Family(4)

"What's wrong? Are they not to your liking?" Dairon questioned when he noticed that Jasmine was not eating and was merely staring at her plate.

She shook her head, not comprehending her own behaviour. She stood up after placing the cutlery aside. "I want to be alone for a while."

"I understand." He had expected this turmoil of emotions so he let her go wherever she wanted, and gave her the freedom to do anything she wanted to help her calm down.

She went to her room and couldn't fall asleep even when she climbed onto the bed and lay to rest. She needed something to do apart from sleeping around and being idle, so she stood up to explore her room. She checked through the shelves and closet and eventually found something that interested her. There was a pile of unused blank paper, which she guessed should be hers since Dairon had stated that everything in this room was prepared for her use.

She took back the paper to sit in front of the wooden table and started looking for something else.

"Where to find a pencil?" She wondered aloud. When she went back to the shelf where she found the paper, she didn't find any.

Just as she was about to give up, a piece of charcoal dropped on the floor, probably from the shelf.

"I guess that works too." She picked it up, luckily it had not broken from the impact of the fall.

The piece of charcoal was somewhat hot, making her wonder whether she could really use it. She went back to the wooden table and sat straight, then made a line at the corner of the paper to test it out. Seeing as it worked much better than a pencil, she proceeded to draw on the paper, stroke by stroke.

The strokes soon turned into a small dress, one that was familiar. She felt as though she had drawn it before.

It was for Dahlia. She remembered, sinking into her own memory.

_____

"Jasmine! You promised to make me a cute dress for my birthday." Dahlia playfully crossed her arms and looked up at her sister, flipping her long black hair as though declaring war.

"Your birthday is two weeks later." She laughed at the little girl's antics. She should be an actress in future, she was so full of drama.

"Uh huh. Is the dress almost ready? Will it be ready in two weeks? You know, it takes time to make clothes for a cutie like me." She insistently pointed down at herself, as though expressing just how cute she was and how difficult it must be to make a dress for a cutie of her caliber.

She laughed helplessly. "I know, you're adorable, you are a flower after all. But could you be patient? You aren't even done with your language homework yet."

"You know I hate homework. Especially language homework." The girl was deflated, looking at her sister like she was a traitor.

_____

"That's the most beautiful dress I have ever seen." Dairon commented from behind Jasmine, whose hand was moving freely against the sheet of paper.

"Ah!" She started from her thoughts, and the piece of paper on the desk burnt down to ashes in a flash.

"Why did you burn it? It was beautiful." He was shocked by the sudden occurrence.

"What? I didn't burn it. You did." She turned and glared at him. How audacious. First, he startled her and burnt her drawing of Dahlia's dress, and now he was blaming her for burning it?

He looked at her for a few seconds and was shocked that she really thought of him as the culprit. "I'm sorry."

She clicked her tongue, mumbling about how she had to do it all over again.

What was strange, the sheet with the dress was the only one that had burnt down, leaving the others intact even though they were together.

He watched her for a while before gently calling for her attention, trying not to startle her again. "Jasmine?"

"Mmh?" She looked at him with eyes still lingering with annoyance.

"Tell me about yourself." He pulled a chair beside her and sat on it, making her wonder when she agreed to talk about herself.

"Do I have to?" She tried to evade the topic.

"You asked about me. It's only right that I ask about you, right?" He looked at her meaningfully, letting her know that he was not going to drop the topic until she talked about it.

"I hate to admit it, but yes. What do you want to know?" She conceded and placed down the charcoal to answer whatever he was going to ask.

He carefully found his words. "You said that Vivian's grandmother used to tell you about witches. Have you ever encountered one?"

She shook her head. "None that I know of. But when we lived in the village, there was such a thing as witches getting burned to death. The villagers called them witches but sometimes I would believe that it could be the villager leaders' way of getting rid of the people they disliked."

It was rare that she had talked so much about herself and included her opinion, so he grabbed the chance to ask more. "You lived in the village before? Where?"

She was about to answer when she realized that the name had slipped her mind. "I don't remember."

How strange. How could she forget such a thing as the place where she had spent more than ten years? This shouldn't be normal, right?

Dairon interpreted her response as her not wanting to talk about the place so he dropped the topic.

"Do you do everything by yourself?" She asked, denying him the chance to pry for more information.

"It depends on what you are referring to." He was ready to feed her curiosity even though he couldn't feed his own.

"Cleaning the mansion, for example." Wouldn't he die from cleaning this humongous place all by himself? In fact, it was already strange enough that he could manage to spend all his nights here on his own.

"No. There are servants to do the chores." He explained with a laugh, noticing how stunned she looked when she talked about it. Was she worried about him?

"There are servants? I haven't seen anyone but you all this while."

"That's because they know not to bother you." He explained. "Come, I'll let you meet them."

He stood up and she once again followed him down the hallways which she was sure that she would never get used to.

They walked to a different wing in the mansion. He summoned the servants and they arrived within a minute. There were ten men and nineteen women—such a large number to be living in the same residence as her without her knowledge.

"If you need anything, you can summon any of them." He said to her after the brief introductions. They seemed to have been told about her presence beforehand, because they bowed to her when they were dismissed. She wondered why they did so, and hoped he had not introduced her using some strange title.

"Rosetta." He called back a maid before she could leave.

The young woman, who looked only slightly older than Jasmine, returned and bowed at both of them and awaited the orders.

"Take care of Jasmine and tend to all of her needs." He instructed, then turned to her before she could reject the offer. "Rosetta is human, you may be more comfortable around her."

"I see." Her response was indifferent but she was doing a happy dance inwardly. Finally, there was a human!

…

Just as she expected, it wasn't long before she and Rosetta started getting along.

"Rosetta, where is Dairon?" She asked the maid in the afternoon, when she left the library to find him gone.

"He received a message so he left the mansion. Is there something you need, milady?" Rosetta responded respectfully.

"Someone to chat with. Does this count?" She asked, hoping the latter would agree.

"Very much so, milady." Rosetta smiled, to her relief.

"You don't need to use the honorifics. Just call me Jasmine." She took a seat in the living room and called Rosetta over to sit with her, but the latter shook her head. "Master Dairon wouldn't appreciate that." She was talking about both sitting down with Jasmine and addressing her so casually.

"That's okay. It's just a title. You can secretly drop it when he is not here." She suggested with a chuckle, and decided to go and take a walk outside with Rosetta so she wouldn't be seated while leaving the other standing.

At home, her family had a few servants since their household wasn't that big. She had Dahlia had grown up under the care of one nanny, whom they treated as their second mother. All servants were allowed to sit with them but they did not become disrespectful, so she was not used to having such distance between them.

The sea was calm as they walked around it, and Jasmine finally found an opportunity to ask, "How did you end up here? I mean, considering you're a human."

Rosetta shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright if you cannot talk about it." Jasmine was not mad at her.

"It's not that I cannot talk about it, I can't remember. I forgot everything about my past." Rosetta explained, baffling her. Even so, she didn't want to pry too much lest she made Rosetta uncomfortable.