The Talking Sword – Chapter 2 post 5

***just so you know – I’m trying to update this every couple of days, it may stretch out to three or four days once in a while, so be patient!***

 

“Belladonna…” Neverbob began, but he was interrupted by a sharp retort from Dawn.

“Not Belladonna. I hate that name. My mother gave me that name and then she left us. My name is Dawn.”

“But Belladonna is such a wonderful name, a name of beauty and strength,” said Neverbob.

“It’s also a name for the plant ‘deadly nightshade’, used for thousands of years to poison people. No thanks, I prefer Dawn.” She crossed her arms and glared. “Same as you hate the name Bob.”

“How did you know that?”

“Granpa called you Robard, but introduced you the other day as Neverbob. Robard might get shortened to Rob, or maybe Bob. So you mustn’t like Bob, to be called Neverbob.” Even with her arms crossed and through the glare, Dawn still managed to smile, just a little bit.

Robard looked at her for a few seconds with his lips pressed tightly together, then turned to her grandfather.

“Do you realise it has been more than two hundred years since we had a female sworder? And she was able to achieve great things for the fellowship.”

“And do you remember what happened to her? Do you?” Grandfather’s face was starting to turn red with rage.

“She gave her life defending innocent people.”

“She wasn’t even twenty years old!”

Robard paused, deliberately calm for one breath then a second before saying “In the short time she led the fellowship, she did much. She reminded us of our purpose, reminded us that the measure of a person is in what they do for others, not what they achieve for themselves.”

“And then she died, stuck on a soldiers bayonet. Did she cry, Robard? Did she call for her mother as she lay there bleeding in the snow?”

 

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