Difference between revisions of "Logs:AU - Holder Wife"

When Madilla was eleven, her cousin, Jessil, broke his leg. It never healed quite right - he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. She helped nurse him, while he was incapacitated, and her aunt, Essa, commented on how patient and dutiful she was, but eventually, he was back on his feet, more or less, and the duty ended. Life went on.

Madilla lifted her arms to let her mother slide the dress over her head, feeling the scratchy red fabric slip over her shoulders, pooling over her slender figure. She was taller than the last wearer had been, and skinnier; they laced the laces tight, and it still sat loose over her barely-there bust and non-existent hips. Sixteen (barely, just barely - just today), and she still looked a child, though she was considered grown, today, a woman. A wife. Today. They pinned up her hair for the first time in her life, tucking little flowers into the twist. They told her she looked lovely; she smiled and smiled and smiled. The perfect bride.

Of the wedding, she remembered little, afterwards. She held the hands of her husband, she kept her gaze lowered, repeated the words. They exchanged the wedding mark. And then there was the celebration that followed, the feast at which she ate little, though her stomach growled: a woman never over-ate. And then they laughed and cheered as her new husband carried her across the threshold, and up to the chamber where they would sleep, in a bed separated by a curtain from most of her new husband's family.

"You're light as a feather," her new husband whispered, the first words he'd spoken to her since they'd exchanged their vows. "Like a child. You look like one, too. No breasts. Disappointing. Girls are better with breasts."

She flushed, embarrassed by her own skinniness. The unusual threadfall might have finished, these past turns, but things had been tight all the same. There would be more food for the others, now she was gone.

He closed the curtains behind them, but she could hear them outside, standing around in the bed chamber, waiting. Listening. She'd known that would happen, but she found herself shy, all the same, and stared at the ceiling above the bed upon which he had laid her down.

"Look at me," he told her. She looked up, seeing him properly for the first time today. For the first time, really, up close. She'd never spoken more than a few words to him, before today. Or at all. He was young, perhaps five turns older than she. Not bad looking, though she had little basis for comparison; she assumed he would be considered so. His expression was serious, almost calculating.

And then he nodded, as if finally satisfied, and got onto the bed, crawling on top of her.

And that was her wedding night. When he pulled back the curtains, she pulled her dress down again, turning her head away so that she didn't have to see the people still crowded around, the confirmation that yes, the deed was done, and yes, she'd been a virgin. He left her, then, and his mother came in to help her into the bath, to wash her and put her into a nightgown, then back into the bed that still smelled of him.

"You'll get used to it," her new mother-in-law told her, kindly. "He's a good boy. You'll see."

She would, she knew. It wasn't so bad. He wasn't old, and he was the eldest son, too, so one day he'd inherit this place, and she'd have a position of... not power. But importance. The holder's wife, rather than just the wife of one of the younger sons. Better than her mother was. Her son would be holder, too, one day. She wrapped her arms around herself, content with this idea. Her son. Hers. And daughters, too.

There was more food, here, more money for the little extras. Once, her husband - Caden - brought her home some ribbons. Once, a swathe of fine fabric for a shawl, though she had little place to wear such a pretty thing. She would have preferred the wool to make a more useful shawl, like the one her mother wore, though she herself had no skill at weaving or knitting to make such a thing.

And towards the end of their first turn together, she discovered she was pregnant, and there were more gifts, then, and Caden became so attentive that sometimes she thought she might burst, but in a nice way, because she was excited, too, overwhelmed by the changes in her body, first little, and then more obvious, as the months passed.

Even the pains of childbirth weren't so bad, because at the end of it, they handed her a baby, and she got to keep him, her little boy, and hold him to her breast (larger, now, more to Caden's liking), and feed him and change him, and cuddle him when he cried. And over time, there were more babies, and perhaps she even learned to enjoy her husband's advances, not just for the hope that there might be another baby, but because she liked him - loved him? - and he seemed to care at least a little for her.

When she was twenty-five, the mother of six, now, except that the youngest had died last turn, only a few months old, so only five, now, and there'd been a miscarriage, too, three turns before that, too, but: when she was twenty-five, her father-in-law passed on, and her husband became the holder. They moved from their bed in the room that was now shared by all the adults into the room that had been her mother and father in laws, gaining privacy for the first time. It seemed too quiet, at first, but she grew to like it.

She cried when her second son, Mattian, left. "There's no place for me here, Mother," he'd told her, fondly, but condescendingly. "I'll be better off working for someone else, where there's more room to advance." She cried again when her daughters left, marrying one after another, leaving them behind. Mattian wrote letters she struggled, and often failed, to read, though she treasured them anyway, admiring his learning. He'd ended up at Peyton, not so very far away, and talked of the girl he wanted to marry - a Harper. A Harper! Such an interesting career choice for a girl, though she was pleased for him anyway.

Her eldest married, bringing Kalisty into the Hold, and like her own mother-in-law had done for her, turns earlier, she bathed her, on the night of the wedding, and promised her that it would get easier. And she believed it. She was happy.

Then, there were grandchildren, more little babies for her to cuddle and love, though her knees were beginning to ache, and sometimes, her hands just didn't close the way they used to. Well. She was getting old. It was to be expected.

She cried again, when Caden died. But he'd lived a good life - over fifty, when he died - and all things come to end, eventually. She had a few more turns in her, though she found herself settling more and more into her chair, letting her daughters and daughters in law, and their daughters, take on the most of the day-to-day work.

When her own time came, a couple turns later, she died content. Eight living children, more grandchildren than she could count, a good marriage... She had no regrets.