She wakes well before the sun rises--she always has, even as a child. There's not much to cook in the bare house, but Cat manages to scrape some toasted bread together, leaving what she doesn't eat on the table. It's the first meal she's had in a day or so. She's almost as bad about forgetting to eat as she is about not sleeping. But, she figures, if she's moving in with someone again, she needs to shape up. Anelore always kept her fed and paid more attention to her well-being than she really liked.
It's the first time she's been able to think about him without feeling a lump of grief rise in her throat. It's guilt that twists her stomach, but Cat's gotten good at ignoring guilt, even standing in the bedroom doorway. Ralyn is cute when he sleeps, and that goes a long ways towards stamping out the feeling. If he isn't dead and still remembers who she is, Anelore won't forgive her, but she can't bring herself to care anymore. He shouldn't have gone away for so long. She had her own life to think about, and even beyond that, their daughter needed a father. She'll have to talk to Ralyn about that, once morning comes; Mina favors her more than she ever did Anelore, but it would be fairly obvious that Ralyn was not her birth father. The blonde curls had to be from somewhere, and it certainly wasn't from either member of the dark-haired couple.
She sighs, turning away from the bedroom. Her sword still rests against the wall, exactly where she left it the night before. Mornings have always been her training time; in between the night and the dawn, no one seemed to much mind her slipping out of the half-burnt town and into the fields. But there's something different about this house than the one in Archet. She doesn't know which floorboards creak underfoot, or how loud the door is when it shuts, or how heavy of a sleeper Ralyn actually is.
It's not a hard decision, once she gets down to it. Go out in the already-sweltering heat of summer, or nestle back under the covers for a few more hours? Ralyn doesn't wake when she crawls back into bed, or at least he has the decency to pretend to still be asleep. She'll never know which.
She's starting a new life. With him, with Mina, with the Dawn, with this house...it's all new and it's all changing.
Being in the Dawn is like being in Archet again, before things fell apart. It's drinking and laughing and getting punched in the face (she can't even be mad about that--it was a good punch, for a seventeen year old) while sparring...it's the life she dreamed of when she was ten or eleven. It's not always all fun and games, but it's perfect.
She hasn't felt so safe in years. It's partially what Taala told her on that third or fourth day, that she's part of the Dawn and protected by them, but it's still partly something inexplicable. Safety in numbers, Cat thinks, but even she knows it's more than that. A new family and real friends. People she believes would miss her. Reasons to live.
It's a small change when she stops tracing "C"s on surfaces; so small that it takes her weeks to notice it. There's no need to write her name anymore. People know it, and they know her face. She won't be forgotten again.
Starting from scratch isn't as hard as she thought it would be. It's the easiest thing she's done her whole life.
