Fendryys brushed her auburn fair back from her face and sighed, staring down at the bowl of bland porridge on the table before her. Her father heard her and glowered; without looking she could feel his eyes boring into her. “Eat” was her father’s simple command.
“I thought you had said we’d have something fresh for tonight,” Fendryys said.
“It is fresh, and it’s good for you, so eat.”
She sighed again. “Some meat, or some cheese, or a fruit! Not freshly prepared gruel from a sack of meal a month old!”
Jareth’s fist slammed down on the table. “Enough! We can’t afford more, and you know it!” He let his anger rest a moment. “It’s every day with you, isn’t it? Wishing for more than we have.”
“But you keep promising we’ll have more! That things will get better for us!”
“They are better! They’re scores better than they have been in a long time! Since the wars...”
Fendryys knew where this speech was going, having heard it untold times, and decided she would not listen to it again. “The wars are long over, Father! They are long gone, and I don’t need to hear of them any more!” She stood, her anger and her resolve to finally speak her mind fully was rising. “You’ve given so much to this nation - our family has given so much, and how do the nobles reward our sacrifice? With this meager home we had to build ourselves from mud and straw, in a backwater hamlet with nothing to eat but this stale gruel meal after meal! While your “promotion” was to stand guard over the very vineyards that supply those nobles’ merriment and excess! You have given all, and then we are left to stare at what should be ours!”
Jareth burst up from his seat, grabbed and shook her violently. “You speak like those damnable Defias traitors! Are you one of them? Has my daughter fallen to that despicable lot?” He clutched her right wrist and inspected her hand. “The day I find you with a cog on your hand is the day my daughter is dead to me!”
Fendryys cuffed him across the face. Her father released her, and she spun about, running from their home and out into the dark night.
