Lia

Just a little short I wrote because I can't bring myself to do my homework. :D Critique is appreciated. :)
(Note - "amma" is a made up word, just for the fantasy feel :P It's supposed to mean grandmother, if that's unclear.)

Lia watched the last of the crows perched on the balcony rail as the dusk deepened. One by one the little black birds had taken off to find their homes somewhere in the trees beyond, until only two remained. But now, as the setting sun arrayed the sky in warm golden tones, they too fled off into dark line of trees below.

They were going home, Lia thought, and she pushed herself up from her spot leaning on the balcony rail and paced back and forth. She felt a great melancholy in watching the sky flare up with sundown and waiting for that brief blaze of color to be quickly smothered with the cold blanket of night. It dredged up old memories in her, memories that she had thought would quickly heal and become no more than silver scars on her heart.

But that was foolish of her, to think so. Lia let out a little laugh. It hadn’t been so long ago, not so long ago at all, when she had been like those crows herself: free to go wherever she pleased, flitting from tree to tree, from the crowded halls to the rich, varied scents and sights of the marketplace. But no more.

The transformation had gone by in a blur: the word that the red lord in the east was coming in to the town of Tarin, and her old amma’s worried look. Amma told her things about her mother, about things she had done a long time ago and buried in the past, to be trod on and forgotten – but not forgotten by all. Your mama was never lost, she remembered amma saying in her soft, sad way. She didn’t really wander into that forest and get lost, never to come back again. To the best I know, Lia, your mama is alive somewhere and no one knows where. It was for the best, Lia. The lord can’t know. It would put the both of you in terrible danger.

Lia glanced down at her clenched hands, seeing her knuckles turning white. She forced herself to relax, and gripped the balcony rail instead. She breathed out slowly. Tonight, she and Anaris would leave for the mountains. They would cross the pass, and go on down to a little village no one would ever think of searching. Lia had never crossed mountains. She had never even left her safe home in Tarin in all the fifteen years of her life, and now, so abruptly, she was being uprooted.

A heavy, oppressing feeling settled down over her like a silent shadow, and Lia tried to turn her mind away from these thoughts, to conceal herself from everything. She was wrong, she admitted to herself now: this painful, vulnerable feeling wasn’t something that would just heal, that would just go away. But what could she do about it?

A cold breath of wind that whispered by, raising the hairs on the back of her neck, brought her suddenly back to herself. The dusk had faded to night, and now there was nothing to see: only a foggy blanket of dark cloud, the occasional star peeking out from its depths. Wrapping her arms around herself to shield from the cold, Lia hurried back into the warmth of the room inside. She must be ready to cross the mountains.