An image of the captain as a boy sprang into my mind. Laughing turquoise eyes, wild black hair, mischievous grin. Rowdy, impetuous, free. He would have been a handful for any parent or priest, no doubt. But to be that young when his friends, his mentors, his only family, were slaughtered… I shook my head. Grief cut out pieces of the heart, seared itself into the mind in ways that never truly healed.
