"What time is it?" She yawned, reaching into her wardrobe to grab one of her silk robes, tossing Isabela an extra one.
"Certainly too early for someone to be having a visit," she muttered as Lisa tied the robe closed and stepped out into her quiet home. Bohdan had promised his services to her after she saved his son despite the fact that his son seemed to be quite able to take care of himself. Either way he was still here helping his mother keep the massive house together with his son's help. And apparently it was so early that the two were still in their quarters asleep, which seemed to surprise Lisa since it seemed like they never did go to bed.
Cautiously she opened the door and stared at something she never expected to see. Clara stared up at her with the surprisingly amber eyes as Isabela looked over her shoulder before grabbing onto the back of Lisa's robe in either fear or surprise. "Lisa…why is there a wolf at your door? That's not normal, right? Out of everything that's happened to you, this is strange…right? Please say it is?" She begged only to watch as Lisa knelt down and held out her hand to the dog. It came up and gently licked her palm before the girl smiled.
"You have no idea how happy I am to see you, Clara," she said with excitement, leaning forward and wrapping her arms around the dog. And suddenly tears appeared in her eyes and she squeezed it tightly. Clara was all she had left of Lothering and for years she'd thought the marvelous beast was gone. And yet here she was in all her glory. Slowly Lisa pulled back, pulling at her tears as she glanced up at Isabela's confused face with a smirk. "This is Clara, we met a few years ago in Lothering. Never really one to be a pet, she's much too wild for that, but she always kept coming back whenever she would leave. Apparently this is no different."
"I think it is…" Isabela remarked, gesturing to a basket that Clara was standing over. The wolf whimpered and did the same as Lisa looked at it curiously. Slowly, she pulled at the corner of the blanket before pulling her hand back like it was going to bite her.
It was a baby.
Its head was covered in feathery black hair and it looked no more than a few months old and was sleeping soundly in the basket. But the worst part of it all was that when Lisa looked back up, Clara was gone. She snapped to her feet and rushed into the middle of the empty city with nothing but a robe on. "Clara!" She called, whipping her head around in search of the black wolf. But she was gone, leaving a baby on Lisa's doorstep.
The woman came back with slumped shoulders, looking down at the basket and then up at Isabela who was reading a small bit of parchment. Lisa glanced over her shoulder before plucking it out of her hands as she read it.
Dear Lisa,
Hello, darling. I know this is more than you're expecting to get from me, but this is something that I really need for you to do. His name is Kane and I know that you'll be able to care for him as if he was one of your own. I love you and I'm so proud of how you've grown.
A Dear Old Friend
"So…you have a baby now?" Isabela asked curiously as Lisa looked over the child, watching as he shifted in his sleep. Her mouth was open in surprise. She couldn't have a baby…or at least she just wasn't ready for one. Her life didn't have room for it but there wasn't much she could do now and I wasn't like she could simply leave him there.
So she brought Kane back inside and found him a room in one of the many bedrooms that her new home had. Her mother seemed to be thrilled – after she tried to understand how Kane came to be and even then Lisa couldn't tell if she believed her. And Lisa was happy for her; it helped the woman take her mind off of Bethany being in the Circle while Lisa was able to continue to live her life. She did admit, though, that she found some joy in coming back home to him. Despite how much she didn't exactly want him to show up on her doorstep, he had.
Lisa loved running her fingers through his thickening, black hair while she watched him draw or play on the floor. And while her mother had taken to loving – when he was able to talk – that he called her "nana" Lisa made it very clear for him not to call her any sort of "mother" name. She wasn't his mother, despite how close she felt to him as the years passed. To him she was Lisa – or with his young vocabulary "Leeza."
And in a way he really had become her child, but he wasn't. He didn't look anything like her. Everything about them was extremely different. His hair, for one, was black, and his eyes were a sharp green that seemed almost unnatural. She wasn't even sure if she should call him a Hawke. But in a way that seemed too silly to worry about.
For now she just dealt with having him and letting him grow up as she wondered whom his mother could've been. Did Clara have some other family she didn't know about? That was very possible. During her somewhat relaxing years she sort of tried to see if the woman was in Kirkwall. She asked all of her friends to keep an eye out, but in the end they just ended up fawning over Kane and seemed to forget about it all together.