"Yep," she said, nodding in answer to his first question, "And, uh...yeah, I guess so. The abridged version, anyway." Morgaine had had an interesting twenty-seven years, with a vast array of experiences to show for it, but she started from the beginning.
"I was born in India, but my parents immigrated here when I was still a baby, so I grew up American. My parents had a hard time with that; they\'d wanted a good girl – they tried raising one, too – but somehow, what they got was a rowdy kid who played guitar and got into fights at school and did the opposite of whatever they wanted her to do." She laughed – a mostly humorless one sort of like the one Tau had uttered earlier, that had worried her so much – and looked down at the table.
"Now, where my parents come from, it\'s still fairly common to arrange marriages – which means that they decide who their kids are going to spend their adult lives with when the kids are still really young, and don\'t get to have any say," she spoke about this particular subject with a certain detachment, though she didn\'t seem to notice. She paused there, took a breath, and looked up again, "When I was seventeen, I found out that my parents had done this – arranged a marriage for me with some person I\'d never even heard of. He\'s from a good family, they said, He\'ll make a good husband." She couldn\'t keep the bitterness from her voice as she mimicked theirs.
"Anyway," she went on, shaking her head, "I didn\'t want that life. I didn\'t want my mother\'s life of subservience, doing everything your husband says, deferring to him in every way – I couldn\'t even respect my parents; how could I be expected to honor someone I never even knew?" She laughed again, and this time there was humor there – showing how ridiculous the thought was to her, "So I ran away. I stayed with friends, and I made money by playing guitar in the subway. I didn\'t make a lot, but I only needed enough for a bus ticket."
She paused, and sighed. This was the hard part, the part she still didn\'t like talking about. She wore her scars with pride, because they were part of who she was – but it was a difficult part, a part she liked to keep inside. As if gathering her strength together, she went on, "I didn\'t have time to make enough even for that, though. The kid I was supposed to marry – his dad found me, one day, while I was packing up. It was late, and the station was empty, so it was just he two of us. We fought. He – he had a tube of battery acid – sulfuric acid, I\'m told – and he threw it on me. On my face. And as I lay screaming on the tile, as it burned, he shouted at me, that it was my fault, for bringing shame on my family, for refusing to marry his son. He said now, no man would ever want me again," She spoke dispassionately, and her gaze had travelled back to the tablecloth, at the last sentence, however, a smirk crossed her lips – but it was gone with her next words, "Eventually I passed out, and somebody found me like that. A cop, I think. When I woke up I was in the hospital, with my guitar and a suitcase by my bed, and a note from my parents telling me I was dead to them," The smirk returned, and her eyes moved back to his face, "And that was the best damn thing that ever happened to me."
"So I graduated high school, living with friends, off the charity of others. Colleges gave me more scholarships than I could ask for, and I got into a good school, studied music for four years, got my degree, and hit the road. I got my tattoos the day I met Ami, a year or two later. She held my hand," The singer smiled, remembering the experience – painful though it had been, "And the rest is history I guess."
A shadow passed dover their table, and she looked up, suddenly delighted, "Hey! Food\'s here!"
