"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.
"I think so as well, seeing how far Persia is from here," her father drawled, his mustache closing over his now closed lips, smiling soon after.
"What is his name?"
"Erik Destler, he won't sound familiar as composers go for he's never published his work." Henry picked up his paper as he returned to his seat and opened the black and white words attempting to find something that wasn't entirely overturned by politics.
"Why ever not? Is he any good? Possibly good as me?" Haya asked laughingly. She composed in her free time, using the piano as a way of escape, and therapy of sorts. It was nothing more than a hobby for her though.
"He is amazing," her father replied without another word to be said.
Haya humphed and crossed her arms, pulling a thread from her dark skin that had come loose from the blouse.
The young woman awaited the man her father promised would arrive that day with a little less than discontent. She hadn't felt like visitors that day, and she'd had to put away the project she was finishing. It never failed to bother her when her father sprung things like this on her. Haya hadn't ever been the most social of creatures, though that was for good reason. To top it off, while stuffing away her blouse, she had slipped and pierced herself with a pin. It wasn't an immense wound, but her finger would just not stop bleeding.
Just as she began to blot it with a cloth, the expected visitor arrived. He was early she would have guessed, if the commotion her father had given was of any indication. She cursed when her father called her into the entranceway as she clutched the cloth to her bleeding finger, looking completely out of propriety.
"Ah! Monsieur Erik, it's so good to see you!"
"Henry," a deep voice replied with a chuckle as they obviously embraced, though Haya still hid in the sitting room.
"Haya, darling," Henry called again, sounding more formal.
At nineteen, and of a strange heritage, she hadn't met many people. Of course, this man had to be as old as her father if not older, even if his voice did not betray that.
Haya walked into the small area where the doorway met the stairs and then opened in to the sitting room she had just exited. The kitchen sat beyond that, where she was just covering her wound, yet her blouse and finger fleeted her mind when she was met with the tall figure of a man in solid black adornment. He was an intimidating person, undoubtedly, but it could have been any of the factors he possessed that would chill a person if he merely possessed one. Yellow eyes, a white mask on half of his visage, gaunt frame, thin skin, and a bloated upper lip peaking through the mask. Long bony fingers reaching out to take her hand which almost made her scream with fright if her father wasn't there. Damn propriety, she thought, I'm not touching that man.
"Haya," her father said sternly.
"Sorry, Monsieur," she muttered and stuck her hand out, forgetting the bleeding finger.
"You're bleeding," he noticed plainly, his tongue getting in his way allowing his French accent far too much ease.
Haya retracted her hand swiftly and placed the cloth on it again.
"I apologize," she said, biting back a sneer that the man evoked so easily within her vocals. Oh how she wished to bite his head off with words.
How had her father made friends with such a strange, blunt, and awful man? Awful was purely by look of face, yet she wasn't willing to be surprised if he did have an awful mien attached.
"Here," he offered quickly, and seemingly pulled a vial from nowhere, dropping a few of the drops encased onto her finger that he had thrust away from her side. The liquid wasn't as mobile as water, yet it certainly wasn't mud either. It absorbed into her skin and soothed it, plugging the tiny incision as well, ceasing the drops of blood.
"How?" She questioned and twirled her finger around the dark skin not much different than before the incident.
"A few things I picked up in Persia... So how are you fairing, Henry, it's been at least twenty years." His attention completely faded away from the girl, his eyes now Henry's.
"No," Haya's father replied as her eyes stared at her hand in incredulity. She failed to believe that anything as such had occurred, the way he grabbed her hand and forcibly healed it quicker than one's heart beat.
Her own heart was hammering in her chest, he'd touched her. She felt the skin covering his bones, and there was little else there. Her father held wrinkles and a good amount of silver hair over his knuckles and the back of his hand, yet with that man... Haya had felt little but his taut skin... And a small jolt of warmth, numbing her fingers and her wrist. The joints tingled with a strange blush, making her still gaze at her hand though the men were long gone from the area.
For the first time in her life, a man hadn't so much as treated her like an object or an oddity. He'd given her an impassive glance, not even commented on the mixture of her parentage, and then he went off and spoke to her father as if he hadn't seen her. No, Erik Destler was a man of little words, doing only what kept him alive and nothing excessive. For the man who traveled as he seemed to, Haya could hardly feign surprise. She wasn't ogled at, the skin hadn't burned in her chest and face from a threatening stare, but her hand had betrayed her initial feelings of intense disgust. Haya didn't wish to be suddenly thrown so violently from her original perspective of Erik, in any way or form, but the man's mind without even a few extra words made her want to know every turn and nook his brain conceived. Haya wanted to know everything, and he was just a room away to do that.