Feels Like Home
"I'm not a little girl anymore, not by any means!" Brianna's words seemed to echo in the wind long after the sound of her horse's hooves faded in the distance. Roxanne took her son back into the farmhouse for some food after their hard day of work among the crops, but Dustfinger stood as if rooted to that one spot in the yard, motionless. Beside him, Farid chattered indignantly in his defence, the boy from such a different story to this one somehow had become like his shadow. In spite of many long nights spent together in the other world, the boy had never grasped the appeal of the silence Dustfinger so craved. The very silence which had been his only time to conjure the fading image of his precious Roxanne's beautiful face, when he was stuck so far away from her for ten miserable years.
"Farid, just be quiet!" he snapped finally. No amount of words could make the teenager who had ridden away from him in angry tears believe that it was the truth. He cursed the hoarse tone of his own voice, being back in his world was slowly crumbling his refined ability to hide his emotions. The boy's mouth dropped open; looking like a wounded puppy, he let the tiny blooms of flames he had coaxed into existence die abruptly. Without a word, he retreated into the farmhouse where Roxanne was feeding her hard-working son. Dustfinger meanwhile, slipped silently around the building to the grave site in the backyard he had so far been avoiding. The fields in front of the house had any number of herbs and crops sprouting around the well in the centre, but behind the farm there was little but a fenced square area, as if to respect little Rosanna. Cloth tassels fluttered from the wired fence at intervals and even after a decade, Dustfinger recognised the playpen where his younger daughter had played as a toddler.
Instead of containing children's toys, now the fenced square had a large rock in the centre. In front of it was an unnatural mound of earth, surrounded by the white lilies associated with death. The gate built into the wired fence creaked as Dustfinger cracked it open, long unused it seemed. "The fairies might have helped her if you had been here to talk to them," Roxanne had said frankly earlier, not accusingly because she had accepted the death of her little girl years ago. But to Dustfinger the guilt was a weight, knocking flat the joy of being reunited with Roxanne after the decade of separation. He approached the simple slab stuck in the ground hesitantly as if footsteps in the vicinity could break a stone how the sight broke his heart. The sun was harsh on this rarely tended backyard during the day; making the ground he carefully lowered himself to dry and hard.
Darkness was falling over the yard, but Dustfinger could still make out that the stone marking Rosanna's burial site was plain. Roxanne had managed to educate both Brianna and her son, why should Rosanna's name be forgotten? The fact bothered the scarred fire-eater more than expected. With no engraving on the stone for him to trace, Dustfinger sat silently in the dark with his eyes closed, willing the long-dead little girl to become more than a name to his memory. Dustfinger had always loved the night, even when in the other world it meant helpless dreams of his family here. No matter where he was, fire and flames were his pets, and they reigned supreme in the darkness, ideally in fact on nights as still and windless as this one. The wind, which had earlier been ringing with Brianna's angry accusations, was now non-existent as if his daughter's aim in her rage had been to take away the very air he breathed. Dustfinger pressed his hand to the stone desperately, but still, Rosanna's little face swam vaguely in his memory, refusing to come into focus. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart," he whispered to the spirit of the child he could barely remember. He never was the most attentive father but to have missed this tragic milestone felt like the ultimate failure, much as it had been out of his control.
"Don't start," Roxanne's voice suddenly sounded from right behind him, weary but with that eternal musical lilt he had so long ago fallen in love with. Dustfinger whipped around, his inner turmoil interrupted by the only one who could safely take away the silence he cherished at night. He couldn't even bother wondering how long she had been standing there watching him; she was just too beautiful despite going from a travelling entertainer to a domestic farmer's wife. Dustfinger was not used to anyone witnessing his heart on display; words failed him as Roxanne paced calmly towards his spot in front of the grave. "It was a horrible epidemic," she continued softly, crouching beside him with her gaze turned on the stone marker. "That's how I met Jehan's father; when I was travelling with the girls, looking for a cure for Rosanna. It was never going to work, with or without fairies," Roxanne sighed quietly.
"Yes but you were here," Dustfinger replied, hating himself. "You were here to fight for her, and I wasn't!"
"You're here now," Roxanne soothed. "I'm not saying that life has been easy, far from it, but everybody thought you were dead!"
With that she cupped his scarred face and made him look more closely at Rosanna's burial mound, Dustfinger couldn't suppress a gasp. Interspersed with the white lilies around the grave were more of the red anemones from which the fire elves gained their honey. Everyone in this world knew that he was the only one who could get to that honey without causing the elves to angrily riot; it was a fire-eater's skill few had mastered. "You thought I was dead too?" he suddenly realised out loud, the thought was sickening.
Roxanne simply nodded; a swell of emotion robbed her of the voice he loved so much. "You may have been a vagabond at heart Dustfinger, but you always came back to me! Ten years is too long to hold on to hope, even for people who have been through less than I have."
By the end of this speech, the woman's stunning dark eyes were full of tears, and Dustfinger sat up straighter, the anguish of the daughter he could barely remember pushed aside. "How do I deserve you, Roxanne?" he sighed, pulling her trembling figure into his arms. No words, even the honest ones, could describe what Silvertongue's accursed gift had put them through over the past decade. For a moment he simply sat rocking her in the darkness, breathing in the achingly familiar fragrance of the bitter orange essence in her hair. And yet that very scent pushed out the confession which had plagued him since he first set foot in the backyard memorialising little Rosanna. "I can't remember her face." God, it hurt to say the words out loud.
Roxanne leaned back, a puzzled frown on her face; "Whose face?"
"Rosanna," he sighed sadly, and his beautiful wife mirrored the sadness instantly in her dark eyes. "I can't remember our little girl's face and Brianna hates me! I was too cowardly to face her; it's no wonder she can't forgive me."
"Stop it!" she interrupted sharply. "Brianna may look just like you, but she has always had my spirit, just give her time." Roxanne's quiet confidence was one of the qualities he missed most in acquaintances in the other world, where everyone was out to be the best in an unbearably fast-paced environment. Dustfinger hung on her every sweet word as she went on; "And Rosanna was the reversed combination of her sister, she looked like me, but even in her short years the adventurous temperament was yours. Remember now?"
Dustfinger nodded, as if his wife's musical voice had painted a picture across the years he missed, dormant memories of a child's tinkling laughter seemed to ring in his mind. "I'm so sorry, Roxanne," he breathed, clinging to her as if at any moment he could wake up and be worlds away again. "I love you so much."
The hands trailing the prominent scars on his face were much rougher than he remembered but the moment Roxanne spoke, the surreal feeling of the entire conversation was banished. "Thank you for coming back to me," she whispered, sparing the gravestone another glance as if it was the reason for respectful silence.
Dustfinger leaned down, breathing in her scent again as he kissed her deeply, trying to make every single one of his senses believe that this was genuinely happening after a decade of dreaming. "I told you my love; I will always find my way back to you. Always!"
His own voice was loud in the dark and deserted yard, but the words were a promise. With the bliss of Roxanne leaning on his shoulder, Dustfinger conjured a circle of flaming flowers around them and vowed never to let her go again for as long as they lived. He was truly home at last.
A / N: This is my first Inkheart story! I'm re-reading the books now after first reading them as a teenager and discovering all the same shipper feels. I love these two so much and hope the story does them justice!