She didn’t seem to be deterred by the warning and merely grinned in victory. “Thank you, Pappa!”
Damasc Timone sighed and smiled. “You’re welcome, my little dreamer.”
*****
Childhood speeds past in ways that few things in this universe can match, more so for a family that knows the pain of separation, and this rule was not lifted for Elan and her family as a seemingly endless march of scorching hot days and fearfully chilly nights came to pass. Elan grew up, as children were wont to do, gaining in size and stature with practically every passing day, as far as her proud, but confused, father could tell.
Damasc didn't know what to do with her, in fact. She was like nothing he knew, nothing he understood. He worried about her, in fact. He thought that she should do as a child would. Adulthood would come all too soon in the world they lived in, and the innocence of youth should never be wasted.
Elan, though, had ideas of her own in that regard.
Elanthielle dedicated her spare moments to learning what her father was willing to teach her, spending much of the next three years chasing his impossible dream, though the Dreaming continued to escape both father and daughter. And in those years, she grew up. Her height almost matched her mother’s then, her eyes coming closer and closer to those of her father in those inevitable times when they would quarrel.
Like her father, she spent many of the hottest days of the year seeking her dream while pushing her body’s limits of endurance with every passing moment.
“You try too hard, little dreamer,” he chastised her often, frowning at the red tone of her skin where the sun had baked it through even the dirt covering she always seemed to wear.
Elan smiled as she looked up to where her father was approaching her. “I am determined, Father.”
Damasc smiled, a little sadly though. He missed the old Pappa title as much as he missed the tiny little child who had fiercely defended her mother on that first night so long ago. She now stood even with his shoulders and showed every sign of continuing to grow out of control. “When I was in the city, before what happened...my master told me that dreams are like the mist... Don’t try to capture them, they’ll just slip through your fingers. You have to allow the dream, like the mist, to surround you. Only then can you control the dream, and use the mist.”
She sighed, frustrated. “It isn’t easy to wait for something you want so badly you can taste it, Father.”
“I know that, Ela,” he told her sadly, wondering how it was that he had infected her daughter with his own madness. “I know that.”
“What do you want that badly, Father?”
Damasc looked at his fifteen-year-old daughter, wondering at her determination for the thousandth time. “Justice. Revenge. I want the blood of my friends to stop screaming in my dreams, Elanthielle.”
She shivered. He never talked like this to her, not in the entire time he had been back. The words scared her, coming from him, but she had to know...to know what they meant, why he would say them. She had to know what things, both beautiful and terrible, had happened to make her father the man he was.
“Tell me, Father,” she said, reaching out and grabbing hold of his tunic, turning him back to face her.
He looked away for a moment, then looked back. For whatever reason, she wasn’t backing down from her goals as he thought she would. He expected to come home to a child and instead found a young woman waiting to be born. That hurt too, as much as the missing title of Pappa.
“Years ago...” he started slowly, taking a seat by the boulder, “I left you and your mother and went off to war.”
“Against the monsters.”
He nodded. “Yes. Against the monsters. They rule our world now.”
“I’ve never seen a monster,” Elanthielle said, brow furrowed in concentration and puzzlement. “Why?”
“We, your mother and I, chose to build our farm here because the monsters don’t like the desert,” he explained. “They have no place here to hide from the sun...and even those who can walk in it have no love of the sun’s light.”
She looked around the barren land that was her home with new eyes. “Momma never told me.”
“You didn’t need to worry about it, Ela,” he said. “Besides that...few people are willing to endure the hardship of the barren lands...even when they have all the basics of survival, as we have here. They don’t come here, and so the demons who hunt them do not come here either.”
“So...home is safe,” Ela said wonderingly.
“No,” Damasc said sternly, fiercely. “No, Ela...you are old enough to know...there is no place that is safe. Not now, not for a long time. The demons rule our world, Ela.”
“We have to take it back.”
So simple a pronouncement, so difficult a reality.
He smiled. “Many have tried. Most have died. The demons come here through their portals...they cast their magics...and even our most powerful fighters and mages and priests fall before them.”
Elan was silent for a while, thinking about that. “What happened?”
The quiet between them stretched into minutes before Damasc spoke again.
“We were attacked. Ambushed in broad daylight,” he said. “They came up through the ground...inside the stone walls of our building... Outside they had human soldiers waiting to catch any of us who tried to escape.”
“Human...!?” Elan asked in shock.
Damasc nodded. “Humans. This is a painful lesson, Ela...one that would be best to learn now, from me rather than later from a traitor. Humans are not angels. We choose our path through life and we are free to choose any path. Neither good nor evil lays sole claim to our souls, little dreamer.”
She looked around the area, avoiding contact with her father’s eyes for a long moment. “I don’t know any other humans...”
“I know. And I’m sorry for that...” he sighed. “I wanted you and your mother to be safe while I fought...”
“It’s alright, Father,” she said, getting up with a troubled expression. “I understand. I…need to think about this.”
He watched her walk away before sitting back against the boulder and sighing as he stared up at the drifting clouds. Could she understand? Was there any hope of even that meager salve to his conscience?
Damasc didn't know, and the question of it was preying on his mind every day and night now. The talk of demons and the failings of his past burned in him then, an old fire and one that he had thought quenched in the blood of all those he had called friend. He got up slowly then and walked back to the house, then into his and his wife's room.
Beside the bedroll, wrapped in tattered cloth, was something he hadn't looked on in three years. Damasc steeled his determination then and drew out the dull metal of his sword.
If his little dreamer was going to follow her father's path, then she should be shown well and truly how to walk it. Perhaps, just perhaps, he might deter her from it if she saw the cold, stark reality of the road she sought.
Living was the best a person could hope for in these days.
*****
Elanthielle was by the riverside, gathering water for the crops, when she heard a noise behind her. She turned around and saw her father standing there, dressed the way he had been the first time she saw him. His clothes were thick and stiff, his sword strapped at his side, and his face painted blue.
“Father?”
He was silent for a long moment and just stared at her as she stood up and looked at him. Finally he pulled an object from behind his back and tossed it to her. “Catch.”
She did, barely plucking the item from the air as it flew past her. She looked at it in wonder for a moment. “Father?”
He didn’t speak as she pulled the long, slim blade from the leather sheath and looked at it as the dull metal reflected the rising sun.
“That belonged to a friend of mine,” Damasc told her. “He was a small man...but brave, and loyal... He died well. I brought it with me for your mother, but you're old enough now, Ela... If you intend to follow my path, my daughter...you must understand and accept this one thing.”