In Which Dalston Makes Up for Lost Embraces

October 14, 1165

Tired of watching the clouds breeze by, Dalston arched his back and fiddled with a loose thread of his tunic. When was Deian's game going to start? He had waited long enough, and was now growing impatient. Maybe he was testing them one at a time, and Dalston had drawn the last turn. Yes, that had to be it. The only other reason it should take this long was in the event that both Octavius and Severin had lost and Deian was therefore not even bothering with him, but that was bleak thinking; Dalston preferred the first possibility.

"Dalston?"

He looked up to see a tall, fair-haired man standing on the other side of the rose bushes, his mouth as immobile as Dalston remembered, but a smile in his eyes of the likes he hadn't seen in many years. "Father?"

Dalston scrambled to his feet, then edged through the bushes, an eye open for any indication that this man was not who he thought it was. "Father, is it really you?"

His father nodded. "Yes, son, it's me."

Still somewhat skeptical, Dalston placed his arms around him, then proceeded upward to his shoulders and face. He did not disappear upon contact, nor morph into whatever object had been the framework for the mirage. He was most assuredly real, and most assuredly present.

"It is you!" Dalston exclaimed as his father pulled him in for an embrace. "Father! I missed you!"

"I missed you too, son," his father muttered into his ear. "You've done well for yourself, Dalston; I'm proud of you."

Dalston felt a smile break on his slowly-warming face. "Have you seen my children?"

His father placed a hand on his shoulder. "Indeed, I have. They're beautiful."

"Dalston? Abrich, is it Dalston?"

A slender figure emerged from the exterior rim of the thicket and made her way toward the father and son, the skirts of her gown swishing over the blades of grass as her pace quickened to a run. "Dalston? Is that you?"

"It's him, Rica," his father confirmed, using that familiar pet name that hadn't breached Dalston's ears in decades.

Her unforgotten smile swelled to its potential. "My son."

As opposed to her straight-laced, controlled husband, she had always been an irrepressibly joyful woman, her happiness that of the most contagious of sorts. Dalston could not help but return the grin. "Mother!"

Laughing, she rested her hand on Dalston's arms and met his eyes, her smile unbroken. "It's wonderful to see you again!"

She flung her arms around his neck and held him tightly, as though determined to make up for all those long years of lost embraces. "Oh, Dalston! I haven't been so happy in years!"

Dalston placed a quick kiss on her cheek. "Mother, it's been far too long."

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