Hi all! Sorry for the wait; I'm in college now (yeah, I know I can't believe it some days either), so updating is a bit more scattered. Love to my wonderful beta Kokou and to everyone that reviewed last chapter.

Chapter 4: Lost Cousin

Again the two Tortallian's were astonished, but this time, Numair came out of his daze quicker. "Raisin," he called, "Please ask Inkblot to relay a message to the King. Tell him that our guest has awoken and wishes to talk to him and the Queen and that she claims to be the Queen's cousin. And that we have another visitor."

"Yes sir," the small creature said. "He'll be up after the noon council session. You don't need to attend. In his words, 'get the girl fed up but don't ask too many questions.'"

Numair nodded and left to get food for all of them while Daine went and got some cloths for the small girl from the stores. Sitting alone in the sitting room, the two foreigners stayed silent for the most part, then Kitten came up and looked at the girl for a moment before saying, 'Can you actually understand me?'

Ontillia looked at the dragon a moment before responding. "Yes, why? Can't Lady Daine?"

'No, she can only read the thoughts of animals and animal-like immortals. But I'm too young to do that with,' the dragonette said, turning a light shade of grey for a second.

"That must be annoying," Lunian said gently after piecing together what the dragon said. Seeing the confusion in her face he added, "Lia has been teaching me the languages of other immortals. She can understand us all without learning."

The dragon nodded solemnly, 'You might want to keep that to yourself for as long as possible or, since he already told Mama and Numair, to ask them not to tell,' she said to Lia.

The girl nodded as Daine came back in the room with cloths, bandages and salve, "Duke Baird, the head of our healers, will want to look you over later, but for now I need to clean your wounds and bandage them back up."

The girl nodded and turned her back to the Wild Mage, letting the blanket slip down, revealing her half healed back. She stayed quiet as the worst wounds were cleaned with a stinging liquid.

Once she was finished, Lia sighed and sat back gingerly, "Thank you for taking care of me, Lady. I know it must have been confusing taking care of someone that you couldn't talk to or get to respond in any way. I was just so out of sync with the world."

"It wasn't the first time and it probably won't be the last," Daine said, patting her on the shoulder, "Just don't call me Lady. It's Daine and that's it, understand Ontillia?"

"Yes La…. Daine but you must call me Lia then," the girl responded.

At that time the baby started to cry, making Daine get up and go care for him.

"She seems nice enough," Lunian said quietly before yawning loudly.

"Sorry for making you have to hunt me down again."

"What are friends for? Just try to stay out of trouble for a day or so this time," came the response.

They waited in silence until Numair returned with three maids bearing trays of food. Daine joined them at the table and let the girl eat her fill as they nibbled at smaller amounts themselves. The only surprise came when Lunain's stomach rumbled at the smell of food. Lia glanced over at him and uttered some words under her breath at his shrug. Food started flowing into the air at a level that he could reach easily with his mouth since he didn't have the hands to pick it up for himself.

"I thought that Stormwings didn't need to eat, or rather, you only feed on the leavings of war and fear," Numair said.

"Most of the time that's true, but I'm young and am still growing. I need to eat a large quantity of your food to grow. If I were like my brethren, I would go to a battlefield and take my sustainus there, because if I don't eat then I won't age and come into my powers," Lunian replied with a shrug.

"Plus, when I found him, he was a baby and couldn't feed himself, and neither I nor my parents were going to go out and find a battlefield and bring home his natural food," Lia mumbled through a bit of food.

The two older people wanted to ask how the two friends had come to be with each other, but the king had ordered that they not question, her so they let them finish their food in silence.

That afternoon, their majesties, along with some others such as his son and daughter-in-law, Garth the second, Alanna, and Buri, arrived while Lia was playing with Numair and Daine's daughter, Sarra. The king watched the girl flout steel feathers in front of the younger girl changing the colors as fast as the Sarra named them. He saw the Wilima nose prominate on her face but also the gentle and innocent eyes of a child that had seen too much at a young age and had traveled far. She was still thin, but he could see the hardness beneath the frail seeming.

He looked over at the one from which the feather must have come and saw to his surprise a young youth of a Stormwing perched sleeping near the window. His hair was tidy, as was his appearance, and he didn't smell as all the other Stormwings king Jonathon the Third had met.

Noticing him, the little girl got up and ran over to hug him and Thayet yelling, "Uncle Jon… Aunt Thyt..."

"Hello, youngling. You been having fun today?" the king said, ruffling her hair.

"Yes. Do you want to meet my new friend? She was a wolf but now she's human and she can do magic!" the little girl exclaimed. "And she has a friend that's a Stormwig and he's really nice!"

"Yes, I think I would like to meet them. Would you introduce us?" Thayet asked, smiling down at the girl.

The queen had her hesitations of this girl claiming to be her relative. She barely remembered her Uncle; he left when she was very young. The only thing that she remembered about him was that he was very nice to her and would give her piggy back rides around the castle. This girl that looked over at them was clearly scared witless but proud in her own small way. Her movements were trained; though not as a royal would be trained, but as a servant would bow to a king. But she was most definitely of her blood line.

Sarra ran over to the now standing Ontillia and pulled her over. Looking up at the adults, she braced herself and clearly as possible said, "Your majesties I, Ontillia, put myself at you mercy," and curtsied as a lower royal to another. Apparently, someone had taught her the moves.

"Rise, Ontillia. It seems to me that cousins should not be subservient to one another," Thayet said gently, putting a hand on one of the girl's thin shoulders. She could only be around Lianna's age, after all, and she was so thin and weak looking. The haunted look in her eye made Thayet want to just hold her tight forever as she would with her own children.

The girl stood upright and looked at the king and queen and their entourage, sizing them up. Lunian moved slightly on his perch, causing everyone to look at him, and Lia said, "Please call me Lia, Ma'am, and this Lunian. He's saved my life several times." She held the eyes of those before her, one after another, never wavering in her gaze, though she shook in fear at times.

Lunian stepped off the perch and onto some rock-looking things with flat bottoms and slowly made his way over. He stopped at an inoffensive distance and made his bow, "My Lords and Ladies."

"Sarra, come. It's time for your nap, little one," Daine called from the nursery door.

"Yes Mama," the little girl said, unsure of her new friends' actions.

"Make yourselves comfortable," Numair invited, coming from his study and taking a cushioned seat.

Ontillia took a chair close to Lunian and waited for everyone to settle and for Daine to return. A few seconds of silence pervaded the room as Lia tried to calm her thoughts.

Finally, Lunian stroked her leg with a claw, careful not to cut her. She smiled over at him before beginning. "As I told Numair and Daine, my name is Ontillia jian Wilima. I am Queen Thayet's cousin through her father, the former warlord of Sarain. I don't know if you remember, but your father had a younger half brother, Menthin," she paused and looked at the Queen.

"Yes, I vaguely remember him," she said with a smile. "I liked him. He would give me rides through the castle sometimes, but he was exiled when I was about seven for having a son with his wife. My father didn't want my uncle to get the throne. I remember something about how it was a miracle that he didn't just have his brother killed."

"Apparently, my grandfather and your father were close at one point when they were younger. Yes, that son that you remember being born was my father. Grandfather moved him and grandma to a northern village, one of those out of the way places that no one knows the name of. Da married my mom when they were about seventeen and had Ritchard a year or so after. Life went fairly well for about ten years, until Grandda told my brother about our heritage." She paused for a moment.

"That was a year before I was born. They didn't realize how ambitious my brother was. He gathered quite a following by the time I was five to rebel against Lord Anduo." Lia took a deep breath, trying to remove the emotion from her voice. "The Lord found out and came for us two years later. Dad saw them and came running from the field where he was working." Stopping to blink the tears away, she took another deep breath. "Ritchard was in the town with his 'army' when they hit and was killed in the first wave. Well, the Lord's army had orders to kill all the residents in the town and the outlying areas. Da stuffed me and Lunian into the niches in the well where we kept the milk during the summer. He tried to get Ma down there, but was too late. He barely had time to cover the well before they hit." She bit her lip and looked down at her hands as she twisted them. Lunian also bowed his head and surprised the gathered humans by having tears streaming down his face.

Ontillia mastered herself again and continued, "We came out after the noise had stopped for several minutes. They were all dead or almost dead. Da lay right beside the well. We think he died right after pulling the covering. The only one left alive was my Ma, but even I knew that she was dying. Her leg had been cut open badly, and she had healed it the best she could, but it wasn't enough and I didn't know enough to heal her. That's when she told me about my heritage and why she cried when I was born."

"A curse was set on one of my great-grandmothers so that all the daughters of her line would be happy only long enough to raise a family and have a daughter of their own. That daughter would then become able to care for herself and then her family would die, leaving her alone. The cycle will continue until a daughter of that line gains the forgiveness of the goddess that our great-grandmother offended." She stopped and just breathed for a moment. Daine came over and hugged the small girl. The story was just too much like her own, except that Daine had been old enough to take care of herself.

"How did you survive?" Thayet asked as gently as possible when the child released and pushed away Daine only to lean into Lunain's chest. He had moved behind her during the story.

Okay so that chapter was getting a bit long so I'll continue with that through next chapter. I'll try to keep it short, but, well for those of you that know my writings, I tend to have stories that have to be told and I can't figure out how to tell them without doing something like this.