(ESO FanFic: Templar of Shezarr – Part 4)

My Father’s Hands – Standalone Story (Rusia Cassiana)
Location: Hawke Manor, Reaper’s March

I find it hard to remember my father’s face now, over a decade after his murder. His hands though, I remember those as if they were my own. Perhaps because mine remind me so much of his. The long fingers, strong yet oddly delicate, equally adept at song or sword. Yes, our hands were so much alike, my father’s and mine. As we had been alike in so many ways.

I missed him terribly.

Sighing softly, I set down the lute I’d bought in a marketplace on Betnikh. I’ve no idea how the orc trader had come across such a lovely, sweet instrument made for human hands. Whatever its origin, he hadn’t appreciated how fine quality it was, and had sold it to me for far too little. I’d tipped him an extra coin anyway, to appease Sai, the alleged old God of Luck for such a terrific find. Not that I was terribly superstitious, but it couldn’t hurt.

As beautiful as the lute was, I still had not been able to bring myself to try to play it. Not since my father died had I played an instrument. Even though I could still hear the music in my head, I could no longer feel it in my heart.

Being from a minor noble family, I’d been taught music and dance from the time I could toddle around. By the time I was twelve, I’d played several instruments, and started to develop a passable singing voice. After my father died, however, I just could never find the joy in music again. It had always been one of the special things the two of us shared. My mother had been much more interested in weapon training and magic study than playing the latest compositions from Cyrodiil.

Mother, oh mother, are you still alive after all? Did you not die next to your beloved, my father, as I have believed ever since that horrible morning? When my childhood ended forever, ripping me from my home and throwing my future to the winds. Did you really send someone to try to kill me, so many years after I thought you gone?

Shaking my head, I tried to clear my mind of the dark thoughts surrounding the recent assassin attempt that nearly took my life. Picking up the lute again, I laid the lovely instrument in my lap, forcing my right hand to pluck the strings while the left gently adjusted the tuning pegs. The quiet, nonsensical notes clenched my throat as I fought back tears.

Closing my eyes, I could see my father’s hands twisting the pegs on his own dear lute. He’d called it Mariaella after his aunt, who’d taught him to play so many years ago. I’d never met her unfortunately, as my father had said we would have gotten along famously. Tragically, all of his family had died in a terrible sickness while he was away studying at the University of Gylim. Where he’d met Sergianus, his best friend, my god father, and the assumed murderer of both my parents.

Damn it. This is why I don’t play. Every time I picked up a lute, or a flute, or sometimes even just hearing a bard singing in a tavern, I can’t get the picture of my parents’ beaten, bloody bodies out of my head.

Regretfully, I slowly loosened the tuning pegs just slightly on the lute again. Never put an instrument back in the case with full tension on the strings if you aren’t going to play it again soon, my father had always told me. But don’t loosen the strings too much. You have to keep the tension in the neck in balance.

Balance. Something I struggled with every day. Balance between past and present. Balance between warrior and healer. Balance between life and death.

Gently, I eased the lute back into its soft leather case. Rising to my feet, I turned and carefully placed the lute back inside a large storage trunk. Out of sight. Where it would not remind me every time I saw it of all that I had lost. My music. My family. My father’s hands.

Someday, perhaps, I could find the joy again. But not today.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED