Own nothing. This one is very sad, I'm warning you.
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"Dad?"
"Hey, Tommy. What is it?"
"My teacher says we have to do a report on one of our ancestors."
"When is this due?"
"Tomorrow."
"Are you serious?"
"No, I have a week."
"Thank God. Okay, who do you want to write about?"
"I dunno, Nana?"
"Nana Sharp or Nana Anderson?"
"Nana Sharp."
"Okay, let's get your mom in here. She was Nana's granddaughter. Lily? Lily, Tommy's working on a project. We need you to tell us about Deryn."
"Just let me finish this email... Okay, done. What do you need to know, kiddo?"
"Well, like, did she do any cool stuff?"
"Oh, yeah. She dressed as a boy and joined the Air Service."
"You never told me that!"
"Wow! Did she kill Nazis?"
"Tommy! Don't you talk about violence like that! But Nazis were in World War Two. She was WRAF for that one."
"What was World War One about, then?"
"There was this guy Archduke Ferdinand... I don't really know the details."
"Dad?"
"Um. Well, there were Germans involved. I am positive that Germans were involved somehow. So she kind of killed Nazis."
"Will!"
"Sorry."
"Anyway, she was a wonderful grandmother. When I was a teenager, she tried to get me to go up in a Huxley. God, those things were deathtraps. But towards the end, she had dementia."
"What?"
"It's a disease that elderly people sometimes have. It makes them very confused, and it's very sad because sometimes people don't remember their pasts."
"Yeah, it was really bad. She kept talking about a prince, she had to stop a prince from being assassinated. And we'd tell her that their wasn't any prince. She would yell, 'The pope made him a prince! Showed me the scroll and everything! At the hotel!' Always called me 'Lilit,' too. I would say, 'No, Gran, I'm Lily. Lily, not Lilit. Lily, Alex's daughter. Lily.' Then she would start crying, saying, 'Alek? Please don't tell him, Lilit.' It was so hard to see her like that."
"I'm sorry, mom."
"It's okay, she's in heaven now."
"Aw, Lils, don't cry."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."