55: Nol

The memory of her was ages ago and yet it felt like only yesterday that he last saw her face. Still vivid and engraved in his mind. Small girl, perhaps younger than the child before him now. Short brown hair that was knotted with each of his visits. Dirt caked on her frail fingers and pale cheeks. Her dress never changing. The poverty and filth she lived in. It saddened and angered him each day that passed. What truly angered him the most was that devil of a father of hers. A drunkard, violent of a man. Each coin made was spent on his ale, which only grew the violent tendencies. If he got bored with laying hands on her mother, he dealt with her. Hells, he enjoyed tormenting her, and yet when Nol would visit her, she would smile through the tears and the pain as if it was completely ordinary. Nothing about her situation was ordinary in his eyes.

"Will I find happiness someday?" She once asked him one night. It was a painful question to answer for her. He couldn't predict the future,