CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
She can sense the shift in the atmosphere, the way the air between them pulls taut after she brings up Magnus. She is unfamiliar with what the relationship between a father and child should be like—her own father was absent, as were most of her siblings’ fathers. Whatever she has gleaned over the years is only from what she has observed in Atrox. She knows nothing of the relationship between him and Magnus, whether it had once been good and was now broken, or if it has always been strained. But she does know that Atrox is not a bad father, or at least, not to the ones he chooses to be around (and maybe there is a part of her that knows that is not necessarily a good thing—that he has children that grew up wanting to know him just as she had always wanted to know her own—but she has always been too thrilled at being one of the chosen few that she was willing to turn a blind eye to that).
There is a part of her that wants to fix whatever may have happened between them; thinks that surely it must be something that is fixable. She feels almost guilty at being able to speak freely with him when his own son can’t.
But she remembers her mother warning her to never bring up Atrox to Magnus during her then frequent visits to Tephra, and now she has Atrox before her requesting the same. And so even though there is an uncomfortable tug in her chest, she nods her head. “I won’t say anything to him, I promise.”
She is reluctant to leave, finding herself clinging to the only parental familiarity she has left. She is sure the desperation is on her face, but her mother’s absence had left such a painful ache and something about having Atrox—someone her mother had loved whole-heartedly—close was like a balm.“How are things in Hyaline? I keep meaning to come back and see how things are, but…” she trails off with a half-hearted and slightly rueful smile. She knows she does not have to explain to him why she doesn’t go back. It is the same reason he doesn’t leave, she assumes.
@atrox