It's cold and dark. Sun is alone. The bitter wind whips her hair in her face, it nips at her skin, it calls to her. "Murderer!" It whispers.
Suddenly, her mother, Renn, is there, bringing light with her. Their eyes lock. Sun's heart is filled with longing for her mother's touch, for the warm embrace she has missed for a long, hard, almost five summers. Sun is perplexed at her mother's cold, hate filled gaze. Abruptly, like a rock has fallen to the pit of her stomach, she understands. She is the girl who killed Torak the spirit walker – her father.
Sun sat up in her sleeping sack.
Father died trying to save me, I didn't kill him. She sighed. So why does mother hate me? She contemplated.
Her uncle, Dark, sat at the other side of the shelter. Dark wasn't her real uncle, but he was so close to her parents, that they could have been siblings.
Dark frowned at her. "What's the matter Sun?" he said as he came and sat next to her.
Sun sighed. It would be silly to say there was nothing; he had always been very intuitive.
"It's just," she paused, considering how to phrase it.
"Why does mother hate me? I didn't kill my father, he died saving me." She closed her eyes and let her last memory of her father fill her mind.
. . . . .
Sun, her father and her uncle Dark had been rock climbing. She was ten summers old. They were almost at the top when sun had lost her balance. Her foot missed the crack, in her terror her hands had slipped, she was falling. I'm going to die, I'm going to die, was all she could think. A firm grip caught her around the wrist. She was safe. Her father hauled her up and placed her on the top of the cliff in Darks arms. Sun looked down at her mother's relieved, loving face and smiled shyly. Her mother looked shocked, hands on the little bump on her stomach.
Everything after that seemed to happen in a heartbeat, blink and you would miss it. In her father's haste to save his only child, he disobeyed rock climbing's first rule – keep three limbs on the rock at all times. He had only had two limbs on the rock. Her father fell to a heap at the bottom of the rock, dead.
. . . . .
Dark replied instantly. "She doesn't hate you." He said in a gentle voice. He had known this conversation would come up one of these days and he had been prepared, Sun was almost fifteen summers old.
"So how come she left the day father was buried and hasn't come back?"
Dark sighed, "Renn – I mean your mother, just needed some time alone. That's all, she still loves you."
"ALONE TIME? IT'S ALMOST FIVE SUMMERS SHE'S BEEN GONE!" Sun yelled, tears cascading down her pale face. "THAT'S ALMOST FIVE SUMMERS THAT I'VE NEEDED A MOTHER! SHE WASN'T THE ONE THAT HAD TO FACE FATHERS DEATH! " Breathing heavily, she paused. "I just want to be loved. I just want her back. I want father back. I want everything to go back to how it used to be." She whispered.
Dark tilted his head down and smiled a sad smile, his cobweb-white hair covering his pale-grey eyes "I know exactly how you feel."