Chapter Text
When the distant outline of Ketterdam building’s peaks and the harbor became visible through the morning fog, Priya’s heart started falling into the abyss and soaring back to heavens again with new force. She couldn’t allow herself to believe that this was happening.
No, nothing was happening yet – for all she knew, she and her husband were traveling to this foreign city to ‘receive news about their missing daughter Inej Ghafa’. The wording was so vague it could mean anything. Maybe someone was waiting there to tell them she’d been seen there but was gone now with no trace. Maybe they’d find her in one of those… those places and would have to get her out. The thought lay heavy in her chest, but, if that was the case, Priya had no doubt they would find a way. The previous two years had prepared her to get her hands dirty for her child should she ever have the opportunity. Almost eager.
But that cursed vagueness. Maybe they’ll be taken straight to some local morgue. Priya knew nothing in the whole world could prepare her for that one scenario.
The woman felt Devnand’s hand on her shoulder as he hugged her lightly. She knew he was equally as anxious, and yet his proximity was comforting. She forced her eyes away from the city ahead to meet his gaze and answer his reassuring smile with her own. Morning sun turned into silver his freshly grayed temples, and some part of her mind that never quite grew old whispered that her husband was handsome.
Priya felt her smile growing more genuine. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, facing the inevitable truth together.
It hadn’t always been like that. She could never forget those agonizing, suffocating months right after their girl had been taken from them. Once the first confusion, shock and panic had faded away, she’d wanted to blame someone, and the real culprits had gotten far out of reach. Sometimes the guilt for shutting him out would still resurface and torture her at night as she tried to fall asleep by her amazing, gentle husband’s side.
‘You’re a mother’, he’d told her at her apology. ‘You could curse the whole world for what happened and still be right.’
‘But not you’, her voice had been muffled as she’d hidden her face in his chest, pain upon pain upon pain threatening to tear her apart from inside. His hands around her shaking frame had taken some of it away and there’d still been enough to fill the True Sea.
‘Not you, not you.’
‘I can’t believe I’m afraid now’, she said, turning back to the distant shore. ‘I’ve been praying for this, for… for anything for years, and I’m terrified.’
He squeezed her shoulder, holding her closer. His other hand found her palm and brought it to his lips.
‘Me too, sajnii. Hope is terrifying,’ Devnand said with his usual calm wisdom, the one she knew their daughter would’ve – would inherit. ‘But you are brave. We can face it.’
She let her head lean gingerly on his shoulder. They weren’t accustomed to outwardly showing their feelings in public, but there were not many people on the deck this early, and the few sailors running on their chores didn’t pay them much attention. And even if they did – a Suli couple would stand out like a sore thumb regardless of their behavior. Suli didn’t usually travel by sea that much. Not by choice.
And she’d made a habit of pushing the boundaries of acceptable recently anyway.
‘And how would you know how brave I am?’ she asked, her eyes fixed on that saintsforsaken harbor, closer and closer, too fast, too slowly. ‘Not like I need my courage when you’re around.’
He kissed her temple, his lips betraying a smile.
‘See? Flirting with me while we both tremble with fear. Brave.’
Priya let out a nervous chuckle and hastily wiped her eyes, unwilling to let the tears spill out and make her look like she already had a reason to mourn.
He was right though. She was brave. They both were capable of much more than they’d once thought. They could face it.
***
But when she saw a tiny figure, almost like the one that visited her in her dreams, running towards her, when she heard the voice that had called her for help every night, shaking with joy instead of fear now – Priya had to grab her husband’s arm, losing her balance for the first time in ages. And he had to hold on to her, his strength leaving him for once.
Because, as it turned out, all the anger, and terror, and the gruesome things they had to witness, and hear about, and do over the last two years hadn’t prepared them for seeing their daughter alive, laughing, overwhelmed with happiness, flying into their arms.