Ristadis sighed despondantly as she let the flower wreath flow away on the water. It was a local way of remembering the dead. The action may be Matorian but her memories coursed through Zena and the places she had not been for many years. She wanted those memories to disapear, except for the memory of her parents themselves. That she wished would live forever in her heart. Her chest still ached dully when she thought of them. Of the guiding parental light of blood relatives. Her adoptive Father was the best but he was not her real parent. No matter how hard she had willed herself to follow that thought it always bounced off that her own parents were gone. There was an empty hole that felt like it would never be properly filled.

She had found her own family though, out here, she knew that not all orphans were as lucky as her. Either they didn't get adopted or they went to families that were not their perfect match. It hurt to think about them too. But she had been saved and the scars laid on her soul helped make her who she was.

She loved those she had left, growing as it was too. Her sister and brother in law had wasted little time in bringing her small delights in the form of a bevy of sweet children for her to spoil. Being an aunt was the best!

Still she felt partially hollow as she had no other family from who she was before she had lost her parents. It felt like living in two different worlds at the same time.

She went so far as to go to a wise woman and ask about loss and feeling guilty. Only to hear from the specialist that what she felt was normal and that everyone took a different amount of time to grieve. So Rista tried to hold on to the good memories and forget the time of terror when she was completely alone in the world. It still woke her up sometimes in the middle of the night. The emptiness had no one to beat it back. So she sometimes went and slept in her Father's room. Weather he was there or not, his scent, of fresh pine and mountain streams always calmed her down and made her feel loved. Her Father had soothed her in a time when she had been looking to latch onto anyone as support. From within his kind arms and sometimes perched on his shoulder, she learned to see the rest of the world again, not to hide from it. It had taken time, even for a kind soul like him, but he had had Ninaeleth's help. Nin had gone through a very similar situation and Rista was able to take refuge in shared traumatic experience, from someone nearer her own age. She smiled when she thought of how strange they had both looked when she first met them. Fins, silver eyes, silvery and bi tone skin, yet a family they were and together a family they became again.

She was as fiercly loyal to her new family as she had ever been to her blood one. She sang the songs her Mother sang when she soothed Nin's kids. And so parts of her old family lived on in parts of her new one. It was constantly morphing and changing but becoming greater, becoming grander. Her heart had slowly filled over the years and she was truly happy. Loved ones were never truly forgotten, no matter in which manner they were lost.

She wished that they could be there to see her grow as a swordsman, but as she thought about it she felt like maybe they would be watching still. She would do them all proud, her new family, her old family and family still to come. She was part of a greater thing, a living thing, she had a lagacy and it was time for her to lay it.

Rista trained as hard as she had ever done to prepare for the hardest trial of her life so far in terms of accomplishment. Of courses everyone else currently important in her life would attend and that would be enough, she would hang her head proud with many weapon masters before her. The twin blades were an elegant art and through her art she would honor her family.

She felt deep in her heart that her path was finally perfectly clear and she was able to concentrate with a uncluttered consciousness.

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