Having spent a lot of the journey spinning tales, Aralyn fell silent when they approached the town, resting her throat and centering herself in the corporeal world.<br/><br/>The young sorceress met the eyes of children who admired them, giving them smiles and little waves.<br/><br/>As they entered the manor, her throat tightened for a different reason.  Every picture they passed, her eyes sought hungrily for an image of her father to fill the blanks left in her imagination . She was sure she would recognize him from her mother's many tales, and she'd never felt his loss so heavily as when she began to believe she had not even an image of him!<br/><br/>Then they entered the library and her eyes widened and brightened.  The elfkin girl crossed the library to stare at the portrait closely.  Slowly her eyes brightened and a smile returned to her lips.  “You truly are as mother said,” she whispered.  Then Aralyn spun to face the steward with a bright smile and a half curtsy.  “Crassus Antilus,” her eyes danced.  “Gauis is not the only one my mother remembers fondly.  She has spoken of you on occasion, and asked that I deliver her greetings.”<br/><br/>Aralyn carefully removed her mask and rested it on her knee.  Then the blond took an orange and a peach, then set them beside her plate.  Next she split a loaf with her knife and piled some saucy meat on it.  At the first bite, her nose wrinkled a little bit at the entirely too smooth and fatty taste of domesticated herdbeast, but the flavor grew on her quickly, and with the promise of fruit to follow, she found herself savoring the meal.<br/><br/>Aralyn held to a bright but bittersweet demeanor through talk of her father and his legacy—up until the revelation of his cause of death.  This set the blond's lower lip to trembling and her eyes to shining.  She tried to contain herself, but the very idea that those monsters had done her father in after decades of fighting, decades more after his victor, made her want to sob.  Tears ran freely down Aralyn's cheeks for some time.<br/><br/>It was Edmund's words that snapped her out of it.  She dabbed at her cheeks with a cloth napkin, then flashed her half brother a fierce smile.  “We are the sons and daughters of Gaius Talonius.  Let them come.”