exanimateThey're stored a floor below her penthouse prison, in a disused room; the Kirayth walk down with her, guard her. Some of them offer to go in with her, to help. She always turns them down. She needs to be alone with this.
A room full of boxes. The only material trace of her family's lives.
It was a year before she could come in here, a year before she first opened a box with trembling hands. Books. She started a small library on the ground floor of the Tower, in one of the old conference rooms - her mother's history and fantasy, her father's poetry, hand-scribbled in identical brown leather journals.
The next month, it was clothes. Her father's. She kept a vest, a jacket, and donated the rest.
The next month, her mother's jewelry. She kept it all, pushing small velvet boxes and pouches to the back of the bottom drawer of her vanity, scattering earrings like tiny stars in her jewelry box, stacking bracelets on the dresser, hula hoops of silver or colored glass, snakelike chains with sparkling stones.
The next month, her mother's files on House Tamra. She examined them all, studying intently - looking for a purpose, trying to see if it had been worth it. If the sacrifice of her mother's life had been worth anything, if she'd made a difference. If she should have just stood down, instead of continuing to defy Alanna and the Council. Did her courage help, or just get her killed, with none of it meaning anything? She gave the files to Fenris.
"You don't have to do this."
"Yes, I do."
Month after month. She chooses a box. Kneels down. Caresses the worn brown cardboard, tears off the tape, and closes her eyes right before she opens it. Fragments of who her family was. Recipes and silk robes and old stuffed animals, mirrors and tiny blown-glass animals, drawings.
They are gone, her parents.
But they echo.
She opens the box.