Chimera Fields Roast Mutton

How utterly chaotic -- how neglectful, how lacking of love! She couldn't imagine growing up in a home like his own, and not coming out with a coldness to the world, a stony heart and a jaded eye to the kindness that anyone offered. How dreadful, how awful, how entirely sad - and his story clicked understanding into place, so that where her heart had once turned with frustration, she found in its place a deep pull toward him, and a want to show him that things could be better -- that perhaps she could become to him one small soul who could make things better, could show him that he mattered -- because though she hardly knew him, and he had given her no real reason to stick around, she was certain he mattered.

Maybe that was enough.

"I'm so -- " sorry, but she caught herself again, and she shook her head. "Did you ever - did you ever find your sister? Do you still live with your family now?" Surely not - he looked old enough to be her age, and where she was from, it was expected and celebrated for yearlings to disperse from home, to find themselves, and their place in the world, regardless of whether or not that led them back to the Island. But as she already discovered, and was discovering at rapid speed, things were so very different here.