{"id":4628,"date":"2021-06-02T09:33:22","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T13:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4628"},"modified":"2021-06-02T09:33:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T13:33:22","slug":"twenty-08-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4628","title":{"rendered":"Twenty – 08"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This post is from Bryant Tapping’s point of view.]<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThen you believe him?\u201d Bryant asked quietly, drifting away from the door.\u00a0 Tory startled and twisted toward him, as if he hadn\u2019t realized that Bryant was still there.\u00a0 For a few seconds, he held his gaze, then finally nodded slowly.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo some degree or another,\u201d Tory said.\u00a0 \u201cEven if I don\u2019t believe the whole thing, usually prophecy doesn\u2019t care.\u00a0 Does it, Lin?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lin winced and stared at the floor.\u00a0 He shook his head.\u00a0 \u201cNo.\u00a0 It usually doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s history there\u2014something there that I\u2019m not sure I want to know the whole of.<\/em>\u00a0 Bryant\u2019s lips thinned and he nodded.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re right about that, I think.\u00a0 I remember Aoife saying it a few times when I was growing up, before she left.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long ago did she leave?\u201d\u00a0 Tory asked, looking between Bryant, David, and Isabelle.\u00a0 \u201cHow old were you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really remember her,\u201d Isabelle said.\u00a0 \u201cNever really had much chance to know her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid and Isabelle were still really little,\u201d Bryant said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only have a few scattered memories I can string together,\u201d David admitted.\u00a0 \u201cHer face, her voice, fragments of stories and the feel of her touch\u2014gentle, soft, but usually cold fingers even when they probably should\u2019ve been warm.\u00a0 That could be a trick of my memory, though.\u201d\u00a0 He rubbed at his temple.\u00a0 \u201cMy dad raised me.\u00a0 I remember him being sad a lot, especially when I was younger, but that seemed to either fade as I got older or I just stopped noticing.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure which one it was, really.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know that he got over her or if he just stopped letting the rest of us see as we got older.\u00a0 Probably the latter.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI have most of the stories from him,\u201d David continued.\u00a0 \u201cThough a lot of them were things my mother wrote down and gave to him for me\u2014like she knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing the Taliesin\u2019s sister and a princess of the Aes Dana<\/em> in her own right, it wouldn\u2019t surprise me if she did,\u201d Lin said quietly, leaning back and tilting his face toward the ceiling.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t know what made her leave you, but I\u2019m sorry that she did.\u00a0 That couldn\u2019t have been easy, especially not knowing where she went or if she\u2019d ever come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI…\u201d David\u2019s voice trailed away and he stared off into nothing for a few seconds.\u00a0 Isabelle squeezed his hand and he looked at her then, smiling faintly.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I think I asked maybe twice growing up if she was ever going to come back before I asked my father one last time before we left to come on this journey, to come on this quest.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think even he ever expected her to come home.\u201d \u00a0David took a slow, deep breath.\u00a0 \u201cHell.\u00a0 There are moments when I wonder if she loved us at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure that she did,\u201d a voice said from the doorway.\u00a0 \u201cBut Aoife was always more duty-bound than the rest of us.\u00a0 If my sister thought that there was something she had to do and it meant leaving her husband and her child, she would.\u00a0 Much to her eternal pain, she would.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This post is from Bryant Tapping’s point of view.]   \u201cThen you believe him?\u201d Bryant asked quietly, drifting away from the door.\u00a0 Tory startled and twisted toward him, as if he hadn\u2019t realized that Bryant was still there.\u00a0 For a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[336,337,369,14],"tags":[340,271,150,359,171,170,360,350,149,173,148,147,165,200,146],"class_list":["post-4628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ambrose-cycle","category-book-8","category-chapter-20-book-8","category-story","tag-ambrose-cycle","tag-artorius-mackenzie","tag-awakenings","tag-david-ocredne-miller","tag-fantasy","tag-fiction","tag-isabelle-squires","tag-knights-errant","tag-original-fiction","tag-phelan-ocredne","tag-post-apocalyptic","tag-serial-fiction","tag-story","tag-thomas-merlin-ambrose","tag-web-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EBlN-1cE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4629,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions\/4629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}