PeaceMaker

"My safety?" Desilva echoed, her eyebrows furrowing slightly at her mother's words. They exchanged eye contact for a second before a burst of hesitant laughter staggered out of Desilva's lips, "But mother, I'm safer here than I ever was at the village."

Memoline flinched and her head, once held up high, lowered as her eyes peered deep into Desilva. The tone of her voice dropped. "Silvi."

"We were getting visited by tax collectors almost every month and before his highness showed up, it was beginning to become a weekly attack," Desilva voiced, her arm drawing onto her lap protectively.

"Silvia..." Memoline muttered, her tone dropping as the air in the room stiffened. 

"We were suffering there, mother.. Even you were struggling, you were sick. We could barely feed our village in the wintertime and the children had to wear sheets that had been torn beyond the expectations for clothing," Desilva pressed, "I know you and the elder want to make it feel like we weren't going through a bad time. You helped the kids grow up as normally as you could, teaching them to hunt with us and how to sew, but with each month passing by, it became apparent to me that we were barely making it by."

"Silvia," 

"If his highness and his army didn't come to us at that moment, who knew if we could have had any food or money for the next year," Desilva continued, her eyebrows furrowing deeper as her frustration and anger rose. 

"Desilva,"

"I WAS READY TO USE MYSELF AS A PAYMENT MOTHER!! I WAS GOING TO END IT ALL WITH ME! If it weren't Dominic that was there at that moment, who knows with who or where I would have been!"

"DESILVA!" 

Desilva shivered as her name rang out in the room, slamming into her ears. In silence, she sat there for a second before slowly looking up at her mother, a shiver running down her spine when they made eye contact. 

She could feel it. The fury, the frigid coldness in the gray flurry in her mother's eyes. A sight so chilling that her lips were pinned shut and as those gray icicles pierced into her, she wished she could swallow the heavy words she had said that still hung in the air like a thick blanket of snow. 

"Mother…" she muttered weakly.

"How dare you?" Memoline retorted, her voice so low and harsh, it felt like a growl rather than words came out of her mouth. 

Desilva flinched, instinctively shifting slightly away from her mother. 

"'If his highness hadn't…' Do you think that he's some savior? That we must bow to him and respect every action he makes because he lent a few more hands to us?" Memoline snapped, her voice wavering as it rose, "How dare you put the very reason why we suffer as a savior? If he hadn't existed, if his father hadn't existed, we would not be in the state that we are in right now."

"Mother…"

"Let it be known, that every act of kindness that he has done in this past year will never be enough to cover the damage done by his parents before! That every act of kindness he has made, will never be thanked for genuinely out of my mouth! THAT I WOULD HAVE RATHER GONE THROUGH OUR LIFE AS WE WERE BEFORE THAN RECIEVE HIS HELP!"

Desilva shook as her mother's words rattled through her. Her hand shook as her heart rate went up and her face fell to her lap, unable to look up at her mother.

"Suffering? How dare you speak so demeaningly with the same mouth I gave you, with the same words I taught you about your family!" Memoline fumed, "We were not SUFFERING, we were SURVIVING! Are you so wrapped up in the shine of the mirror that you have peered through for one day, so entranced by the soft silk on your body and by the gold linings of the palace you stay in that the life you lived in now seems to be a life of hardship and suffering?!"

"M-mother.." Desilva stuttered. 

"Or are you so caught up in that prince's eyes that you cannot see clearly through yours anymore?" Memoline snarled, her words heavy like a weighted hand had slapped Desilva across the face.

"NO MOTHER!" Desilva yelled, falling to her knees as she scrambled up, her arms wrapping around her mother's waist and head buried in her lap, "No mother! No, no I am not!"

"Never forget that the life you lived before the prince's presence, that the life you spent with your family, that that life you call suffering, was caused by his kingdom," Memoline growled, her voice lower but just as harsh as before and like words repeated in a chant, they repeated in Desilva's head. 

Desilva sat silently, her grip on her mother as tight as it was when she fell to her knees. The words lingered on her tongue as she weighed their need to be said. Her mother's tone and warning rang in their head as fear of disobedience mixed with their blaring rings. Her lips pursed together as she tried to bite back the words, but they spilled forward soon after. She needed to know. "W-what did they do?" she asked, her trembling voice barely above a whisper as her grip on her mother's waist increased. 

"What?"

"W-what did they do to us?" Desilva repeated, "y-you mention the pain t-they brought us but you never go into specifics of what a-actually happened."

Memoline peered down at her daughter's head, staring at the way her hair layered on top of each other and flowed down her head. Her stiffly set lips, crinkle as their edges slowly dip, her jaw clenching. 'I should have never allowed her around him,' she thought to herself as she let out a long quivering sigh, 'she has changed.'

"M-mother, I want to know what happened to us," Desilva begged, "I-I want to know the a-actions of the one I should hate."

Memoline stared into her daughter's eyes, the gray storm in her eyes darkening. 'The look in her eyes, even the way her hair looks. Everything has changed.' 

"M-mother?" Desilva stammered as tears began to form in her eyes, "M-mother, please. I don't mean to anger you in any way. I just want to know more of our history, I-I want to understand the pain we went through so I d-do not act in a way that causes us more pain."

"Why?" Memoline muttered, "why must you know?"

"M-mother?" Desilva flinched, unable to recognize her own mother's voice.

"Do you not trust me?" Memoline pressed, her hands reaching for the arms Desilva had tightly wrapped around her waist, "do you not trust the words your own mother tell you?"

Desilva immediately shook her head, burying her head further in her mother's lap as tears began to run out of her eyes. Her hands wrapped tightly around her mother's waist, "Y-yes mother. I do! E-every word t-that you say. P-please, don't let go."

"Then why must you know?" Memoline spat, her frown growing into a scowl. Her hands grabbed onto Desilva's arm and slowly started peeling them off, "do you no longer respect the words I tell you? Do they no longer hold any weight to you?"

"M-mother p-please don't- yes, yes I do," Desilva sobbed, her hands shaking as she tried to hold on to her mother. 

"Then do not question my words," Memoline spat, her hands ripping away Desilva's grip. Desilva slipped, her footing on the ground slipping as she fell to the ground, tears running down her face. 

"M-mother…" Desilva stuttered, her hands tightly gripping the hems of her skirt as her head hung, facing the ground. 

Knock knock knock

The room stood in threatening silence, like a breath being held for longer than needed. 

"Come in," Memoline instructed, her voice cooling to a calmer volume as she turned away from Desilva to the door. 

The door swung open and a man walked in, his eyes fixating on Memoline only. "A visitor has come to speak with you, chief," the man relayed, "a gray-headed man, said he is a royal council member."

Memoline nodded her head and smiled. "I'll be right out." Once the man had bowed and stepped out of the room, her gaze fell down to Desilva who sat quietly sobbing to herself.

"You have changed," Memoline muttered, her calm sentence like a knife to Desilva's heart. "This place, that boy. They have changed you." Before Desilva could grab at her feet, before she could scream out an apology, before she could beg, Memoline turned around and walked away. 

Desilva listened to the sound of the door closing before her tears poured forward without restraint. "M-mother… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" she murmured as she rocked back and forth. In her trance, she barely flinched at the sound of the door creaking open, barely even noticing it.

"Desilva…" Chalice called out to her in a soft worried voice as she looked in, "oh no…"

Desilva looked up at her through blurred vision. She choked, "I-I made mother angry."

*

CHARACTER PROFILE UPDATES!! (just in case they are needed)

(Everyone +1 because of the year passed in war)

*Dominic Aarvi-

Age: 20

*Boris-

Age: 21

*Kalmin R. Pervot-

Age: 24

*Claudia R. Clav-

Age: 19

*Desilva Milti-

Age: 20

*Axel Xicheng-

Age: 23

*Memoline Milti-

Age: 52

*Litian Roman-

Age: 20

*Adia Sole-

Age: 19