Chapter 18

Asin takes the leather sack from Lealy and carries it on her shoulder. She walks behind Lealy and Dalia. Lealy is mumbling, upset and worried about Tirad that no one knows where he is. But Asin had seen Tirad going out of the house in the middle of the night and she had seen Dalia following him. Dalia had come back a little later and had slept by her side without saying anything. She must know where Tirad had ran off to but she won’t say it, not to her and not to Lealy who could hardly eat her breakfast, being so worried. The roofed alleys of Oxan are not new to Asin, but it is the first Dalia has seen such a place, Asin wants to tell her daughter about her past, especially now that she has finally set foot on land and can understand what it is like to live on an island. She needs a time alone with her but Lealy won’t let leave them to themselves and Dalia is obeying her every command without objection, asking Asin to do the same. She may be right to be so thankful. Who knows if anyone else had given the ruling, what could have happened to them? But Asin refuses to accept that she owes her life to Master Tirad, not the way Dalia has devoted herself to the idea. Not that she doesn’t like Tirad but she is torn by the thought of what she knows will happen to Dalia. Her maternal instinct tells her that Dalia has fallen for Tirad and since she has to leave him within the following days and go back to their ship, her heart will be broken. Even if they didn’t separate, Tirad would break her heart. Not only because he is young, but for having devoted his love to the Saviour. She knows his type, wandering men who have reached where they are with many difficulties, men who try to do the right thing their whole lives and never know what they wanted from life until it is too late; they spend their first half of their lives losing all their chances of happiness and spend the second half regretting it.

Asin knows her daughter well. She is similar to her, never too scared or too careful, sticking to her best opportunities. All she needs is a little more luck. She usually takes her time getting what she needs and achieving what she wants. But this newly flourished love has made her cautious. She didn’t smell like coming from a man’s arms last night when she returned. She hasn’t gained Tirad’s trust yet. She needs more time to subdue him, something she doesn’t have. She doesn’t want her daughter to fall into a similar fate as she did, having to get used the mundane life on the ship after a burning heartache. She feels too useless, not being able to help her daughter. She couldn’t help anyone and that disappoints her. If she could, she would have saved the life of her stillborn babies. Perhaps saving someone from death is easier than saving them from falling in love and have their hearts broken. She can’t help either of them; Dalia and Tirad have to go down this path alone as every other human being has done, a path of pains and inner wounds never fully healed and treated. They shall soon look for remedies to soothe the soaring pain of separation and seek shelter in mundane thoughts to dissipate the memories of these days. But Tirad will never even be truthful enough to himself to understand when and how his heart had been wounded. He will face his inner self too late to be able to fill in the hole that would always make him feel incomplete. Asin feels helpless more than ever as he had been feeling for the last sixteen years, since she was found passed out on the sea by Avij divers.