Chapter 1 — The Fields of Her Beginning

Isolde was born in a small farming village, where the days were long, the air smelled of wet soil, and the sun always seemed a little closer to the ground.

Her family worked the earth — rice fields in the rainy season, vegetables in the dry. Their hands were rough, but their lives were soft in the way only rural life could offer.

Her father was there, but not quite. He drifted in and out — quiet, distant, rarely involved in the world within the home. Responsibility did not seem to rest on his shoulders, and care did not live in his words. If anything, the home ran because her mother held it together.

Her mother was the kind of woman people wrote poems about without realizing. Gentle, selfless, and always thinking of others before herself. She never raised her voice, even when her heart was heavy. When neighbors were in trouble, she gave without hesitation. When her children were sick, she stayed up all night, silently praying beside their beds.

Isolde had an older brother — a restless, mischievous boy with scraped knees and a temper that bloomed like weeds. He hated studying, preferred chasing frogs to reading books, and often got into trouble with neighbors for breaking something, teasing someone, or simply being too loud. He’d come home, dragging his guilt behind him, and it was always their mother who bowed her head in apology.

But when it came to Isolde, his whole being softened. He was fiercely protective of her — sometimes too much. He’d stand between her and the world, offer the last piece of fruit, take the blame for things she didn’t do. He'd ruffle her hair, call her "cái đuôi nhỏ," and build her mud castles in the yard like they were palaces.

Isolde, even as a child, had a light around her. She was soft-spoken but sharp-eyed — the kind of child who listened more than she talked. She wasn't pushed to study, and no one expected much from her academically. But she surprised everyone. She absorbed things like a sponge, quietly collecting the world around her and understanding it in ways even adults missed.

She grew up running through rice paddies with bare feet, catching dragonflies, playing house with banana leaves and clay pots. Her world was green and golden, messy and warm — the perfect mess of a countryside childhood.

And though life at home wasn’t always whole, her childhood was.

Only years later would she look back and realize: She had been poor, yes. But never empty. She had been overlooked, yes. But never unloved. And most of all, she had been strong long before she knew what strength really was.

Isolde Does Not Look Back