Halena still stared out the window. Yet another two years had passed. Would she ever get to see her parents again? It seemed not.
The stars that night seemed to twinkle at her. It was like they were inviting her to go and dance with them. But she knew that was something that she was not allowed to do. She was the adopted daughter of the Aryo and Arya of this place and nothing was going to change that apart for one thing.
The one thing that she had wished to happen for a very long time.
It would have been her parents' anniversary that day. Instead of spending it with her parents watching them raise their eyebrows at each other, she stood there and listened while her tutor tried to make her a religious person. She had been sent to her room though when she had told him that he was wrong and that Dweia actually did have a husband and a little girl. She had be about to tell him that it was her when Eliar and Andine came into the room to see how she was going. The tutor was sitting there looking like a blubbering idiot and Eliar had quickly gone to see how he was while Andine pulled Halena out of the room and to her own.
'You can't do that!' she had said.
'Why not? I am right!' she little girl had protested.
'Because we have to keep you safe. If the word had gone around, it might not be safe for you anymore. You would either have to go and live on the road or with someone you didn't know in a place you didn't know off,' she told her.
'That's ok. The man was an idiot anyway. Why didn't you tell us?' Eliar asked coming into the room.
'Because I don't think you would have me. You seemed to hold him in high respects and if I told you that he was just silly, then...' she said and started to cry.
'Shh,' Eliar said and hugged her close. 'What's wrong? You don't seem as happy today.'
'It has been four years. I didn't know that Daddy would need four years,' Halena sobbed back.
'Sometimes they need all the time that they can get. Now why don't you go and play the piano for us.
'What would I play for you?'
'I don't know,' Andine said and started thinking.
'Feed the birds?'