My father and I have always been at odds. I am sure that he forever curses the day that I first uttered a word, for not long after that, I learned to vocalize my disobedience.

Father wasn’t deliberately oppressive or sadistic in his approach to raising my sister and I. We weren’t beaten, nor malnourished. It was rather his cruel indifference that burnt me. My earliest memories are of a stark difference between my mother’s touch and my father’s; Mother was gentle, soft, and her cooing would make me passive, sleep-like. My father’s touch was absent, and his voice came to be associated with anxiety. I would hear him calling for me, or for Zul’aih’kah, and whereas my older sister would dutifully and quietly meet his every request, I would run, if only to make him catch me. It only made things worse when he eventually caught and punished me, but perhaps I so desperately wanted his attention that I deliberately set out to defy him at every turn. If I couldn’t have his love, then I’d at least have his ire. I would mean something.

When my mother died, I thought it was a gentle blessing. To have been mated with such a cold, dismissive man. Did she love him that way? Regardless, she was free of him.

We, however, were not.

The last time I saw him, I remember being so hurt that I could not even raise my voice. He laughed at me. I felt about three inches tall. My lips trembled, my chest heaved, and I fumbled over my own feet several times trying to clumsily pack what few ‘belongings’ I had. And even then I had to fight to keep small mementos that had belonged to my mother. “These aren’t leaving the Isles, or I will smash them myself!” he threatened. I left with almost nothing. I had nothing. And I felt as though I were nothing. I told him that I’d never see him again. He shrugged and said that I had disgraced him. Zufli. He had stopped calling me by my own name at that point. Most of the villagers had.

When I left the Isles, people wanted a name again. ‘Who are you?’. At first I clumsily made up a name or two. When I learned how to read and write, I wrote ‘Dzivah‘. A variation of my birth name, that was beautiful to read and to scribe. If you’d read it in a tome, you’d think the author to be powerful, wise, and above all, important. 

The name of a Magistrix, I thought. Perhaps I would come to greatness with this name. And so I’ve carried it ever since.

When I arrived in Sen’jin village months ago, I kept a low profile. The reclamation effort meant that there wasn’t even all that much time for idle socializing or teary reunions. We had a city to build, after all. But eventually I had to face up to what I’d run away from; that I have a history, and it starts right here, on these Isles.
It meant that I would finally have to confront my father, after all of these years. And, after much internal prodding, I made the first step. Contact was not hard to find, once word of mouth had taken wing. He still lived in the same old hut.

My father’s first word to me was my birth name. I was stunned. His face was old, his features drooped, and his expression plaintive. But the way he said it, it reminded me of my mother, and conjured up feelings both of sadness and joy within my heart.

‘Zeeva.’

‘Father!’

My father wasn’t able to hug me, I knew that. As a grown woman with many failings of her own, I could no longer fault him for not being affectionate toward me. My father would always be as he is, just as the Loa sought him to be. Nothing I could ever say or do would change him. As it turned out, I’d already forgiven him before I’d ever set foot back in the village. All he needed to see was the smile on my face to recognize that.

But my father’s sad expression was tinged with something else. Something familiar and yet, I could not place it’s familiarity from elsewhere into the context of my relationship with him. I relished it and yet, it made me feel cold and guilty. Several days later, a conversation with my older sister shed light on what it was that I saw in his eyes. As his caregiver, she was telling me that he’d asked her to wake him if I were to show up late at night. Finally it dawned on me. He wanted to face me with his eyes open. Awake.

I could never have his love, but finally, I had something.

My father was afraid of me.