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5 times Aislyn had been given empty promises + 1 time Aislyn finally experiences a fulfilled promise
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“Once the situation in the Empire settles down, I’ll take you back to my family’s territory and show you the sea—I promise.”
Her father often talked about the sea and the breath-taking views whenever the sun sat on the horizon.
He even promised that, one day, he’d take her to his family’s territory and prove that its true beauty wasn’t something that could be captured in photos. He had even stuck out his pinky and childishly made a pinky promise with her—as if acting that would turn his words into the absolute truth.
And she had foolishly entwined her pinky with his, burying the promise in her heart—all while hoping for the day it would turn into fruition.
For several days, she would daydream about the way the sun would sparkle on the water or how the sea water be more cool than that of the river. She tried to imagine the way the sky turned a beautiful pink when the sun was rising over the horizon, but couldn’t exactly capture the beauty he had bragged about.
But, one fateful day, she had grabbed onto his hand—after finally accepting she wasn’t going on the trip with her parents to Duscur. “Father—you’ll come back, won’t you?”
He just ruffled her hair—an affectionate action she always enjoyed receiving—with a tired smile as he spoke. The image of his back turning, disappearing int other carriage was burned in her memory.
“I promise I’ll return.”
The only one to return was a bloodied, barely breathing body of her mother—the left side of her face, hardly recognizable, had been covered in layers of bandages. She had remembered the way her mother’s hand barely lifted itself in the air before wiping her daughter’s tears.
The was the last time Aislyn felt warmth from her mother.
After her recovering, her mother was forced to immediately return to work, having to fill the additional role of her missing husband. It didn’t help that during the time she had been resting, many of the distant relatives visited—in hopes that they would be able to take over House Erebus. Even Count Rowe himself had given a visit in hopes to be the one to do so.
Aislyn could only watch, as a helpless 14-year-old girl, her mother drown herself in work—trying to protect her home. It was as if the countless papers and merchants had been on her mother’s mind and she and her little siblings had been forgotten.