Difference between revisions of "Logs:Mother Merian"

"No." It's not an irritable voice, or even a very forceful one in its soft cadence, but it, nonetheless, makes its point quite clear in those slight emphases. "No. You cannot have an extra cookie until after dinner. No-, no buts. I don't care if you think Jolene got more than you. I don't care if you think this is not fair. Life is just not fair, kid. Just get used to it and let me have some quiet to think." With a babe at a bared breast, clutched long in the crook of her arm, and a spatula in the other, Merian can't even have the energy to look exasperated. "Just go, go sit in your chair and be quiet for just a little bit longer and I'll have dinner ready."

The cothold just outside the hall's walls is roomy, with separate rooms for each pair of children and in spotless condition despite four children all under the age of six running around. It's tasteful, partially due to the simplicity of the furniture and decorations. Merian is a rounded, comfortable looking woman who clearly spends what little free time she must have on her abode than her looks as her blonde hair seems unwashed for a few days at least, and her attire, while once nice, has odd patches keeping it together. The aroma of a hearty herdbeast stew fills the air and a plate of butter cookies sits in the center of the large round table.

Her son, the older of her two boys, stays underfoot. "How come?" he wants to know. "How come Joley got more? I want--" Another look at Merian, though, and he breaks off and unhappily goes to his chair. Except... then it's not so unhappily. The cookies are, after all, in the middle of the table. He climbs up, and then reaches. Will they be close enough for him to grab, or is he going to have to find another way?

"There is no how come, you exasperating little creature. Why can't you behave like your sisters? Or," the baby currently getting his fill of nourishment. "Rhadevyn." She's done reasoning with him or being nice and calm with her calm-seeming, but rife with non-calm voice. "Just," and then there's one of her well-behaved little girls, the one younger than Joley, running in with a gleeful shriek as she's chased inward by a jovial, if portly, man. "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDY!!!! NO NO NO, I'M TICKLISH!" For a moment, a brief moment of chaos, Rhad is left to his own devices as Merian's face just sours, tightening, as she refocuses her attention completely on a dinner that's been done long ago.

She used his full name. All those syllables. Even if the 'why can't you behave' isn't anything new, and he kind of likes 'ex-as-per-a-ting' even if he can't completely pronounce it all just right, this really isn't good. Rhad looks sideways at his mother beneath his long fringe... but takes his opportunity. Instead of climbing onto the table-- he's done that before and gotten into trouble for it, too-- or tugging on the tablecloth-- ditto, not that it would stop him if there were no other way to get it done-- he hastily grabs the long-handled ladle set out for the stew and tries to bump a couple of the cookies off their plate and over to him. Maybe they won't notice the couple broken pieces and the trail of crumbs!

He's lucky that the person who notices is his father and not his mother, or at least that might be what he thinks for years to come. Nothing comes of his extra cookies, or those broken pieces. It's like his mother didn't even notice at all. Crime success!

It's a quiet day at the cothold just without Smith Hall and Merian adjusts her skirts, pets the coiff of her hair and pats the knot on her shoulder down. In the mirror, the now rotund woman stares at her reflection and the gleam of the double loops and double cords in dark, rich red and white knot, long unused. A single gold tassel hung in the center. "You look beautiful, darling," the voice creeps up on her, her husband, the portly (if a little thinner now) man, twelve turns older. "I've been recalled. I've decided to return." The bickering of two girls pauses the woman's voice and a quick smile appears on her face. "Joley, Linds. You're on holiday, not here to argue again. Now try it again and see if you can enter this room in a more civilized manner befitting your respective ranks."

Rhad's knot isn't nearly as fancy as, with a sidelong, got-you smile, the teenager slips past his chided siblings-- only to stop short when he's far enough into the room to see the older woman. "Mother?" It's neither entirely certain nor entirely censure. He glances at his father as though ramifications could be writ on his face-- is this new to his father, too?-- but then his dark eyes are drawn to his mother once more. It's the knot that dragged on the floor, back when they first tried it on when they thought her attention was elsewhere, after he'd found it in a box under the bed when Linds was taking forever to find them; it fits her now despite the changes in her figure, the knot of a master vintner who married down.

"A dragon is waiting for me. I wanted to see my children one last time before I went home." She doesn't even miss a beat at the implicit designation of this as not home. "My darlings," there's warmth there in the serenity of her voice, unclouded by the frustrations of housekeeping, child minding, and the general burdens of being a woman in love. Jolene and Lindsiera stop short too as they re-enter and stand by Rhad. "Mom?" Well, Linds at least. Jolene, the eldest, doesn't seem fazed. "Come visit. I can show you around the vineyards inland of Tillek and we can picnic on the beach when you're free of studies." The youngest, a shy boy trips down the stairs from the bedrooms and creeps along to cling to his mother's skirts. Him, the ten year old who seems smaller than his age, is lifted (at his age). "No tears. Don't cry. Haven't you lot learned anything from me in the last few years?"

The man, the husband and father, has lost some of his joviality in the past few turns, that brightness that chases his children, almost as if, by them growing up, he doesn't quite know his place. And here, too, dismissed as an accessory to the walls by his wife, he seems ... out of place, without the will to get in a word edgewise. That he's not invited to the vineyards of Tillek is obvious, but that the youngest of his children is apparently leaving as well sits odd enough for him to state a very quiet, "No. Leave him, woman." The awkward air of parents about to argue hangs heavily in the air.

Perhaps that's why Rhad looked away from his father. Perhaps he had to. There are no signs of tears in his expression, nor a struggle to contain them, but neither is there complete composure. His mouth is tight, his skin tight over his bones. Maybe later it will register, how much happier she seems; maybe much later he'll be able to reason out why, for all that she's nothing like the gears and gadgets he prefers. His gaze twitches to his father and then away, but he doesn't leave. Neither does he say he'll go.

Maybe the bickering that results, or the terse words of an argument that can't quite argue freely starts, and ends, without too many words being said, is something that is familiar to the children. Snippets over time, overheard conversations here and there quickly masked. But when it does end, Merian is giving her children kisses on the cheeks and holding her youngest's hand as they head towards the Hall courtyard. Most of her personal effects, what little there was are gone, with the exception of a small painting, in a gilded frame, hung by the door. It's abstract in a swirl of colors and a small brass tag at the bottom calls it [ Peace ].

Too familiar. The apprentice has to stoop to let his mother kiss his cheek; if it feels at all like betraying his father to go along with it, it's not as though his father isn't standing for it too. She's left 'Peace' behind, but if she's left peace, it's only in avoidance and what stays unspoken still. He might ask his older sister about it, later. Might.

There are bits and pieces in the fog of memories, laughter and popped corn around a hearth with stories and fires. Of absent fathers, busy with work, while tired looking mothers make valiant, but failed, pretenses. Of a big sister who, beyond the veneer of stoicism, is all gush and warmth and heart. There's cookies being baked, dabs of dough and batter smeared on noses, and images of a mother, or was it a father? Or was it a sister? That sort of blend seamlessly together.

It converges four turns later in the formal auditorium of Healer Hall, one of the grand lecture halls that is now being used for a more formal walking of tables. It's for the families, when the real promotion happened days earlier. Merian sits in the seats designated for the new-made Journeyman Joley, as she goes professionally by now (particularly in light of a particular auspicious someone, who shares a similar name). The Master vintner looks pleased even if a seat separates her from her undivorced husband. The little one, still diminutive in stature, sits nearby with an apprentice vintner knot on his shoulder.

It's going to be him, not just someday but soon. Rhadevyn sits as straight as though he were the one trading in his senior apprentice's knot this day. He sits stiffly between his parents; he sits as silently now as he'll be voluble later when he's congratulating his big but not so tall sister. He doesn't seem to pay much attention to his little brother, but once he gives Linds a hand signal from when they were children that their parents aren't meant to see. It's afterward, during the celebration and after he's partnered one of Joley's patient year-mates in a dance, that he speaks to his mother without really looking at her. "They're posting me again, until my Turnday. To a Weyr."

Throughout, she can't help herself, a hand sneaking out to caress his hand, her soft, loose-skinned fingers rubbing at his knuckles. And later, when her children dance, and her eldest is surrounded by congratulatory peers and now subordinates; after her son partners another and speaks the words she doesn't respond to except with a hug that attempts to convey those emotions she's just never been terribly good at... after all that, Merian returns home, to the small room she's claimed for herself at the vintner outpost in Tillek. Her children have never visited, other than the little one who stayed. There have never been picnics on the beach or guided tours of those vineyards. There is only a sketch of her family, done by the amateur hand of her third child, Linds, of those moments of happiness. And in her room, in this silence of no one, not a child, not a husband, and no obligations of her biology, she thinks back to the last hug with her oldest son.

It wasn't a wordless hug, soft words spoken into her son's ear and a hug that draws him close enough to smell the fermenting sugars his mother works with constantly now. "Come visit." Pause. "Please." But they're such soft words, the entreaty strength-less and now, perhaps, a little hopeless.