Author-ized L.J. on Nostr: The siblings' mother was also an enslaved woman captured during travel and pressed ...

The siblings' mother was also an enslaved woman captured during travel and pressed into food prep and service on a work camp where she met her future husband. This part isn't exactly unusual, though, since slavery is a part of this world and anyone who could be captured without recourse was "fair game" for enslavement. The siblings' father worked to buy the freedom of the woman he'd come to love, which contributed to the chronic injuries and pain that would disable him later in life, and wanted her to go home but she decided to stay partly because she'd been running from a predatory man in her home community in the first place, partly because she couldn't secure safe travel back and she was relatively secure where she was as a free if poor woman, and partly because she loved him too. They lived happily ever after--until her sudden death after giving birth to their third and last child, that is.