At last, after months of wandering the New Continent.
She appeared in a small town in the south. She seemed to have gradually grown used to life on the road, too. She had cut her hair so short that people mistook her for a boy. She mingled with the groups traveling south, and in every small town she passed through, she did her best to ask for news of her mother and older brother, all the way to this place.
Her long wandering had already left her unrecognizable as the sweet little girl she had once been.
But she still quietly encouraged herself.
[Though life was full of suffering.]
[She still had to do her best to keep living.]
These were truths no girl her age should have had to understand. Most of them were still by their parents' sides, learning to read or playing. Perhaps even long after they reached adulthood, they would still not understand such things.
And precisely because of that.
She had never given up hope.
She wanted to go home.
And wherever her father and mother were, that was home.
She continued wandering through the little town and asking for news, walking the streets as unobtrusively as possible. She deliberately avoided the finely dressed gentlemen and ladies, because they would show her no pity. All she could expect from them were looks of disgust and disdain.
"My daughter?!"
A familiar voice, carrying a hint of startled disbelief, came from behind her.
She stopped.
Tiny flecks of light shimmered in her stunned eyes.
That voice called her name again.
There, on that crowded street, it took all her strength to turn her head. Reflected in her eyes was a lady in an elegant gown, and she saw the astonishment and disbelief on that familiar woman's face.