Ehren shook her awake. She’d been sobbing in her sleep this time, something she hadn’t done before. She sat bolt upright, nearly hitting him in the head with her own.

She gave him a confused look.

“You were sobbing,” he told her gently.

Anything could set her off these days. He could feel her drifting further and further from him. He watched as her hands went to her cheeks to confirm for herself that she had in fact been sobbing.

“It was all so real,” she muttered. “And he was there. The man my mother drew on a daily basis. He looked exactly like the sketches. Why did you wake me?”

Ehren gave her a baffled look.

“Nothing bad was happening, so why did you wake me?” she clarified.

“Why were you sobbing in the first place?” he countered.

Akira groaned in frustration.

“I was so close!” she snapped. “All my life I’ve wondered why I don’t look like my father. Tonight I was this close to getting the answers.” She held up her thumb and forefinger with a tiny space between them to indicate how close she was. “All of it was finally starting to make sense. The sketches of the Alhambra, the Great Mosque of Córdoba, even the sketch of the man she would only pull out when my father was gone. The pieces were starting to fall into place. Shit!”

Akira stumbled hastily out of bed and trippingly made her way to the desk on the opposite side of the room. Ehren didn’t offer her any assistance; he’d likely be snapped at if he did. He just watched in growing confusion as Akira pulled a piece of paper and a pencil from the desk. She immediately began to sketch something on the paper. Furiously outlining and erasing before whatever image she had in her head left her for good. He watched her draw for what felt like hours but was actually no more than 30 minutes. She sighed deeply.

“What time is it?” she asked absently trying not to yawn.

“A few hours before dawn,” he answered. “Why?”

“I want to go back to sleep but with dawn not far away, that’s unlikely,” she told him. “Is there a place I can see the sky from? I need to see the stars.”

Ehren nodded and held his hand out to her, fully expecting her to ignore it. She didn’t. She took his hand tentatively. He resisted the urge to grip her hand more firmly and pull her to him. He tightened it only enough to pull her gently to her feet. He turned and pulled the covers off the bed. He wrapped them around her before leading her to the balcony. He sat her in one of the chairs then turned to make his way back inside.

“Have you ever wondered why my hair is white?” she asked stopping him in his tracks.

He turned back to her.

“I never thought about it. To me, it was a part of you no matter what color it was. You’d be just as beautiful with red hair as your are with white.”

She stiffened at his mention of red hair.

“Do you remember what I looked like before I went to the nuns?”

He shook his head, forgetting her back was to him.

“No. All my memories of that time are hazy at best and gone at worst.”

She nodded, “I figured as much.”

“What’s this about?” he asked.

“I never looked much like my father and I always suspected my mother had a man that she loved deeply before my father. Askel is the spitting image of my father, right down to his exact shade of copper blonde hair. I look nothing like him. The shape of my face is different. The color of my hair was dark auburn. None of my father’s relatives had auburn hair. Neither did my mother’s.”

She placed the sketch on the table to her left.

“My mother drew this man every single day. She never stopped. It’s like she was afraid she was going to forget him if she didn’t draw him.”