Flash Fiction Friday: A Bard's Daughter

We haven't visited the Secrets and Stones universe much in this series, but we will today. Today's flash fic is set three or four years before all of the other stories in that series thus far.

A Bard's Daughter
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“You said you found her behind a tree?” Shea asked, looking down at the child. 

She was a small thing, scrawny really, and no older than perhaps five. Her clothes were well worn with the soles near walked clean out of her shoes. Painful looking circles lay under her eyes, and her long, dark hair was bound back in a rough braid.

Daithi nodded. “She was curled into the side of a bard leaned up against it, dead,” he answered. “Half frozen herself.”

“Some power or other was looking after her, that’s for certain, this time of year,” Shea agreed. She gestured toward a bundle in Daithi’s hand. “And that?”

“Instruments the bard had when we buried him,” Daithi answered. “They’re her’s by rights.”

Surprised, Shea looked away from the girl, now trembling under the pile of what blankets she had, to consider the half-grown lad in front of her. Reaching out, she took the bundle from Daithi and set it beside the bed. Shea settled her cloak over the child as well. Then she crossed the few steps to stand in front of Daithi.

“You’re a good boy,” she said, patting his cheek. The way his face went red and he started sputtering at the praise made her smile. “There’s plenty who would have taken the bard’s instruments and left her there to die with her Da.”

“I couldn’t do that,” Daithi protested with a shake of his head. “She’d have haunted me for sure.”