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September 12, 1202
"Mama!" Ceidrid nearly bounced himself out of Dora's arms as she struggled to pick him up. He was so heavy now. It wouldn't be long before she couldn't lift him at all. "You all right? You look sad."
"Oh. Oh, no. No, I'm not sad. Quite the opposite." She'd thought she'd been right to be worried, to dread it. Who would take such a thing well? She hadn't taken it well, when she'd remembered--and it was her!
But... she should have known. She was a mother. And nothing in the world would have made her stop loving her baby, not for a second.
"I'm... actually very happy."
"But you're crying."
Was she? Dora took her hand off her son's back for a second, just long enough to wipe her eyelashes. She had cried earlier, rather a lot. Her mother had too. There might have been a few tears left over. "Oh. Yes, I was. But they were happy tears. There's nothing in the world quite like happy tears."
"Happy tears?"
Dora nodded and stroked at Ceidrid's hair. So soft, so thick. So like her mother's. "You'll understand, one day. Sometimes, happy things happen because sad things have gone away--or, at least, have become less sad. And those happy things are only happy because you were sad before."
Ceidrid's head rolled to the side. He didn't get it. He hadn't lived long enough to get it. To Dora's great relief, he'd never been sad enough to get it. She hoped it would be many years yet before he had been.
Sad things, less sad. Still sad. She'd still left her mother in several years of unknowing purgatory. Her mother would fight with keeping it from the rest of the family, everyone else, even though her heart wanted little more than to burst into joyous song for all the world to hear. She still had to figure out who to tell, how to tell them, who would be better off not knowing, how to pretend for their benefit. How to let Ceidrid and any future siblings he had have their grandmother, how to let her mother have her grandchildren, without acknowledging the relationship.
If Ceidrid need to know. If Adonis needed to know.
Still sad.
But less sad.
And, given that--so happy indeed.
NEXT CHAPTER:
June 7, 1200
"That cat seems to like you," Thetis's voice sounded from the couch, her having apparently returned from putting the tea set away. "She doesn't usually like new people. Or even most familiar people, really."
This sweet animal? Thetis may have been the one who lived with her--but Dora didn't quite believe it. Thetis must not have seen the way she'd allowed Ceidrid to grab at her tail, swat at her nose. An ill-tempered cat wouldn't have had much patience for a toddler's antics. "She must like you."
"She tolerates me. She and Florian are the bane of each other's existence." The older woman chuckled to herself as Dora returned to her own seat, Roux trailing after her skirts all the while. "Maybe she'd be happier living with you and Ceidrid and Adonis."
Dora glanced down at the cat, now perched by her ankles, starting up at her with love in her eyes. "Are... are you seriously offering?"
"Why not? She obviously adores you, and she seems to find Ceidrid much more agreeable than the other children around here." Thetis shot one of those warm, motherly smiles down to where Ceidrid played on the floor, but a sudden melancholy sigh eased the curve of her lips. "Really, I don't doubt that Florian would have given her away years ago if she hadn't been Teodrin's cat."
"Oh." Dora stiffened. She'd been an acquaintance of the Tumekrins long enough to know who Teodrin was, but she'd never asked about the details. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, for all the family must have ached for any hint of closure. The circumstances of such an event couldn't have possibly been pleasant. "I'm sorry."
"It's quite all right. Roux misses Teodrin too; maybe it will be easier for both her and us if we can miss him separately."
Dora turned to her own son, busy by the hearth with Thetis's children's old toys and his own imagination. If--God forbid--Ceidrid ever vanished, she failed to see how any cat or lack of cat would have done a thing to console her. "Maybe..."
"And she'll never really know, the poor thing--not being able to read or speak or understand language. At least we can hold out hope for a letter, some story somewhere, anything.
"Though, it's been long enough that I suppose it's foolish to really believe it's coming."
Dora swallowed. None of the Tumekrins liked to talk about Teodrin much, though Alina had once described him with loving exasperation as a 'mama's boy', and Severin had muttered something about his little brother being scarcely able to walk to the market alone, never mind run away. How had such a gentle, timid young man suddenly up and left? And without so much as a note for his poor, worried mother?
Or what if he was like her? What if something had happened to him, something had made him forget his own mother? For him to remember bits and pieces of some other mother, some woman who didn't exist, just enough inconsistent details to know his own mind was lying?
And what if--somewhere--her own mother ached for her too?
"I... uh, we can talk about something else, if you'd like."
NEXT CHAPTER:
January 10, 1199
"You know, we invited you and Rina for lunch--not for a house-call," Dora teased Severin as she lifted her now-awake infant son from his crib. "You could have just stayed downstairs with Adonis and Rina and your children, rather than coming up here for me."
"I could have." He shrugged--just as he could have, Dora supposed, not bothered coming at all. "But I know you didn't have the easiest pregnancy. If you have anything to talk about, I figured it might be easier for you if you didn't have to ask in front of Adonis."
"Why? Adonis is proving himself a fine father, and you know how he doted on me when I was expecting."
"I didn't mean to imply the opposite of either; just that husbands and fathers tend not to look at their own wives' pregnancies most rationally. Just ask Rina how on-edge I was when she was pregnant."
"You're always on-edge." Perhaps she didn't spend enough time with Severin to fairly make that call, but she knew it was the right one. Her baby boy beamed up at her from his place in her arms, nothing but love in his blue eyes. Other than the expected fatigue of taking care of infant, he hadn't given her any trouble at all. "Ceidrid is a very good baby--and it wasn't as if I was dreadfully ill when I was pregnant."
"No, but you were... out of sorts, I figured." Severin sighed. "Adonis mentioned that you woke often throughout the night--usually in something of a state."
Dora shook her head as she wiped a bit of drool from Ceidrid's mouth. "Oh, that wasn't anything. Just... well, not even nightmares, really. Vivid dreams."
"Dreams." He frowned. Severin was a physician, and a man of science. 'Dreams' weren't his realm, nor were they likely a thing he considered to be of much importance to anyone. "How were they vivid? Bright images?"
"No, as if... as if I'd actually been there. Like they were memories, sort of--but they weren't." At least, she didn't think they were. But, the most troubling thing about the dreams had been the realization of just how little of her life she could clearly recall. "Or if they were, they weren't quite clear enough to ring any bells. Flashes, mostly. I couldn't even make out any faces."
"Hmm. You might have more luck mentioning that to Orrick than to me--though, I suppose his being your boss might complicate that." Severin shifted his gaze down to Ceidrid. He didn't much like children as a rule, but the look was more of inquiry than contempt. "You and Adonis both have blue eyes, but I don't think his are either of yours."
"They're not. We're not sure where they came from, really. My father had my eyes, and my mother's were green." She remembered their eyes. But they'd named the baby for Ceidrid's father. She couldn't remember the name of her own.
"You know, they look a bit like a few of my siblings' eyes," Severin muttered, squinting.
"Well, given how much you all keep talking about how much I look like Alyssin, maybe we really are distant relations."
"Maybe--but my mother says Holladrin and Octavius got her mother's eyes. Alyssin definitely takes more after our father."
"Oh." So that wasn't an answer, then. And Severin kept staring at the baby, frown curling. Surely she didn't suspect her of being unfaithful to Adonis--did he? "I wouldn't--"
"I know."
Still, his own eyes--green, teal green, like his mother's, like the eyes she kept seeing in her dreams--never left the baby's.
NEXT CHAPTER:
