Isabella ran her finger across the cool gold band of the bangle she had always worn. It was all she had from the birth mother she had never known. Three dark, almost black, sapphires caught the sun, highlighting the hidden blue of the jewels. Their colours mirrored her own eyes.
Isabella knew nothing of her own father, she had only recently foundout the man who she thought was her father wasn’t at all. Only Evelyn had. Evelyn looked after her for all of Isabella’s fifteen years. She was the woman Isabella had thought to be her mother. Sometimes Isabella hated her, she hated her for all the lies she had grown up to believe as the truth. Sometimes she missed Evelyn so much she wished she could forget her. Evelyn had done her best to protect Isabella.
She tried not to dwell on the past, she knew it was no good. She wouldn’t be going back. Not to being a noblewoman, good for nothing but a pretty ornament for some lord. Isabella wanted to be like the mother she knew only a little of. Evelyn had said her mother was a warrior, a knight in service of her countries monarchs, one of the few female knights in the world. Isabella’s country would never allow such a thing. They say it is not god’s will, females were not made to practice mens professions. They would burn anyone who even dared to.
All Isabella had to go on was a name, and the bracelet. Alianna.
That was it. No explanation, nothing to say she wanted to meet her daughter, or even loved her.
In a way Isabella would have loved to go back. She knew she couldn’t, but when you were alone, the world was like a jungle. The rules she knew didn’t exist, or they didn’t apply to her anymore. In the jungle she had just entered the only rule was to survive.
She wanted to find her mother, hopefully Alianna wouldn’t do something like organize a marriage for her like Evelyn had before the winter’s plague took her. She wanted Alianna to teach her how to fight. To use a sword and bow. But first Alianna had to be found.
Starting with the gold, Isabella would find where that had been mined and then look for any distaff knights in the country.
“C’mon,” she muttered to her stead in street cant. The mare cantered along the road sensing it’s rider’s eagerness and fear.
Each step they too was one less to unraveling her past.
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