1. Remembrance
Sometimes, Lann dreams. It doesn't happen often, usually when he's bone-tired and on the brink of collapsing face-first onto his cot, but when he does it's centered around a woman whose name and face frustratingly slips away every time. He knew, in the depths of his soul, that the woman wasn't any ordinary woman, nor any of his trusted comrades, but he just couldn't figure her out.
When he wakes up he doesn't fully remember the contents of the dream, but there's always a trace of something lingering at the back of his mind; he faintly recalls a certain type of perfume or sees the tumbling locks of thick hair being swept over a clothed shoulder. Rarely, Lann is treated to a flash of a soft but beautiful smile that fills him up from the inside with a kind of warmth he hasn't felt in years.
Those small flashes make him feel like a young and naïve child all over again as he reaches out with tiny, hesitant fingers in hopes of touching, feeling, discovering who this special person was to him.
It isn't until one night that he finally remembers, a name—no, not a name, a title at the tip of his tongue as he jerks awake, wide-eyed and sweat cooling on his body. Pent up energy is buzzing in his ears as he finally, finally, remembers:
Mother.