The next morning, fog from the ocean rolled in and made the forest look like something out of a ghost story. When Greg woke up, most of the Crimson Falcons were already up and quietly packing up their camp. It was likely that Marina was out of sight, looking ahead with Kael.
Denna asked, "Did you sleep well?" as she handed him a cup of something hot that smelled like honey and herbs.
"Well enough," Greg said, gratefully taking the drink. "Thanks for last night and for telling me about Marina."
"Now I know why she acts like that, but of course, she sometimes gets on my nerves."
Denna's face relaxed. "She went through hell and still wants to help people. That takes a special kind of strength." She stopped to stir the fire. "You know, we haven't told you everything yet."
Greg was surprised and asked, "What the fuck...? There's more?"
"The part where we found her," Ryn said, coming over with her own cup. "Marina told you about her brother's death, but she didn't tell you what happened next."
Greg calmed down, sensing that he had found another important piece of the puzzle. "Holy shit... why am I surprised? Every person has their own past, so I need to understand it even more in case I didn't do something wrong that can reach out to their past."
Denna started, "It was about eight years ago," her voice was quieter than usual. "We were still a new group at the time, just Kael, Ryn, and me. We had a job to do, like get rid of some bandits who were attacking merchant caravans in the eastern territories."
"The job went well," Ryn said next. "But on our way back, we saw this girl lying on the side of the road. She was about fourteen or fifteen years old and had many cuts and bruises. Initially, we believed that monsters or bandits had attacked her."
"We did our best to help her," Denna said. "But she fought us, real hard. She had a broken knife that she had been using as a weapon, and she wouldn't let anyone near her. It took us an hour to convince her that we weren't going to hurt her."
Greg could easily picture it now that he knew what he did. A young Marina, scared and alone, didn't trust anyone after seeing her brother die. He can't even imagine Marina becoming scared and alone now, as she always shines like the morning sun with her positive energy.
Ryn said, "When she finally let us treat her wounds, we saw that most of them weren't new." "Some of them were weeks old. She had been living alone in the woods for almost a month, eating whatever she could find and fighting off anything that came near her."
Greg asked, "Why didn't she go to a town and get help?"
Denna explained, "She believed it was her fault."
"Later, she told us that she thought she deserved to suffer."
"She thought that if she had been a better sister and a better person, her brother would still be alive. So she ran. She just kept running until she couldn't anymore."
"We took her back to the nearest town," Ryn said next. "Paid for a room at an inn and made sure she had food and medicine. We thought once she recovered, she'd stay there, maybe find work, and start over."
"But she came with us," Denna said with a smile. "Three days later, when we left for our next job, she was waiting outside the town gates with a backpack and that same broken knife."
"She said she didn't want to stay in one place because she needed to keep moving, or she'd think too much."
"We told her that going on adventures wasn't safe for someone who wasn't trained," Ryn said. "She said living wasn't safe either, so she might as well do something useful."
"Stubborn as hell even back then," Denna added fondly. "We tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't listen. Finally, Kael said that if she was going to die anyway, she might as well do it with people who would try to keep her alive."
Greg said, "So she joined your party."
"Sort of," Ryn corrected. "She went with us, but she didn't really join in. She stayed on the outside and didn't eat with us or talk about anything personal. She just existed on the edges of the group."
"It was like having a ghost," Denna said. "She'd fight when we needed her to and follow orders when given, but the rest of the time she was just hollow."
"Like an empty shell, and we didn't know how to reach her heart."
"What changed?" Greg asked.
"Time, mostly," Ryn said. "And Denna was too stubborn to give up."
Denna laughed softly. "I just couldn't stand watching this kid waste away. She reminded me of my younger sister, actually. Same determination, same self-destructive tendencies when things got tough."
"So I started small," Denna continued. "I made her favorite foods when I found out what they were."
"I made her sit by the fire instead of out in the cold and asked her opinion on things even when she didn't want to give it. I just kept pushing, little by little, until the walls came down."
Ryn said, "The real breakthrough came about a year after we found her."
"One of the jobs was to take care of a family with young kids. One of the kids was a boy, maybe eight years old. That was the same age as Marina's brother."
"She completely lost it," Denna said in a low voice. "She just broke down crying in the middle of camp. That's when everything came out..."
"...the fire, her brother, the guilt, everything. We stayed up all night with her, letting her cry and talk and finally, finally grieve properly."
"After that, she started getting better," Ryn said. It took her another year to really fit in with the group, but she improved slowly during that time. But once she did, it was like she'd always been there."
Greg sat in silence, processing this new information. The Marina he knew was sure of herself, smart, and always had a joke or a comment ready. It was hard to reconcile this with the image of a broken teenager who could barely take care of herself.
"Why are you telling me this?" Greg finally asked, even though he already asked yesterday.
"Because you need to know what Marina sees when she looks at you," Denna said in a serious tone. "She sees someone doing what she did, like working herself to death, taking on everyone's problems, and never asking for help."
"She sees herself before we found her."
"That's why she cares so much," Ryn said. This is why she encouraged you to go on this trip.
"She's determined to prevent you from experiencing the same challenges she faced."