Ula preferred to live life as if she’d never had a childhood. Finding that moving forward was a better option then harping on a insignificant past that only ever hurt her heart. Looking though at the swirling book announcement poster attached to the small bookstore’s delivery had the past swirling around her like water.

  The Paladin’s Oath

  It was a simple name. One that could belong to any number of stories that she could brush away after a quick shiver down her spine. But the image of a coral-colored clam opened with a shining pearl nestled in golden satin looking fabric, with a coat of arms she’d sat pointing at various colors and pictures that made the emblem. She’d drawn it about a hundred times in the notebook sequestered to the back office of this store. Preserved only by the care of the owner Tariness.

  Ula’s name meant gem of the sea, a name lovingly curated to fit the story her father had wooed her mother with on their first date, the story of a paladin long without a mission finding it in the eyes of a powerful ocean goddess. It was a story that even after a long day of her father working he’d come home and start off where he left off making notes in a notebook to remember, her mother asking questions to help him along. Then when tucking her into bed he’d touch her nose and whisper.

  “And never forget, no matter how far and wide the Paladin goes he always knows that he’ll make his way home, to tell his stories to his little girl.” It was a promise she’d never doubted. The story had been the foundation of Ula’s life. It was the light that brightened her mother even as her mother slowly withered to an illness, it was the string that held Ula’s family together when her mother died.

  Even in the worst of moments her father would hold her and tell the story and when she looked up at him her father would always smile at her.

  Ula had thought she could handle anything if her father still smiled at her. But there was so much hidden behind that smile, so much not dealt with. In truth the story of the Paladin, his goddess and the daughter the paladin would always tell his adventures too fell into a delusional escape. It became a world where her mother hadn’t died, where her father got to be a hero and where everything stayed perfectly frozen in time.

  It wasn’t real. None of it was real.

  Ula sometimes wondered if the times she noted that she grew taller or the time her Aunt cut her hair because it was getting too long broke the illusion.

  If her father couldn’t handle the proof of change so he’d run away.

  She’d thought through every excuse, every accusation, she’d forgiven him and un-forgave him a hundred times over.

  The truth though always stayed the same thought that she’d come home from school as her Aunt was getting ready to go out and meet up with her at the time boyfriend. Her Aunt had barely looked at her, barely acknowledged that Ula existed offering in a passing breath out the door that her father wasn’t coming home, that he’d abandoned Ula. Before leaving Ula in the house alone.

  Ula had spent hours, upon days, even upon years trying to hold onto the belief that it wasn’t possible that her father abandoned her but eventually even she had to fold up all the delusional childish memories and shove them to the very back of her mind. After a while even her Aunt’s subtle but cutting reminders that her father probably didn’t even remember her and if he did he probably didn’t care, if he did he would have done something to prove it right? Stopped bothering her as much.

  Ula had accepted that her father had no care for her at all that even when her Aunt started swearing and destroying the place complaining about how the dead beat stopped sending money, she felt nothing. No disappointment that a proof that he at least thought about her even if she didn’t know it was gone and no relief.

  The truth of the world was her father was a stranger now, a stranger that she didn’t know if she even wanted him to look back. Her Aunt the only person left in her life was cruel. A cruel woman with an angel’s smile.

  Ula had received an invitation to her wedding later this year. Why and how she managed to track Ula down after Ula had run in the middle of the night at the age of fifteen she didn’t know. Guilt? It seemed unlikely. Thoughtlessness? Her Aunt was cruel not stupid. Or maybe she wished to claim some sort of higher moral ground. She did after all try to invite her wayward niece but never receive a reply. And in truth she never would.

  Even that letter though didn’t shake her as much as the advertisement. Nothing made her resolve that she felt nothing toward her childhood anymore feel as shaken as this stupid little flier that she could tear to pieces and forget.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Yet she couldn’t bring herself to. So instead she’d nearly begged Tariness not to carry The Paladin’s Oath in the store. Tariness in the lovely way that was simply Tariness pushed down her hot pink glasses that she always forgot whether she was claiming she needed for distance or reading looked at the flier and tossed it behind her.

  “Looks tacky anyway. Now darling tell me why do the Lin not like oak leaves in particular?” She asked pulling Ula to the only area of her childhood she even could reflect on and only because of Tariness. The notebooks where she’d made notes of creatures that filled her heart and her dreams. A detailed field journal of creatures and plants that only lived in her mind, at varied levels of skill and varied levels of completion. At the insistence of Tariness she’d added more updated drawings to the creatures and though her heart hurt too much to write anything in the pages anymore she’d agreed to allow Tariness to Transcribe her childlike musings clarifying things she’d written or answering any questions that popped into her mind.

  With Tariness the memories of pain in her life were easily placed on the back burner to the brightness that was her present.

  Ula had managed to avoid anything to do with The Paladin’s Oath. Even as it skyrocketed in popularity and it was on the tongues of so many of their customers. But when a copy appeared on the top of there shipment with a insistent review of their supplier she’d give in to flittering through the pages. She paused on the Author’s picture and her heart thudded. The man in the picture wasn’t smiling, he stared forward at the camera as if her might just crawl through the photo and become solid in front of her. He looked more sever, older, not quite comfortable.

  It didn’t make her feel good. Not that she necessarily wished him happiness but at the very least if he was going to abandon her, he should at least be happy right?

  Pain and Anger broke free from her heart. How dare he publish the story that meant so much to their family without even reaching out. Without trying to reconnect. How dare he look miserable in his picture and not think to… She opened a drawer and tossed the book into the drawer. Why couldn’t he have shared the story with her himself.

  The book lived in that drawer for months and it was only when a second book was being teased did she finally go back to the drawer.

  Tariness looked at it in her hands.

  “I thought you weren’t going to read that.” She voiced. Ula nodded she hadn’t shared that the Author was her father but she thought Tariness put pieces together. Tariness was really good at picking out pieces and seeing the truth. She was also usually very blunt about it but Tariness had tempered that bluntness with Ula, after mistakenly entering in a verbal battle with the at the time sixteen year old Ula looking her up and down and concluding that her no good rough and tough persona she’d adopted meant that she didn’t value books.

  Ula knew this because that same woman had apologized right away once she was proven even a bit wrong and had offered Ula a place to do odd jobs, do her homework and have a safe place to exist. If it weren’t for Tariness Ula didn’t think she would have lasted through high school. She was Ula’s safe person and yet there were parts of herself that even to Tariness she didn’t know how to vocalize. And Tariness never held that against her, so Ula never held the oddities of Tariness against her.

  “What can I say I’m giving in.” Ula joked. Tariness put down the full scale printed fantasy map she’d recently brought back and held Ula’s eyes.

  “Are you alright dear?” She pushed. Ula shrugged on her bag and thought through that question.

  “Yeah. Just a thousand and one on the brain.” Ula offered stealing one of Tariness’s favorite phrases.

  “Very well. I am almost finished transcribing the first of your notebooks. Do you think you’d want to look through it. If your happy with it I wish to print and bind it.” Tariness offered ecstatically. Ula felt her face flush. It was a similar feeling to when she’d come home from school at go on and on about her various reptilian, amphibious, mammary and aquatic beings, her various plants, all in which her mother would oh and ah at encouraging Ula to offer more and more.

  Ula remembered a rant her father had fallen into claiming that Dragon esc creatures as villains was far too cliched. That Dragon’s themselves were overused. He mother would look over at her conspiratorially and when he wouldn’t notice would lean down and whisper.

  “He’s never heard of your dragons.”

  It was a good memory. She thought it might be the best memory to allow her to give the story a chance.

  Ula found a place on a park bench and started to read.

  The story started off as stories always do. A main character, the paladin, without a mission stumbling upon an Ocean Goddess, seeing her and finally knowing his purpose. It was a comfortable nostalgic thing to read. But then it was ruined.

  There were things far and wide threatening the Goddess, she foresaw trouble and sent him to assist her seeing as she couldn’t leave her sanctuary but this wasn’t a story of a Paladin in love, no he was so dedicated to his duty that there was no room for him to think of her as anything but the Goddess he served. He went through trials and tribulations sometimes hated, sometimes adored. He followed his creed; he never deviated from the command of his Goddess.

  It was well written, it was engaging. Ula regretted absolutely reading it. She wanted to toss it away and leave it to fester in the mud, she wanted though she abhorred the practice to burn this book.

  He’d erased it.

  He’d erased everything.

  His love for her mother. The warmth of their family.

  He erased her. There wasn’t even a character hinting at the space she used to fill in the stories. There was no person for the Paladin to come home to and tell his adventures. It was like she never existed.

  Ula closed her eyes as for a moment she truly and completely hated her father. She cried alone on a park bench hoping the world thought she had simply read a touching scene. When she finally stood she walked to a random person dropped the book int their hands and walked away without explanation or pause. She’d pay Tariness back for the lost book though she truly doubted Tariness would even think about the book.