Her.

Chapter I

"Haya?"

A young woman popped her head up, curls flying. They weren't very long, they simply fell to her shoulders with a very wonderful durability.

"Yes, Papa?" She replied, looking up from her work on a new blouse. She was seated across from him anticipating a calm day, sitting in their living room to enjoy one another's presence.

"I have a friend visiting me soon, and I wish for you to meet him."

The girl rolled her hazel eyes and let go of her father's gaze, returning to the work she was doing earlier. Haya's eyes were quite the wonder, a sparkle in them not many others had. The border to her pupils flooded a damp green opposing the brown outskirts.

Not wanting to be ignored, and knowing what she assumed, her father stood then, walking behind her and putting his alabaster hands on her shoulders, gently rubbing out the stress a young girl her age did not need.

He was a strange man. The callouses on his hand proved so very much so as they added to the wrinkles that crept over the skin. His white hair and mustache did nothing but allow his hands to further prove his age and wear.

"This isn't like that... He isn't another suitor I wish you to take up."

"Who then, papa?"

"A composer, I met him while I was traveling in Persia a time ago, yet, most recently did I find him here in Paris! He was a dear friend of mine for the while I knew him, though he never seemed very friendly to those whom he didn't trust."

Hay and her father lived in the small cottage they'd had since before her birth, but her father had told more than enough stories about her mother and his travels to know that this was the first place he had stayed for so long. He hadn't ever talked about having many friends while traveling, bar her mother of course. Henry had met her traveling across vast expanses, the only place he'd stayed longer than a month was with her... until the house of course. A woman of completely dark skin, so very unlike his, and also of a fun and spontaneous nature. The woman's demeanor was like that of her daughter's; it hadn't even dampened as her life faded proceeding poor Haya's birth.

Her father and mother met in a rather different place than where they both were from, it was on the Icelandic island they called home for a short amount of time. Henry was a traveler by heart and assistance of money. It wasn't too hard to sustain such a thing when he came from a wealthy family. Paris, London, Coney Island, Boston, Rome, Berlin, Persia, and even a few other places had been put under the man's belt. They were tucked away neatly when he met the woman he would marry in Iceland. She had escaped her home country with her mother and fled there in secret, living off land without a single person in the country knowing they existed. Until Henry came along. A native New Yorker, son to a wealthy factory owner, discovered easily the woman who hid with her mother. When he did, she'd begged him not to rat them out, and Henry promised just that... Falling in love at the same time.

It was hard to explain when he tried to write home and tell them he'd married a woman on his travels. Even harder when he attempted to explain of her heritage.... But that letter was never received by his family. What was left of it. His whole family had been wiped out by a horrid fever, leaving him rich. Well, richer than he'd been before. Devastated by the loss of his family, Henry paid for his wife and her mother's passage to Paris and their new home. Something small so they would feel at home. Just after they moved in, Haya's grandmother passed on from old age, learning just before that she was to have a grandchild.

"What a coincidence, to find an old friend in Paris," Haya replied, picking out a few pins from the fabric of her blouse. The thin metal slid easily from the fabric as she took lithe fingers and plucked away. It was coming along nicely, she thought, and her smile was slowly growing on her plush lips.