When she was a child, it was easy to think that life was perfect.
It was easy to step back and look at the glossy exterior: the strong, hands-on father and the sweet, nurturing mother. It was easy to allow herself to be surrounded by them. To be buoyed by their attention. Even when things got rough—when Leliana and her had to leave Loess suddenly and her mother had to tell her that her father was away taking care of his responsibilities—she knew that her family was whole.
But lately.
Lately, she’s begin to feel her fingers around the edges of the picture. She is still young, her mind still unable to fully comprehend the magnitude of pain that washes underneath each moment like the tide, but pieces have begun to click together steadily. Dovev’s outburst. The way her mother had always looked like she had just gotten done crying during their time in Tephra. That scaled boy in the playground.
None of it make true sense. She has no narrative to piece together.
But it is enough to rouse her suspicion.
Enough to make her question all of the things she has always considered to be the truth.
It drives her from the safety of her home into the meadow, it pulls her like a gravity until she is standing in front of her father, his skin charred and the blood still flowing between his teeth.
Her eyes widen, her heart pounds, and she struggles to move—struggles to draw air into her chest.
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.
She blinks, shaking, mouth dropping open to reveal the shine of the fangs given from him to her.
“D-Dad?” her voice is hesitant, a question, a thread of hope that this wasn’t what she thought it was.
That she was, somehow, still wrong about everything.
howl at the half moon, radio queen. she's all smoke. she's all nicotine.