Duck Lake I never listen, but I see it with my eyes closed

He had skirted around Reverie and her daughter—any other time he would have been grateful at the reprieve from having to spark forced and polite conversation, particularly when bad blood remained between them—but his focus was elsewhere.

Mae.

She had howled her departure one autumn day—the memory of it lancing through the man. At the time, he had assumed to give her space—any time he had tried to talk with her, anger had emanated from her. If he had said the sky was blue, she would insist it was green, it had seemed.

Oil and vinegar.

He had hoped it was a bout of teenage angst—that in a months time, she would be home… where she could be safe.

But no, the monster she ran from was him… not the rowdy gang of rogues that plagued lands, the witches of the marsh, or the soldiers who stole young girls and traded them to Pharaoah’s as pleasure servants...

Him.

And time passed, and she did not return.

They said if you loved something, you set it free.

So when he saw her—that stark, wiry ebony figure in the distance, it felt as if his heart stopped. He might as well had been looking to a ghost, like the apparition and his fevered dream of Ibis.

Scars adorned her. They cloaked her—each a notch of his failure as a father. And while he managed to croak one word: “Mae…” he found himself silenced beneath the weight of his grief, then.