered after a few moments, and the man nodded again and moved back, turning to the side and never letting go of her hand as he led her away.
Many eyes turned upon them as they entered the tent encampment of the Desai tribe, and many whispers erupted in their wake. Catti-brie resisted the temptation to cast a spell to heighten her hearing. She heard her name, Ruqiah, several times. The tribe remembered her.
“Whatever happened to that boy?” she asked Niraj. “The one who threw me into the mud?”
“Tahnood,” Niraj said solemnly, his tone alerting her. He turned to meet her concerned stare as he finished, “He did not survive the war.”
Catti-brie’s regret washed away almost immediately on deeper concerns as she registered the last word.
“The war?” she echoed.
“The Netherese,” Niraj explained. “The plains were afire with battle for many months. The crows of our lands are fatter now.”
He turned to her and gave a sly wink. “Not as thick as the crow who spied upon me at the sheep pen, though.”
Catti-brie managed a smile, but her heart was heavy. “Did you fight?”
“We all fought.”
The woman didn’t know what to say, and settled on, “I am sorry, Father. I should have returned to you.”
“My greatest joy in that dark time is that you were not here. Would that Kavi, too, had found another home for those dark years.”
“Not with me,” Catti-brie remarked. “I assure you my own road was no brighter.” She stopped the march and tugged Niraj’s hand to force him to stop, too, and to look at her. “I have so much to tell you. I don’t know if you’ll enjoy my tale or not, but it is one I must share honestly.”
“You are alive and seem well.”
She smiled and nodded.
“Then no tale you tell me can wound me, my little Zubrija.”
When they entered the family tent, Catti-brie had to leap across the floor to catch Kavita, who gasped and collapsed in joy at the sight of her.
Catti-brie gladly buried her face in Kavita’s thick black hair, and she drank in the smell of the woman, the smell of her childhood.
“You haven’t aged,” Catti-brie whispered in the woman’s ear.
Kavita kissed her on the cheek.
“Nayan keeps her young,” Niraj said, and when Catti-brie looked back at him, he nodded his chin toward the far end of the room.
Catti-brie’s gaze locked on the small bed, and her jaw drooped open.
“Nayan?” she whispered, pulling back from Kavita. She looked to her mother, who smiled and nodded then motioned for her to go and see.
Catti-brie quietly moved across the room. She saw a bit of movement first, under some blankets, and she paused, overwhelmed by the thought that she had a brother-overwhelmed and not sure how to even consider this child. Was he really her brother? Similarly, were Niraj and Kavita actually her parents? She had come back to the world fully conscious of her previous life, a life where she had been born to other parents, though she had barely known, and remembered nothing of, her father, and had known her mother not at all.
Still, where did she fit here with this Desai family? She did not even consider herself Desai! Was Kavita no more than a carrier for the will of Mielikki?
These questions had followed Catti-brie since her earliest days in this strange second life.
The blankets moved and the little boy, Nayan, rolled over into sight, his head covered in thick black hair like Kavita, his mouth and jowls wide and expressive like Niraj.
And Catti-brie had her answer, to all of it. The explosion in her heart offered no room for doubt.
This was her baby brother. And these were her parents, her mother and her father, and that it was her second life mattered not at all.
She was home. This was her family, as much as Mithral Hall had been her home and Bruenor was forever her Da.
Whether she was Desai or not mattered not at all, no more than the fact that she wasn’t a dwarf-nay less, she decided, because she was human, just like this family, just like this tribe. The rest of it-skin color, hair color, homeland-was nonsense, fabricated by people who needed to pretend that they were somehow superior for such superficial reasons.
None of it mattered. This was her family, and she could only love them as such.
Nayan opened his dark eyes then. He looked right at her and his whole face smiled, his mouth all crooked and wide and with just a couple of tiny teeth showing.
Catti-brie, charmed, turned back to her parents, who stood together now, leaning on each other.
“May I?”
Kavita laughed. “I will be angry with you if you do not!”
Catti-brie scooped Nayan up in her arms, lifted him up in front of her eyes, and made giggling, nonsensical noises. She had no idea why she might be doing that, but she surely was, and as Nayan thoroughly enjoyed it and laughed aloud, she didn’t stop for a long while, until her arms got tired and she brought the young mister in close on her hip.
“He’s beautiful,” she said, turning back to Niraj and Kavita. “He has just enough of both of you, the best features of both.”
“We are just glad he got Kavita’s hair,” the bald-headed Niraj laughed and winked.
“Tell me you are returned to us,” Kavita bade her. “The threat of Shade Enclave is no more. We are safe now, and so much happier will we be with our Ruqiah with us.”
The smile disappeared from Catti-brie’s face and she gave a resigned sigh. “Mother, Father …” she began, shaking her head. “I have so much to tell you, so much I can tell you now. I left you confused.”
“Speaking of the goddess Mielikki and spouting prophecy about the return of Anauroch,” said Niraj.
“You are a chosen, so you claimed,” Kavita added.
“You remember.”
“Remember?” Kavita echoed incredulously, and she rushed across the floor. “Every heartbeat, I remember,” she said, and she seemed as if she was about to wail. “It was the day I lost my baby girl.” Her voice began to crack. “It has haunted my dreams for twenty years.”
“We always hoped you would come back to us,” Niraj added, moving beside Kavita and taking her arm.
“Let us sit,” Catti-brie bade them. “And I will tell you everything. All of it. And you must believe me, and you must understand that none of it changes the way I feel about you, the love I know here from you. That love sustains me. I need you now, both of you.”
On her hip, Nayan gurgled a spit-filled response.
“And you, too!” Catti-brie said with a laugh. She jostled Nayan, and that was all it took to get him laughing yet again.