The 8th Noble

"That's not broken, that's abandoned." Colette retorted, the slight hiss in her voice betraying her frustration. "And shut UP with that."
She let in a deep breath, closed her fists and let it all go — her fingers spread wide open while she kept her eyes shut.
"I won't give up on you unless you stop— pushing me— away." She was letting it go now. That 'calm' master veneer fading as she spoke, every word betraying the truth she wanted to speak so much more plainly than she knew she should as a figure of 'authority' over someone else.
"You want to talk about being unwanted? My family left me in a desert before I had seen my first month. The people who found me and raised me kept me at a distance because I was seen as unsafe. I was told I would never be allowed to feel love because of a risk for inbreeding. All because my parents never loved me enough to leave me with a family tree when they left me for dead." Colette exhaled a scoffed chuckle. "I was taught to fear touching others because of sickness and to avoid intimacy. My society never had money, and out here there is not a single thing that isn't valued over a credit. I have spent the last four years trying to make up for the sheer amount of history I never even knew had happened in my lifetime."
"I don't understand family. I can't call the woman who took that mantle, Valery, my mother because it feels like an insult to her as if I am calling her a heartless wench who would leave an infant to die even if I know she never would."
"You're not the only one who has had a hard life, Reina. Your pain is your own, but the suffering isn't." Colette exhaled one more time, this time with relief. She had said part of her peace. "Keep shutting people out like that, and you will be as alone as you seem to feel."
"But I will pry you out of your shell if I have to. It would be so much easier if you took that step yourself. First step is to stop pushing yourself down in the ground. The step after that… We'll see."