Disclaimer: I do not own the works of T. Pierce, nor do I make money by writing these stories.
A/N: This story was inspired by the many, many wonderful Daine/Numair fics that I have read on this site. Since there isn't really one that I can cite in particular, thanks to everyone for being part of this community!
The title is not permanent; I usually don't title stories until after they're done, anyways.
Finally, I have every intention of updating regularly and finishing this story. However, I have actually never finished a long story before. That's why I'm here: I need your help! If I feel some obligation to finish for you, my readers, I hope it will help me through the process so I can reach my life-long goal of actually writing a whole story.
Wish me luck. And, enjoy!
Daine Sarrasri was a troubled youth. Onua recognised that look in her eye: terrible grief, anger, and fiery independence. Onua was used to seeing children with eyes like that; she worked at the Chorus Orphanage.
When Daine became a ward of the state, she lost everything that was dear to her nearly on the same day. The fire consumed her family, destroyed her home. She found out quickly that being only thirteen, she had no say in anything. When she found out they were taking Cloud, the pony she'd loved since she was a child, she'd shouted at them, cried, even hit the man who was supposed to be helping her. She begged him, but of course he thought that Cloud was just a pony, and that Daine was just a hysterical child in the throes of grief. He probably didn't make the decisions anyways; all he would give her was a chance to say good-bye. She'd tried to explain it to Cloud, but this was a two-legger thing that the pony didn't really understand. She'd clung to Cloud's neck, sobbing, while the pony whickered and lipped at her hair. Daine could tell Cloud was angry with her, and it broke Daine's heart to betray her friend that way. Animals are like babies, and this was equivalent to breaking a promise.
And worst of all, nobody would believe her when she told them the fire hadn't been an accident.
She tried to tell the police, she'd seen strange men in a truck that very day. Yes, of course it was suspicious, they lived out in the country. You don't see people you don't know out there. But no, sadly, she couldn't tell them anything about those men. They'd been in a big black pick-up truck, that was all. And if only she'd ridden Cloud back to find out who they were, maybe her ma would be alive still.
(Or, she thought mutinously, but knowing better than to say anything out loud, at least they could have died together.)
No, she said angrily to the woman in the city, the one with the artificially gentle smile. She didn't know who her father was. Couldn't people stopping asking that? Couldn't the social worker just look at her birth certificate and see that his name wasn't on it?
Daine knew these people were only doing their jobs. But it seemed to her they weren't doing it very well. She couldn't track down the strangers, she couldn't find out what had happened to her ma, and she had to move to the orphanage in the city and she couldn't take Cloud with her. The pony was sold and the proceeds seized by collection agencies along with the property; she hadn't realised that her mother was in debt. She had to go to public school. She had to leave the people she'd grown up with, all of her friends and neighbors. She was completely and entirely alone.
Onua knew only a few of these details; she'd read them in the girl's file. And being used to eyes like that didn't make them any easier to look into. The hand that she put comfortingly on the girl's shoulder was stiffly ignored as she showed her to her bed in the girl's dorm.
There were a few others in the room already, but Daine pointedly didn't look at them, and they knew better than to bother a newcomer.
Onua, who was especially short, didn't have look down to look the growing girl in the eyes.
"Daine, if you ever want to talk about something—anything at all—you can come to me." Lips pursed, the younger girl nodded, indicating that she intended to do no such thing. Onua gave her a sympathetic look, told her that dinner would be at 6:30, and left.
Daine stood staring at the bed that wasn't, never would be, hers. Then she walked over to the window and looked out it, at the dismal view of city streets and tall concrete buildings. There was a single row of shrubby trees, growing out of little squares in the sidewalk. The trees seemed out-of-place, confined to a tiny square of dirt in which nothing could be expected to grow properly. In the country, they would have been growing in a forest, surrounded by other species of trees, and all manner of plants and animals. Poor trees. What gave people the right to plant them in the city?