Flash Fiction Friday – The Baronessa

Oh hey, Flash Fiction Friday is back. (Shut up, it’s still Friday until I go to bed, whatever the clock says! :P). Tonight I’m posting a short peice about a NPC from my D&D homebrew campaign setting, who I’ve rather fallen for:

The Baronessa

The baronessa finished reading the letter. Running her fingers over her youngest daughter’s brisk script, she sighed. Though she enjoyed the letters Merzala sent to her, they always left her feeling a little sad.
Of all her children, Merzala was the only one fit to take her place when it was her time to go. Merena, her twin, was far too wild and impatient, and Karinda, the oldest far too docile, not to mention if she inherited the keep it would be her imbecile husband running it for her. Markos, meanwhile, had a good head on his shoulders but was far too shy with people to lead. In Merzala, the baronessa saw herself: a born leader, with a prescence that commanded respect but a personality that earned genuine affection in the end. Yet Merzala had chosen a life of altruism, and althought the baronessa liked to think there was altruism in what she did, too, she knew she would not be able to presuade her to come back from the home she’d built for herself and leave the innocents she had dedicated her life to behind.
Even physically, Merzala was the only one of her children she really saw herself in. She put the letter aside and opened her locket, looking down at the tiny, fine portraits she carried inside. Three light-skinned, dark-haired faces looked back at her. The artist had done an impressive job catching their likeness in such a small frame: Markos tussled hair, Merena’s sparkling eyes, Karinda’s sweet smile… Each of them a mixture of her and her late husband, gods be kind to him, so well blended that they didn’t quite look like either one of them. And then her ruby girl… Merzala’s features were so much like her own that they might’ve been mistaken for each other easily if not for the crimson tone of her skin and the horns that curved gently from her forehead. Not for the first time, she wished her daughter’s conviction hadn’t carried her so far from home. Still, gods willing, she would live another twenty years, long enough for one of her grandchildren to take over the keep lest it fall into the wrong hands.
There was a knock on the door. The baronessa closed the locket.
“Enter!”
“Pardon me, ma’am,” the dwarven guard who had been posted outside said. “The adventurers are here.”
“Of course,” she said. “Right on time, too…”

Time for bed for me. Good night, everyone, and have a great NYE tomorrow!