\n\t\t\t\t\tladyheatherHer post: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15705028/
Twenty-five years ago, three-year-old Niamh O'Malley woke up one morning to find her mother murdered and her father missing. She remembered hearing her parents fighting downstairs last night, but Fiachra held her tight and promised her everything was going to be okay. Fiachra, who was eight and who knew everything, had promised. Now they were all alone, miles from the nearest friendly town, out of food and winter was coming. Her memories of that time are hazy at best, but they survived somehow and they made it back to Oseille, where their grandmother lived. Grandmother Saoirse took them in and she did her best to raised them and love them, and shield them from harm. She forbade Niamh to ever go looking for her father, and Niamh did her best to obey, for a time. Life in Oseille was reasonably comfortable, but there was more than enough trouble to go around without looking for more. She grew up, fell in love and made a life for herself, and she began to learn to forget, if not forgive, the horror of her past.
Then Seán came to Oseille, seeking an elder sister he'd only ever heard about in stories. Niamh recognized him as her brother almost immediately, as she recognized the pain he was in, though he did his best to hide it. Just as she knew exactly what she would find when she followed him back to the tavern where his father lay sick and injured in bed. She did her best to heal Liam, and to stick to her promise to her grandmother not to seek revenge. She was a healer, and she had taken certain vows to do no harm. But that was before she saw the scars that Liam had left on Seán's body, and the way that Liam mistreated the boy for no other crime than failing to live up to Liam's narrow view of what was normal. Niamh held on to her vows, but she promised Seán that Liam would never touch him again.
This picture is based on a scene from my short-story Summer Market.
Seán O'Farrell and Niamh Lohan belong to me.