*knock knock*

“Come in.” Nela looked up from the book that she had been reading. And it was of no great surprise to her when she saw Braydon accompanied by her father enter. Braydon had been right in thinking that Nela was one of the first people to know that her father had returned to Mapjess. Reading had been her way of distracting herself as she waited.

“Interesting book?” Cinar asked. Not the question he wanted to ask. He didn’t really know how to talk to his own daughter, a fact that greatly upset him. It had been at least three years since he had last seen her in person. Longer since he had been able to spend any meaningful amount of time with her.

“I cannot remember what I just read.” Nela responded as awkwardly as her father. For someone who had no problem talking with most everyone, she found it hard to think of what to say to her father now that she was able to see him after so many years. The book had merely been something to distract herself and calm her nerves, a wildly unsuccessful venture. Nela had not been lying when she said that. She could not even remember the title of the book, let alone the contents.

“...” “...”

There was a long moment of silence as neither person knew what to say. They both knew that they should say something. They both knew that they wanted to say something. But those were entirely different matters from actually saying something.

“Perhaps you should take a seat.” As the silence grew longer, Braydon decided that he couldn’t bear watching any longer. He broke the silence, pointing out that Cinar was still standing. As much as Braydon would rather stay a bystander, he was not going to stand there like a lemon as the whole thing played out. If the first few minutes had shown them anything, it was that this meeting was going to be drawn out.

“You are right.” Cinar said with a cough to hide his embarrassment. He only hoped that Braydon would not recount their heartfelt meeting after so long to their friends. Nela on the other hand, stayed silent as the minor interlude played out. Though her slightly redder face proved that she was just as embarrassed as her father.

They had both almost forgotten entirely that Braydon was in the room with them. If he had not said anything, none of them were sure how long that would have gone on. Or even if they would have noticed his presence once they started talking. If they did start talking.

“Then I will take my leave. If you two do not sort this out, I will be the first person to drag you both together. And I will not leave until it is sorted next time.” As much as Braydon was interested in Nela and Cinar making up over whatever the problem had been, he was not about to sit through several hours of awkwardness if he did not have to. He would leave that to the parties involved.

“...” “...”

Braydon just shook his head at the reaction of the father-daughter pair. Both of them looked away at the exact same time. Given their familial resemblance and identical reaction, he could easily tell that the two were related; even if he didn’t know that they were.

*clunk*

As Braydon closed the door behind himself, it was just Nela and Cinar left in the room together. And they both realised that they now had no reason to run away or dance around the conversation. The last one had just left the room. And they had barely noticed he was there beforehand.

“We must have looked pretty ridiculous.” Cinar sighed to himself, almost chuckling. Having just thought back over the previous few minutes, he could tell why Braydon had felt the desire to leave the room. Even Cinar himself would have cringed watching the performance that he and his daughter had just displayed.

“Oh, I think you had the better expressions, Father.” Nela made a small laugh, she could tell that she had just blindsided her father. Though her laugh was in equal parts because of the absurdity of their situation and her own nervousness.

“You could have at least shown some sympathy.” Cinar tried to say with a straight face before he started laughing as well. While he may not have had much time to interact with his daughter, the one thing that he knew well about her was her rather dry sense of humour.

He had thought that with the passing of his late wife, he would not get to have such conversations again. But not many years after she passed, his daughter, who had been an infant at the time, started to grow up to be her spitting image. And her sense of humour was almost identical. If he had not truly loved his daughter before that point, he definitely did after that.

“But I am greatly sympathetic, it pained me to watch my own father be so embarrassed.” Nela’s heavy sarcasm was merely a guise to hide her own embarrassment. And she knew it. What she did not notice, however, was that her nervousness and awkwardness had flown away at some point. Instead she was already joking with her father as if nothing had happened. Even if in the truest sense, nothing had. She herself could not name why she had been so hesitant to meet with him. And she knew that nobody else really had a clue why she had been running away from it either.

“There is no use lying to me, you are too much like your mother to get that past me. You looked just as bad as I did. The difference was that you had the pretty face to hide it.” Cinar was in no way convinced by what she said. Though, his smile suggested that he didn’t care if it was true or not. He was honestly more than happy at the fact that he was talking normally with his daughter. The past several years had been lonely for him, even at the times that he was surrounded by friends. They were no replacement for his last remaining family.