Every wizard's sight operated differently. I hadn't had a chance to mingle with many of my peers, what with the death sentence hanging over me, but I'd met enough practitioners to know that no person perceived souls in exactly the same way. I tended to see things in impressions or highly colorful metaphors. Only the strongest, most well-defined souls presented in a way that felt concrete. Deirdre's soul had been like that. Her character had been set in stone long before I was born and was fortified by the might of a fallen angel. Most people were more variable, altered radically by time and circumstance, which made it doubly fortunate that I could only glimpse a person's soul once.
I found myself at Dad's knee, considerably smaller than I remembered being a moment ago. I barely reached his knee and was eye-level with the cushions of the sofa. A glance down revealed a pair of dusty Dragon Tales tennis shoes smudging the carpet. I'd gotten them from Aunt Allison for my fifth birthday, shortly before she and Uncle David had passed on. My scraped knees were knobby, my legs scrawny and smudged with yet more filth. It was darker than the stuff on my shoes and sticky like pine sap.
Strong arms braced my waist and lifted me like I weighed nothing at all, bringing me to rest on a strong thigh. My legs dangled in the open air, not long enough to reach the ground. I caught my reflection in one of the accent mirrors hung on the wall and blinked at it in confusion. I was...well, I was just a kid, really. Past the toddler stage, but not large enough to be considered a big kid yet. My hair and face were smudged with still more of the sticky stuff.
Dad's fingers lifted my chin just a little, and I cringed away from the warm washcloth he brushed over my round cheeks. When I spoke, my voice came out high and with a lisp.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Cleaning you up," he said simply. "She left a mess, didn't she? All these lies on your skin."
He lifted one scrawny arm in explanation, and I finally got a look at the dark, sticky stuff. They weren't smudges, as I'd first assumed. Small words had been etched into my skin, salved with grit and filth, and left to fester. Some were shallow and had begun to slowly mend, but most of them ran deep.
I became acutely aware of just how much I hurt. Here, in this place, I was small, an echo of a time I'd been largely innocent of pain. In the memory this was based on, I'd fallen while climbing a tree and scraped the skin off my knees and elbows. He'd held me as I cried and picked the bark out of the cuts. These injuries were worse. So much worse. There wasn't an inch of unmarked skin. What skin wasn't inflamed had formed white scar tissue. I whimpered as the washcloth ran over my skin, clearing the wounds of dirt and sap. I didn't like the sticky stuff, but it at least kept the wounds sealed shut. I felt almost naked without the coating of dirt and grime. I felt open. Hideously vulnerable.
"Stop," I whispered. "I don't want..."
Didn't want what? To be clean? Did I really value my pain that much? Yes. Yes, I did. Because I'd earned every second of it.
As if he'd heard the thought, he set the washcloth aside and cupped my cheeks. I was small enough that his calloused hands almost swallowed my entire face. The gentle kiss he laid on my forehead made my eyes sting.
"Stop that," he said, voice soft and chiding.
"Stop what?"
"Stop hurting my little girl," he said quietly.
Fresh tears rolled down my cheeks and I buried my face in his work shirt. It smelled like the detergent, aftershave, and the sweat of an honest day's work. There'd been a time when that smell had been the cornerstone of my world. Warm blankets, calloused hands, the tickle of his beard, and the drum of his heartbeat under the soft cotton shirt. But those days were gone. I'd changed, even if he hadn't. His hands settled at the small of my back, the heat of his touch sinking into me.
"Let me hold your burden for a little while," he said in that same gentle voice.
"I can't," I gasped. "I'll hurt you."
"It's killing you," he argued. "I already lost you once. I won't lose you again."
The weight lifted from my shoulders without my conscious permission, plucked off by a will stronger than mine, and I sagged against him. Tears stained his work shirt. His, instead of mine. My father cried the tears I'd denied myself. No one pitied the killer, after all. No one except my father. I ended up with one ear pressed to his chest, listening to the soft, hitching breath and the pounding of his heart, an anguished lullaby. My eyes closed of their own volition. I was so damn tired.
My father held me, guarding me against nightmares as I slid silently into sleep.