A/N: The title is not entirely accurate. These are more clips from a time that I just can't find a place for in the flow of the story but they still add to it. If anyone remembers what word was used instead of museum (the used a different word right?) I'd appreciate the correction!

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Chapter 14(INTERLUDE): A Collection of Memories

Lana. Age: 7

Arra. Age: 29

"No!" Lana shouted at Vincent. "Leave it alone!"

"We weren't going to hurt it!"

"Nuh-uh!" She ran away.

"Lana come back here!"

"No!" She held the small creature with two cupped hands one over the other. "You shouldn't be hurting anything!"

"But. We. Weren't!" He shouted back but Lana was already running away the prize he had worked so hard to capture. He growled and kicked at the dirt.

Lana managed to make it all the way to her mother's rooms. "Mama!"

"Oh! I thought you would have been taught better! Knock first!" The queen herself lifted Lana up and swung her around to drop her on the bed. It was only then she realized that her mother was only wearing underclothes as she'd been changing. "And what is that in your hand? Give it to me."

Lana handed over the little frog. Arra took it and put it in an empty basin.

Arra went to pick up the clothes she had been about to put on. Lana saw the skin her mother never showed, pale and scarred. And that was only her back. All of her body was covered in marks.

"Mama, where did you get those?"

"Get what, dear, be specific."

"The scars."

"Aha. I see." Arra slipped her legs into a pair of breeches. "I'll make you a deal. You can ask about, hm, let's say two and I'll tell you about them."

There were faint, but still present, curved scars on the outside of her upper arm running up and down her left arm. "What about these?"

"Technically, those are more than one but since they all came to be at once I'll count it as one." Arra smiled. "I got those from stormwing feathers."

Lana giggled a bit. "Why did you let one get so close?"

"Oh, I never said it was a stormwing." Arra held up one finger as if pointing out a discrepancy. "There was a silly old hedgewitch who thought she could gather more power if she could kill powerful people with stormwing feathers."

"She attacked you?" Lana's hazel eyes were wide. Attack the queen?

Arra nodded. "Oh, yes. How she had gotten so many I can't tell but she must have at least a hundred and she fashioned them into a fan that looked like the jaws of a shark. Do you remember what a shark is?"

"Of course. We have some of their jaws in our museum. They live in the sea." Lana stated knowledgeably.

"Yes. Well she attacked me with them." Arra was in a stance now trying to replay it for her daughter. Her hand was out as if holding something and she had one leg in front of the other spread apart. "The hedgewitch lunged forward, like this." And Arra demonstrated.

Lana, so absorbed in the story, asked. "Did she get you?"

"Only barely." She shrugged. "She got the tips of them into my skin but that was enough and then she sort of twisted away."

Arra demonstrated that too.

Lana laughed. When she finally had control over her giggles she looked at the other scars. There was big interesting one that reminded her of a snake curling up her mother's right arm but she didn't ask about that one. Instead she pointed to her mother's aged but muscled stomach. "Those?"

"Why, those are proof that you are mine and no one else's." Arra laughed and touched the stretch marks. "Now, shouldn't you be somewhere? Don't jump on your brothers anymore though! If I hear them complain one more time I may have to show them how to defend themselves against you for good."

"Awww, mama." Lana left the room all the same in a good mood.

Iruko. Age: Unknown

Senior Zain. Age: 27

Zain the younger. Age: 4 hours

The new father looked down at his son. One would have expected him to be overjoyed, excited, and maybe a little nervous at the prospect of the very small thing in front of him. Instead his face was hard, features drawn in and his hands clenched until his knuckles were mottled.

His voice was low and venomous when he spoke. "He's like you isn't he?"

"H-he might be. It's too early to tell." Answered the mother from the bed. Her black hair was stuck to her face with sweat, she was pale and her voice had been week. Despite that she had a new light in her gray eyes that only a mother can have.

The man's lips drew into a tight line. "And if he is he'll need the same care you do?"

"Most probably." Her voice had gone soft and careful.

"I had hoped...," He stopped and shook his head. He stayed silent with an internal struggle for long moments. He closed blue eyes and raked fingernails through his blond hair. "I-"

"What is it Zain?" Her voice was still soft, careful but now she was pleading. "Tell me."

Both paused as the new babe took a long shaky sigh but he didn't wake from his sleep.

"Iruko, I've-I care about you and...and..." His face took that hard look again. "You have made me do some horrible things. Things that make me hate myself. If our child was like you I," He shook his head again. "I couldn't handle it. I won't."

"You won't have to." She could see signs of what he was getting to and the desperation in her voice took over. "Please."

"And I won't stay to watch you harm him either. I have to go." He turned away but his hand over his eyes and took one shaky breath. And just like that he walked out of the room.

Iruko rose up from the bed. Her body protested but her heart urged her on. She tried to stand and run to the door, tears already streaming down her face. She fell. She kept going though, rising and stumbling to a fall again and again until she made it to the door. Her fingers dug into the door jamb and she gave a low groan. "Don't leave," She whispered in Yamani. Then in Common she cried. "Don't leave me, Zain! Gods, please, don't leave!"

She sobbed and leaned her face against the harsh wood a sound came from her that was all feeling being wrenched from her being. Zain's shoulder's were hunched and stiff but he kept on walking. Leaving. The same heartbroken sound came from her, louder this time ending in a scream. It was the last cry that woke up the baby. His cries matched hers and after some moments the mother's cries died. Still sobbing silently she knew where she was needed, what she had to do. She went to her child.

For years she would cry to herself, but not in front of her child. His life would be full of enough hardships but she'd teach him what she could.

Iruko. Age: Unknown

Zain. Age: Believed to be around 6

Pictures, images of the dead and dying imprinted themselves into his mind forever to be in his memory. He felt something outside of it all. It was very far away. The pictures kept on coming and his mind dropped the other distraction.

A voice outside the images came to him. "No, no my son. Come to the pain. Let it guide you out."

The voice was soft but somehow he caught it and held on to it. He felt the twinge again outside the horrid pictures. If the images were a veil then that was a way out of it. Fighting against pictures he would always remember he made it back to himself. Even when he was fully himself again he kept his eyes shut. The only way he knew the images were part of his memory and not vision was they replayed over and over again and they weren't new.

It took him a while to feel the pain in his arm and still a little more after that when he realized something warm was on his pants. He was whimpering. He opened his eyes and still he did not see.

With his left hand he felt his right arm. He gasped when he found the wound leaking blood. "Mom, what--I'm bleeding!"

"Zain listen to me--"

"I-I can't see!" He moaned and put his face in his hands. "I can see them still. They were dying. Dead. Oh, gods."

He began to rock. His mother, Iruko, wrapped her arms around him and held him close to him. "This is how it will have to be my cursed son."

Her fingers were stroking his face and there was something sticky on them. He turned his head. He caught the scent of blood on her hand. He pushed her away.

"You cut me!" His voice cracked, not wanting to believe and horrified. "Why? Wh-what did I do?"

Iruko put her hand over her mouth and shed two silent tears. She looked down at her only child, her precious son. His dark hair was flat against his skull with sweat. His arm was red with blood as was his shirt where it had spattered across his clothes from his harsh movements and it was smeared across his face.

He didn't look at her because he couldn't find her with his eyes. He looked lost and betrayed.

She wiped away the tears. What cruel god would have a mother harm her own child just so he could live?

A/N: Okay, send in the reviews, PLEASE.

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