When we got close to the house, I could see Dad standing outside, looking uncomfortable.  We stopped when we neared him.

“Hello, Winter,” he said with an awkward little wave.  “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Nice to see you again?!?!”  My aunt appeared behind him, looking absolutely furious – whether with Dad or with me, I wasn’t sure.  “She betrayed all of us, hid that she was a dragon, and now waltzes back like everything is fine, without even so much as an apology for all the harm she’s caused to this town.”  She pointed her cooking spoon at me – presumably our arrival had interrupted her lunch prep – and glared with that same angry gaze I’d grown up with all my life.  “You had better start begging for forgiveness, young lady, starting with Marilyn!  And get that awful curse lifted right this minute!”

“No,” I responded calmly.

That clearly stunned both her and Dad, who were not expecting an outright refusal.

I smiled tightly.  “I came back to say hello to the family and clarify some things, I suppose.  Would you rather do this outside or in the house?”

I could tell that my aunt really didn’t want to let me back inside the house, but on the other hand, screaming at me in the street would mean, well, all the neighbors could hear.  She huffed as she tossed her hair over her shoulder and marched back into the house.

Manuel, Toph, and I started to follow him, but I paused when I came even with Dad.

“Hi, Dad,” I told him quietly.

He looked at me with eyes a little more wistful than I’d ever have thought to see on him.  “Your mother was really a dragon?”

I paused, not expecting him to ask about Mother.  “Yes.  She left because she didn’t want you – or anyone – to try to make her help with the feud.  She was getting old and tired and didn’t think she would last as long if she had to raise me on her hown, though, so she left me with you so I’d have as normal a life as possible – just without anyone knowing I was a dragon, too.”

I had a suspicion, which Diana had kind of confirmed without saying it specifically, that part of the reason Mother had left me with Dad was because if she’d tried to raise me herself, she would have died sooner.  She had spent most of her energy by then and basically would almost hibernate unless I was actually there with her.  If she’d tried raising me all day for years on end, she probably would have died when much younger and I’d have been left all alone, with nowhere to go but back to Dad, only unable to hide I was a dragon.

“She never left the area,” I added quietly.  “She wanted to still be involved in my life, and she was until the day she died.  I’d visit her regularly, during all those times I was away from the house ‘wandering in the woods.’”  My so-called wandering escapades had been yet another source of argument with my aunt, in particular, who didn’t understand why I would wander around in the forests so often.  I wasn’t about to explain that I’d been spending time with my mother, or with Mark – or that honestly, sometimes I had just wandered around in the woods to avoid coming back and getting yelled at about not supporting Marilyn.

I watched the emotions on his face for a moment.  “Did you ever really love her?”  I asked, still in a quiet tone.

Dad was almost puzzled by this question.  “Love her?  I mean…I suppose so?  We were married and all.”

Not exactly an answer, but I decided to ignore that.  “Did it never occur to you to try to follow her?  To leave here and be a family together somewhere else?”

“Well, no.”  Dad scratched his head.  “I guess not.  I never thought of anything like that.”

Of course he hadn’t.  Dad was too passive about everything – sometimes I wondered if he’d ever had a thought on his own that he’d actually followed up on.  I had no doubt that I existed because Mother had pursued Dad, not the other way around – though sometimes I did wonder what she’d seen in him.  Maybe he’d been different then, when he was away from town for a bit.  Maybe he’d seemed more shy than just…passive.

“I know that look.  You’re disappointed.”  Dad’s observation startled me, and he sighed a bit.  “I’ve seen that look many times over the years.  People disappointed in me.  I used to try to avoid it, but I never feel like I know how anymore.”

Huh.  Did that mean Dad had sort of given up on things and that’s why he was so passive?  Maybe he used to try to please people – probably his parents – and when that repeatedly failed, he just…stopped trying?  Stopped trying anything at all unless he was told to do it?

“I guess I’m disappointed that you chose this town and the stupid feud over Mother,” I told him.  “I don’t see what value the town has over what life with her could have been.”

Dad’s brows furrowed.  “Well, it’s our home, isn’t it?  And the feud is the way things have been done.  We can’t give up the fight our ancestors started.”

I nearly gave him a withering look, but managed to hold it back.  “So you want to fight – and wanted me to fight – just because that’s the way things have always been done?  What’s the point of it all?”  When he seemed completely lost by my question, I clarified.  “What do you think the fight is supposed to achieve?  It’s not about territory – it’s not like people are fighting to have the entire town.  They’re just fighting because they hate the other side, with no particular reason given.”

 “Um,” Dad seemed really confused, “vindication, I guess?”

“Vindication of what?”  I tried not to show my frustration or impatience – Dad wasn’t likely to continue talking if he realized I was mad at him.  He tended to retreat into himself if facing any sort of adversity.  “That we were right all along – about what?  There’s no claim that hydras have lied about anything or sullied our reputations or whatever.  And let’s even say the hydras surrendered tomorrow, and you got your precious vindication – then what?  What does that change about life?  What does that change about anything?”

Dad looked totally lost again.  Maybe I was asking for too much, hoping he’d actually think through the reasons for why this stupid feud was in place and consider what it meant for him personally.

I decided I probably shouldn’t push him further and instead turned to go back inside.  I couldn’t resist one last remark, however.

“Don’t just choose it because it’s what’s always been done.  Choose it because you believe in it yourself – and you’d better have reasons to back up why you believe in it.”  Then I left him alone, pondering, while I went to face the wrath of the rest of my family.

By the time I’d gotten inside, Manuel had already introduced Toph to the rest of the family that was there.  My aunt was looking at Toph suspiciously, muttering under her breath about why I thought it was fine to show up with other family and not offer to help the kapras, while Toph was smiling politely at the younger ones and at my grandmother, who was attempting to get him to admit he was a dragon and he was here to help, or at least to keep me in line, because surely I was as unruly with him as I’d been growing up and needed a firm hand, after all?

“Winter,” Toph interrupted my grandmother easily, giving me a real smile and the tiniest bit of an eyeroll, “I realize your family probably has a lot of questions, but before they ask them all, maybe it would help if you went ahead and clarified what’s going on and why we’re here, so we can all be on the same page?”

I took a deep, calming breath, and pasted on a smile that I’d learned from Diana.  The “I’m in charge and I’m not tolerating any bullshit and don’t even think about crossing me” smile.  Of course, she did it much better than I did, but I was trying.

See, the thing about dragons was that we could rarely get involved in actual fights because we were overpowered, in a way.  Most supernaturals, even, didn’t stand much of a chance against a dragon by the time the dragon was even 100 years old.  Dragons as old as Diana were virtually undefeatable in combat.  Apart from defending our territory – and we could be quite territorial – we tried to avoid actual combat with people and find other ways to resolve a situation.  Magic and combat were the last choice, as much as possible.

Here, I didn’t need to worry about physical harm from people thanks to Mother’s curse.  That meant I needed to make sure my verbal battle skills, as it were, were ready for any fight.

And was going to be a fight.  I knew it.  My family had never really understood me and always viewed me as a problem child, so now for them to listen to me at all, I’d have to make them understand that things had changed and that I was the one in control now, not my family elders.

That was definitely going to be a fight.

“For starters,” I told them, keeping my tone even, loud enough to be heard, but also authoritative, “I am not lifting the curse.  No,” I held up my hand when my aunt started to protest, “I am not.  Not yet.  I hope to do so eventually, but bear in mind the curse says the town has to earn forgiveness.  I doubt even if I attempted to say I forgave the town now that it would work.  Mother’s curse would know it wasn’t real.  Regardless, though, I have no intentions of lifting the curse until it’s right to do so.”  I focused on my aunt, my gaze just stern enough to intimidate her into silence, then swept to look at the rest of them.

“You support the feud.  It’s your right to do so, I suppose, just as it’s my right to hate the feud and everything it brings with it.”  This ruffled their feathers, but I ignored that, focusing on my grandmother.  “Please explain to me why the feud is so important.”

She was baffled by this question, but also a bit offended.  “It’s our heritage!  Your grandfather fought against the hydras and died – to not fight in return would be to dishonor his sacrifice!”

“How many families in the kapra side of town have had at least one ancestor or present-day generation member die to the feud?”  I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.

“All of them, you know that,” my aunt interrupted, seething.  “There’s not a family among us that has been untouched!”

I nodded slowly.  “And the hydra side?”  They drew up, confused by this question.  “Are any of their families untouched by loss?  What about their family members who died to kapras?  What about Mark, my hydra soulmate, who died to Marilyn because he dared try to protect a hydra kid from being bullied?”

Apparently the rumors of Mark being my soulmate hadn’t reached them yet, because this clearly left them stunned.

I didn’t wait for them to process that, though, because I didn’t want to hear them saying how Marilyn was right to kill him and I knew they would.  “Hydras have lost family members, too, to this feud.  I daresay there are probably just as many families who are affected on that side as this.  And if that’s the only reason to continue – because our relatives died in the fight and so did theirs – this fight will continue forever, with no resolution, because someone will always want to avenge their family.  If you kill a hydra to avenge Grandfather’s death, they will want to kill a kapra to avenge that hydra’s death.  The cycle will continue endlessly, with more death feeding more deaths.  There will be no resolution, only more death, more families in pain.”