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I continued to live with my aunt through my childhood. My father lived with us for most of that time, but he was often away on business. Though the economy recovered after the war, the lords had lost much of what made them lords in the first place. My father was no exception, but much of his holdings were tenement houses that were spared the dragon's flame, so he started the reconstruction slightly ahead of the others. Using this advantage, he invested heavily in construction hoping to rebuild the world for the thousands of disenfranchised. Europe still needed the American plantations and workers still needed homes.

The office which my father occupied at Aunt Ethel's estate was forbidden to me as a child. Elsa would chide me about nosing in on adult works or that my father needed his quiet to think. Of course, this did little but intrigue me more. I combined my history books and stories with wild dreams of what hid behind the office doors. Perhaps my father was embroiled in sinister intrigue, plotting against the British Crown with foreign adversaries. Or perhaps, he was secretly a powerful despot, having seized power through the war and now levied his will across the land from his seat in Ethel's extra office. I was quite disillusioned when my father asked me into his study one afternoon.

He was sitting at a desk near a window, furiously sketching something in the pale afternoon light. Hearing me lurking at the door, he called me in and told me to fetch a book for him. The office was almost identical to any other office. Several desks and a small sitting area were the only bits of furniture. A few shelves held big ledgers which were entirely unlike my history books. Instead of fantasy and intrigue, the whole room reeked of numbers and decimal points. Only one table had anything of particular interest on it.

"Father?" I asked. He grunted slightly to indicate he was listening, "What is this drawing?"

With a lot of groaning and creaking of joints, he pushed away from his desk and walked over to where I was standing. Elsa said that before the war, my father was a young, dashing man who would have swept any girl off her feet, but that now the burdens of responsibility weighed too heavily on him. His hair was thinning and he was rather portly. What had once been a proud black beard had splotches of gray creeping in around the edges, just as his eyes had turned a shadowy slate color lurking behind thick spectacles. "This is your home," he said as he towered over me, looking down at the table.

"We owned the whole estate before the war, but I had to mortgage the whole of it. Large estates require a great deal of management. My father had great men to help him, but many of them died in the war and I could not afford to hire replacements." He gestured to one of the larger regions on the survey roll. "This is Annandale Plantation, built by your great-great grandfather not long after the territory was brought under governorship. It is a small house by today's standards, but still solid despite the years."

"Am I named after it?"

"In a roundabout sort of way," he mused. "Now this area here was once fields, but we've started construction on new textile mills. The bankers have lent money to some of the other lords to rebuild their plantations, and it will be more profitable if we keep the resulting crops local. Then we can ship spun fabric at the same price while returning a greater profit. Odd that we didn't think of it before, but desperate men can find unique solutions."

I did not understand much about textiles, but the idea of our family home intrigued me. "Will I ever go to Annandale? I would like to see it, I think."

"Of course," he said rather astounded. "As soon as the factory is finished, my next effort will be restoring Annandale. I will even make you a promise. It is tradition for fathers to give their daughters a party when they turn eighteen. It is a declaration that you are a grown woman. You will have your ball and it will be the first event held at a restored Annandale. Your mother would have wanted that." He looked at the small portrait he kept on his desk. My mother still occupied a lot of his mind even then.

Not being too eager to leave my father's company, I walked around the survey map a while longer, reading names and places. One in particular stuck out to me, "Who is Robert Locke?"

My father responded patiently as he rubbed his tired eyes, "Lord Robert is the owner of Hartfell, a large plantation a little further north beyond the city."

"Why is his name on the map in so many places?" I could tell my time was drawing to an end as my father kept glancing at the clock.

"Robert bought up land during the war. Any time one of the other lords was killed or went in to financial ruin, Robert would come knocking with an offer to bankroll them and send them packing back to the safety of Europe. He accumulated quite a large holding, but it was all the more tragic of a blow when Hartfell was attacked. The Wyrm himself did the work, burned Lord Robert's entire livelihood. Bankrupted the family, but he was able to parlay his land holdings into a loan to keep himself afloat. I'm not certain he'll ever catch up on the loan, let alone the taxes. Maybe a few good crops will let him breathe, but he needs to make it a few more seasons. Once the mills are up and running, he'll be the better for it. Come to think of it, he has a son about your age, probably a bit older. Theodore."

He patted me on the head and took the book that I had been asked to retrieve. "Run along now, I need to get back to work." I saw him like that often, possessed by a tired determination to put the world back the way it was.

My brief interlude into the adult world was not very interesting at the time, but my father had given me a new tapestry of stories. No, he was not a powerful sovereign, but he was a temporarily embarrassed lord working diligently and charitably to restore his power. And he would celebrate that victory by throwing the grandest ball since before the war, all for the sake of his loving daughter.

Aunt Ethel had a painting of Annandale which hung in one of the sitting rooms. She never understood why she would find me staring at it, sometimes for a long while, as I fantasized about all the different rooms and secret passages. I could imagine my mother, dancing in the ballroom with the dashing young figure of my father. Around them would be others, all celebrating a harvest or Parliament Day. Dragons would be in attendance, not the horrible beasts, but the courtly gentleman in their finest costumes, dancing with unsuspecting young women.

On my fifteenth birthday, my father showed me plans for Annandale's rebirth. He had employed a painter to draw out the gardens and the house's exterior. The paintings themselves were beautiful and I could not imagine them coming to life. I told him that I did not expect a promise to be kept to a curious little girl, but he insisted on having my birthday party at our ancestral home.

In the meantime, tutors allied with my aunt's friends to correct my wild upbringing as best as they could. Though I often surprised my instructors in the realms of history, they had much more to teach me about the world. Sciences and maths never interested me, and Lady Ethel was usually on my side in this distaste, but father insisted that his daughter be versed in the ways of bookkeeping. In truth, it was best not to set him off about it because he would then drone on and on about how the world had changed and the old ways were done for or this or that. At the end of the day, I would still have my lessons.

The tutors were slightly tiresome, but the esteemed ladies were an absolute horror. Hour after hour sitting in a stifling room learning to stitch or serve tea. Piano lessons and art lessons and a discourse on the proper serving methods of various meals. Lady Ethel oversaw this realm of my education and she was quite thorough. "If my half-wit brother insists you learn to run his businesses, then you'll damn well learn to run a household as well."

And so my childhood fantasies were battered and bruised by the juggernauts of logic and reason. I learned of the horrors of the war and dismissed any fantasy of ever meeting a dragon. In my limited travel off of my aunt's property, I witnessed the poverty of the surrounding countryside. In my seventeenth year, we went to the city to shop for dresses. When we arrived, the coach stopped and the driver informed Aunt Ethel that it was Bread Day, a day set aside to feed the hungry. Droves of people from all around the city and outside of it would make the trek to the center square just for a loaf of bread and a sack of flour. I started to pout for my misfortune, and never have I seen my aunt become more fierce.

"I was a fool to forget the date, but that's no excuse for your whimpering young lady. Our table is full by nothing but sheer luck and hard work. Your dress can wait a while." She hailed over our escort and gave them all the money she had, instructing them to ride into town, buy as much food as they could, and hand it out to those in the lines. I could be a petulant girl at times, but my aunt was a decent conscience.

Then came my final year living with Aunt Ethel. I had asked to go and see Annandale as it was being remade, but my father insisted that we wait. He wanted the first time that I saw it to be a complete experience. He brought home catalogs from shops in the towns, showing various types of fabric or finishing that he and Aunt Ethel would converse and argue about before finally agreeing on something beautiful which neither of them liked.

Furniture was ordered. Silverware and place settings were selected. I was amazed at all of the intricacies of furnishing a plantation home. Aunt Ethel would take me to galleries and shops where we would look at sculpture and art, making very judicious selections. Lady Ethel based her choices on what she remembered of her home for even she was forbidden from seeing the new grandeur of Annandale.

Then came the selection of staff. Though I was allowed to sit in on these interviews, I found that my opinion was entirely worthless. Instead, Aunt Ethel relied on the advice of Elsa, who seemed to know each and every candidate. My father condoned the whole arrangement and pointed out that Elsa was immensely qualified, having served Lady Ethel faithfully through the war and subsequent years. Elsa had become my de facto lady's maid, but she had remained more of a confidant and mother figure than a servant, which is why it came as no surprise when my father informed me that Elsa was to be Annandale's housekeeper.

Finally came the month of my birth. After a long discussion with his sister about her advancing years and depleting funds, Lady Ethel's home was packed up and prepared for sale. My father arrived in a grand coach and our personal things were loaded on for the full day's ride. Movers would be coming for some of Lady Ethel's things, but the majority of it was headed for storage or auction. My home of almost eighteen years, the only world I had ever known, disappeared behind me.

The ride was long and the conversation was dull, but my excitement could not be tempered. We passed by father's factory and I marveled at the size of it. A huge plume of smoke swirled around the top of the building as if a dragon had roosted in the upper floor. "Machines," is all my father said, half asleep. I saw many of the workers, so many of whom looked pale and dirty. They peered back at us, white eyes surrounded by soot.

My thoughts of reality faded away as we turned into the entrance of Annandale. On the horizon, I saw the brightly lit estate of my family and suddenly felt a great sense of belonging. I was lucky, as my father would say, and in two days time, I would have a grand ball. My fantasies had faded, but the splendor of a fortunate reality was taking its place.