"Your Auntie would be so proud of you, Taijana."

Tai's father smoothed locks of hair away from her face, and place a kiss to her forehead, just as he had when she was a girl. His eyes were swollen and damp from crying, but he never shuddered, not around his baby girl.

Even now, a solid year after her Aunt Dulci's passing, the reality of it all still rocked their little family. She'd always been a frail woman, prone to sickness after the crippling of her leg, but no one had expected her to go so soon. The healer's had told her father that her health was improving; that maybe, despite all the strife happening on Yael, that the positive changes in her family had been enough to see her through. And yet...it hadn't.

Weeks after Xenia was born Dulci slipped away from them in the night. Her father found her tucked into her bed, as if she were sleeping, with a peaceful look upon her face.

At the time Taijana had mourned her loss heavily. Not only was the guilt of not visiting with her as often as she should have slamming into her, but her own mother, the same woman she'd avoided for years, had spat so much hate towards her that even now Taijana felt sick.

"She did so much to help take care of you, and where were you? Off gallivanting around with your new husband, looking after your new family, when the one who needed you most was rotting in her bed-"

It was because of her mother that Taijana had scarcely brought her Kitya around. She wanted her daugther to know her father, wanted Kieran to know him, and Dulci both, but the chances of her mother being around had always been too high...and now, now she wished she'd been a little braver, had had a stronger spine, just to push past the harpy to see her Auntie more.

"I'm happy that you came by. I think she would have really liked it, having us, all here again."

Taijana turned to her father, and saw him making moves to sit by her at the dining table. For the first time in years the whole family, with some notable additions, were crowded into their small home. There was so much heat from their active bodies that all the doors and windows had been propped open, letting in some much needed fall wind to cool the space down a bit.

She kept Xenia close to her chest, wrapping up the wee one as she napped. "She would have liked it, but....I think she would have liked it if it were warmer."

Her father laughed a little. "You're right; Dulci never was a fan of the cold." He reached over to brush back some girls away from Xenia's face, eliciting a little sleepy murmur from the babe. "You know, I hated Kieran when you first told me about him."

"Wh-what?! Really?"

"Yeah, really," he chuckled, "My baby girl goes off without talking things over with her papa first, chasing some stupid boy across an ocean and leaving us all for months on end? I wanted to sock him right in the face as soon as the two of you came back. Your Auntie, though...she stopped me."

"Auntie did?"

"She said he was the best thing to happen to you, and that without him, she may have never left home, let alone Yael. And...she was right. You're more confident now than I've seen you in years, and a mother, to boot. I knew you and your Auntie spent a lot of time together, but I never really realized how much she knew about my own daughter that I didn't." He turned his head up to look at Taijana with a sad sort of smile, "I want to be jealous, but I'm not. She helped make you who you are now, and for that I owe her the world."

Taijana couldn't stop herself from crying. She crossed the space between them, slinging her free arm around her father's shoulder to pull him close.

When her father was out on the hunt with her siblings, Taijana had always been stuck at home with her mother and her Auntie. Dulci had been the only one to stand between Kiera and Tai when the woman was at her worst. She hadn't been able to fight her back every time, but even when she couldn't Dulci was always there to make Taijana feel better in the end. If Kiera gave her extra chores Dulci would try to split the load, if she was having trouble sleeping Dulci would tell stories to her, and now that she knew her families acceptance of Kieran was all thanks to Dulci...

Taijana missed the woman all the more.

[801]