Evvy wondered if they thought about her at all.
She wondered if her mother ever looked down at her hands and remembered how they had pushed her only daughter into the grasp of the innkeeper while the little girl wailed. Evvy thought she shouldn't be able to remember that day; she had been so young at the time. Why, then, was it engrained so well into her memory that she could recall the colour of the slaver's tunic and boots, the smell of the street, the feel of her mother's cool hands on her arm and neck. Evvy wondered if she remembered how the man had looked Evvy up and down and grinned with a smile missing teeth. Evvy wondered if her mother remembered the words she said (words Evvy remembered every day).
"We'll take what we can get for her; we know she is just a girl."
Evvy knew her mother didn't remember how Evvy was dragged off the street, screaming after her mother because Evvy watched her until the door slammed shut and Rookyia Dingzai never once turned back.
Sometimes, Evvy wondered if her father ever heard of her. She had helped destroy a palace in Chammur, had found the spirit of a mountain and taken the 'talking rock' across six countries, had been involved in a war, had stopped the destruction of a volcano... As she travelled with Briar and Rosethorn, she heard stories about her teachers and even herself from people who didn't yet know who they were talking with.
Evvy thought that even if her father had stopped to listen to the tales, he wouldn't recognize who they were talking about. After all, she was just a girl.
Evvy wondered if her brothers remembered her at all. Her youngest brother had been born only after they had fled Yanjing, and was too young to remember anything before she had been left in Chammur, but Wenzhilee and Yiaaming and Huizhaii had been older than her and would surely tell the baby about her. Evvy wondered if they would repeat their parents' thoughts or if they would remember her as more than just the girl.
On nights on the road, especially just after Briar rescued her – she always thought of him finding her that way, even if she would never boost his ego by telling him so – Evvy thought about what it would be like to see them again. The girl they sold for three times less than the cost of the rocks she carried was well on her way to becoming a mage. And even though rock magic was common as dirt, a rock mage studying with the famed Briar Moss and Rosethorn, with a mountain as a companion and becoming a novice in Winding Circle temple wasn't.
So when Evvy thought about her mother's face and her father's voice and the teasing of her brothers too long and got sad, she would imagine all the things they would think when they heard about all the great things this 'just a girl' would be capable of. Falling asleep with these thought in her head was always easier. They would love her, then (though she wasn't always sure she wanted them to), and they would beg her to come back (though Evvy knew she wouldn't) and they would regret ever seeing her as useless (this Evvy never questioned).
Truthfully, her family would never hear of her success. They would never cry on seeing her, and admit that they were wrong. They would never hear tales and wonder if it could possibly be their child. Her mother would never wish she had looked back, her father would never weep for the child he had lost, her brothers never regret the times they didn't say kind words.
Three miles west of Chammur, they were attacked by bandits and killed for the handful of coins they made from selling Evvy. Their bones lay in the sand of a ditch on the side of the road, hidden from passing travellers and far removed from the whispers of growing legend that feature the name of the last Dingzai.
A/N Didn't see that coming, did ya?