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Jan. 26th, 2013 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msmcknittington posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
loathlyladyEvrial woke not long after dawn on her first morning back home, feeling muzzy-headed and still tired after a night in her once familiar bed. She suspected that the reason the bed had felt so strange was because a certain immoderately-sized lump of muscle and good looks hadn’t been sharing it with her. Though if he had been sleeping next to her — she bit the inside of her lip to stop from smiling — she would probably be just as tired. Maldynado snored. Badly. And she should not find it endearing, but she did. For about two seconds, and then she elbowed him in the ribs and made him turn over, which he generally did by draping his limbs over her and burying his face in her neck.
She gave up on trying not to smile as she contemplated what Mal was most likely experiencing at her brother’s house. He would be even more tired than she was. The kids liked to get up early and greet visitors. Having experienced it herself, she could say the effect was unsettling, at the very least.
She dressed as quickly as her slow brain would let her, fumbling through her dresser drawers to find clothes she had forgotten she owned. She pulled on a dark red shirt and old fatigue bottoms and hoped the color would make up for the lack of energy showing in her face. Looking at the reflection in the mirror, she was fairly confident it wouldn’t. Women with her coloring should not be pale. They went all . . . yellow-y gray.
EVRIAL GOES TO THE KITCHEN, WHEREIN SHE FINDS HER SISTER-IN-LAW.
Irin took one look at her and said, “You look terrible.”
“It’s good to be home,” Evrial said dryly as she grabbed a mug out of the cupboard.
She didn’t see so much as sense Irin rolling her eyes.
“It is good to have you home,” her sister-in-law said, “but you still look awful. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m tired. The train ride was longer than I remembered, and I didn’t sleep well last night.” Or the night before that, on the lumpy hotel mattress. Or the week before that, imagining the horrors that this visit might result in.
Irin’s face turned knowing and sly as she lifted the coffeepot off the stove and filled Evrial’s cup.
“Lonely, I bet,” she said. Evrial felt herself begin to blush, but this was interrupted when Irin said, “I do the same thing whenever your brother is out of town. I don’t sleep well until he gets back, and he’s grumpy as a grimbal whenever I’m gone. How long have you two been together?”
Evrial took a sip of her coffee to buy time at this question, and then grimaced when she was reminded why she did not take it black. Oh, well. At least it was Irin prying and not one of her other sisters-in-law. Or her father.
“Since shortly after I —” she reminded herself that twenty-eight-year-olds were not legally capable of running away from home “— left to assist Lokdon with her scheme to help the emperor.”
Irin crinkled her nose, teasing.
“Quite some time, then. Have you been sleeping together every night? Not that there was probably much sleeping going on.”
“Irin! Stop prying into my personal matters.” Evrial set her coffee on the table with a thump, more annoyed than she might have been if she hadn’t been feeling so tired and rundown.
The other woman smirked.
“I want details, Evi! You can’t bring home a man who looks and moves like that and not expect me to ask. Besides, I’ve shared plenty with you over the years.”
“Not that I’ve ever asked you to,” Evrial grumbled. “Seeing as your stories are about my brother.”
“Oh, but, Evi, Verel is thirty-five. He’s in the prime of his life,” Irin teased. This was an old game, and Evrial was confident that nothing her brother’s wife told her was true. Considering some of the hints Irin dropped, if they were true, then the entire family should be worried. Possibly arrests should be made.
“Still my brother,” she said lightly as she dumped a spoonful of sugar into her coffee and then followed it with a slug of cream. Then the smell wafting from the cream pitcher hit her, and her nostrils flared in rebellion. It smelled but revoltingly like milk. Concentrated, foul, and extremely . . . milky.
“Is this cream good?” she asked, fighting nausea. There was a suggestion that, if it hadn’t gone bad already, then it might go bad soon. Like it was waiting to sour, even if it hadn’t curdled in the hot coffee. The image of that filled her head, and she swallowed grimly.
“It should be,” Irin answered, not turning from the stove. “It was fresh yesterday, and it was in the icebox until I put it out. That was only a few minutes ago.”
“It smells rank.”
“Let me check it.”
Irin left behind the stove, carrying with her the strong scents of the apples and onions she was frying to go with last night’s cold roast. This new intrusion was almost too much for Evrial to handle, and she breathed shallowly through her mouth. It didn’t help. Especially not as she became aware of the smell of the food in the scrap bucket, waiting to be taken out to the pigs after breakfast, as well as a dozen other odors in a house that had been shut up all winter and needed airing out. It all pressed in on her, heavy and unpleasant.
She handed off the little pitcher and watched as Irin sniffed delicately at it before frowning up at her.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Evrial wasn’t. The kitchen smells chased her to the hall water closet, where she fell on her hands and knees in front of the washout and retched.
When she was finished, forehead pressed against her arm and hoping another wave wouldn’t come, she became aware of Irin standing in the doorway. She rotated her head toward her, not rising but trying to infuse menace in her gaze, while knowing no one hunched over a washout could appear the least menacing. And that Irin was unlikely to be deterred by bristling anyway, not after all these years of acquaintance with Yaras.
She handed over a glass of water and watched Evrial rinse her mouth out before flushing the washout, a neutral expression on her face. After Evrial had staggered to her feet, she asked, “Does this Maldynado know?”
“That I just vomited? We aren’t that close, Irin,” she grumped back, wanting to lean against the wall, but not willing to do so in front of anyone else.
A funny look crossed Irin’s face.
“You’d better be that close,” she said, sounding a little amused. “I can’t imagine how else you got to be in this condition.”
“This condition? I’ve got a stomach bug or something. I must have caught it from someone on the train on the way up here.”
Amusement was replaced by surprise and then confusion, as Irin tried to decide between raising an eyebrow and frowning.
“Are you not pregnant, then?” she asked, finally settling on playing with the button at the collar of her shirt. A nervous habit. She had done it when she and Verel were courting, Evrial remembered abstractedly as she tried to make Irin’s question fit into her brain. It wasn’t happening.
“Irin, that’s not possible,” she said. “I’ve been drinking the egata tea daily. I haven’t missed a cup.” Well, except for those first few days, but that was months and months ago. If she was pregnant from that, she would have noticed by now. If only because none of her trousers could button.
Irin flattened her hand against her chest.
“Oh, Evi. You aren’t the first girl to find herself pregnant after relying on the tea. It’s pretty unreliable. It’s how Verel and I ended up with Marli and Len spaced so close together.”
Evrial gave in and slumped against the wall, her knees suddenly weak as the possibility of it being true struck her.
“But I’ve been bleeding,” she said softly, holding onto the last possibility of denial. “Right on schedule.”
“But not very heavy? Lighter than usual?”
She jerked her head once, and Irin went back to playing with the button.
“Some women do, the first few months. Sometimes all the way through, too. Didn’t your mother explain —” Irin paused for a moment, then continued nearly under her breath, “No, you were young enough that she might not have. And the youngest, so . . .” She trailed off and frowned. “What was your father thinking, not telling you these things?” she cried at last.
“Why would he know?” Evrial asked.
“Seven children,” Irin huffed. “He might have picked up some knowledge to pass on to you, his only daughter.”
“Father wasn’t in the best way after Mother died.”
“I suppose he wasn’t. But still.”
Against all possibility, Evrial smiled.
“Thank you for the outrage on my behalf, Irin,” she said.
“Oh,” Irin said, wiggling her fingers in the air. “It’s nothing.”
MORE STUFF HAPPENS. PERHAPS IT IS INTERESTING.
***
Maldynado jerked awake when he sensed he was being watched. By more than one pair of eyes. He opened one of his own and beheld an unanticipated sight.
Arrayed along the side of his bed were four Yara children, the youngest on the eldest girl’s hip, so that he could see over the edge of the bed. They all looked at him with a hard, unflinching stare that he recognized from having seen it before on their aunt’s face. Even the toddler wore it. Emperor’s bunions, it had to be hereditary. Nobody’s face just looked like that.
“Good morning, children,” he mumbled, assuming from the faint, pinkish light in the room that it was morning.
As if on cue, synchronized scowls twisted the three older children’s lips. Ah, right. Children did not like being called children by adults. He remembered that from his own youth.
“Our mother says that Aunt Evi probably paid you a lot of money to be here,” began a middling sized boy, whose name he faintly remembered from last night as being Verel, the same as one of Evi’s brothers.
Maldynado’s brows slammed down.
“That is definitely not true.” He sat up and looked sternly at them. They looked back, undaunted. He did not sigh, but said, “I’m here because your aunt wanted me to meet your family.”
The eldest girl — Liri — shifted her youngest brother to her other hip. She was just about twelve, and she looked a lot like he imagined Evrial had at that age, all legs and arms and still plump with baby fat. For this reason, he was predisposed to like her, but that lasting depended on what she said next.
“Don’t listen to him. He’s a child,” she said with the arrogance that eldest siblings seemed to be born with. Maldynado bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling as Verel shot back in indignant tones, “I’m nine, Liri.”
“You’re only eight, and I told you Mama was wrong,” she hissed back. “Aunt Evi has too much integrity to do anything like that.”
Yes. He would like this girl.
She gave up on trying not to smile as she contemplated what Mal was most likely experiencing at her brother’s house. He would be even more tired than she was. The kids liked to get up early and greet visitors. Having experienced it herself, she could say the effect was unsettling, at the very least.
She dressed as quickly as her slow brain would let her, fumbling through her dresser drawers to find clothes she had forgotten she owned. She pulled on a dark red shirt and old fatigue bottoms and hoped the color would make up for the lack of energy showing in her face. Looking at the reflection in the mirror, she was fairly confident it wouldn’t. Women with her coloring should not be pale. They went all . . . yellow-y gray.
EVRIAL GOES TO THE KITCHEN, WHEREIN SHE FINDS HER SISTER-IN-LAW.
Irin took one look at her and said, “You look terrible.”
“It’s good to be home,” Evrial said dryly as she grabbed a mug out of the cupboard.
She didn’t see so much as sense Irin rolling her eyes.
“It is good to have you home,” her sister-in-law said, “but you still look awful. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m tired. The train ride was longer than I remembered, and I didn’t sleep well last night.” Or the night before that, on the lumpy hotel mattress. Or the week before that, imagining the horrors that this visit might result in.
Irin’s face turned knowing and sly as she lifted the coffeepot off the stove and filled Evrial’s cup.
“Lonely, I bet,” she said. Evrial felt herself begin to blush, but this was interrupted when Irin said, “I do the same thing whenever your brother is out of town. I don’t sleep well until he gets back, and he’s grumpy as a grimbal whenever I’m gone. How long have you two been together?”
Evrial took a sip of her coffee to buy time at this question, and then grimaced when she was reminded why she did not take it black. Oh, well. At least it was Irin prying and not one of her other sisters-in-law. Or her father.
“Since shortly after I —” she reminded herself that twenty-eight-year-olds were not legally capable of running away from home “— left to assist Lokdon with her scheme to help the emperor.”
Irin crinkled her nose, teasing.
“Quite some time, then. Have you been sleeping together every night? Not that there was probably much sleeping going on.”
“Irin! Stop prying into my personal matters.” Evrial set her coffee on the table with a thump, more annoyed than she might have been if she hadn’t been feeling so tired and rundown.
The other woman smirked.
“I want details, Evi! You can’t bring home a man who looks and moves like that and not expect me to ask. Besides, I’ve shared plenty with you over the years.”
“Not that I’ve ever asked you to,” Evrial grumbled. “Seeing as your stories are about my brother.”
“Oh, but, Evi, Verel is thirty-five. He’s in the prime of his life,” Irin teased. This was an old game, and Evrial was confident that nothing her brother’s wife told her was true. Considering some of the hints Irin dropped, if they were true, then the entire family should be worried. Possibly arrests should be made.
“Still my brother,” she said lightly as she dumped a spoonful of sugar into her coffee and then followed it with a slug of cream. Then the smell wafting from the cream pitcher hit her, and her nostrils flared in rebellion. It smelled but revoltingly like milk. Concentrated, foul, and extremely . . . milky.
“Is this cream good?” she asked, fighting nausea. There was a suggestion that, if it hadn’t gone bad already, then it might go bad soon. Like it was waiting to sour, even if it hadn’t curdled in the hot coffee. The image of that filled her head, and she swallowed grimly.
“It should be,” Irin answered, not turning from the stove. “It was fresh yesterday, and it was in the icebox until I put it out. That was only a few minutes ago.”
“It smells rank.”
“Let me check it.”
Irin left behind the stove, carrying with her the strong scents of the apples and onions she was frying to go with last night’s cold roast. This new intrusion was almost too much for Evrial to handle, and she breathed shallowly through her mouth. It didn’t help. Especially not as she became aware of the smell of the food in the scrap bucket, waiting to be taken out to the pigs after breakfast, as well as a dozen other odors in a house that had been shut up all winter and needed airing out. It all pressed in on her, heavy and unpleasant.
She handed off the little pitcher and watched as Irin sniffed delicately at it before frowning up at her.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Evrial wasn’t. The kitchen smells chased her to the hall water closet, where she fell on her hands and knees in front of the washout and retched.
When she was finished, forehead pressed against her arm and hoping another wave wouldn’t come, she became aware of Irin standing in the doorway. She rotated her head toward her, not rising but trying to infuse menace in her gaze, while knowing no one hunched over a washout could appear the least menacing. And that Irin was unlikely to be deterred by bristling anyway, not after all these years of acquaintance with Yaras.
She handed over a glass of water and watched Evrial rinse her mouth out before flushing the washout, a neutral expression on her face. After Evrial had staggered to her feet, she asked, “Does this Maldynado know?”
“That I just vomited? We aren’t that close, Irin,” she grumped back, wanting to lean against the wall, but not willing to do so in front of anyone else.
A funny look crossed Irin’s face.
“You’d better be that close,” she said, sounding a little amused. “I can’t imagine how else you got to be in this condition.”
“This condition? I’ve got a stomach bug or something. I must have caught it from someone on the train on the way up here.”
Amusement was replaced by surprise and then confusion, as Irin tried to decide between raising an eyebrow and frowning.
“Are you not pregnant, then?” she asked, finally settling on playing with the button at the collar of her shirt. A nervous habit. She had done it when she and Verel were courting, Evrial remembered abstractedly as she tried to make Irin’s question fit into her brain. It wasn’t happening.
“Irin, that’s not possible,” she said. “I’ve been drinking the egata tea daily. I haven’t missed a cup.” Well, except for those first few days, but that was months and months ago. If she was pregnant from that, she would have noticed by now. If only because none of her trousers could button.
Irin flattened her hand against her chest.
“Oh, Evi. You aren’t the first girl to find herself pregnant after relying on the tea. It’s pretty unreliable. It’s how Verel and I ended up with Marli and Len spaced so close together.”
Evrial gave in and slumped against the wall, her knees suddenly weak as the possibility of it being true struck her.
“But I’ve been bleeding,” she said softly, holding onto the last possibility of denial. “Right on schedule.”
“But not very heavy? Lighter than usual?”
She jerked her head once, and Irin went back to playing with the button.
“Some women do, the first few months. Sometimes all the way through, too. Didn’t your mother explain —” Irin paused for a moment, then continued nearly under her breath, “No, you were young enough that she might not have. And the youngest, so . . .” She trailed off and frowned. “What was your father thinking, not telling you these things?” she cried at last.
“Why would he know?” Evrial asked.
“Seven children,” Irin huffed. “He might have picked up some knowledge to pass on to you, his only daughter.”
“Father wasn’t in the best way after Mother died.”
“I suppose he wasn’t. But still.”
Against all possibility, Evrial smiled.
“Thank you for the outrage on my behalf, Irin,” she said.
“Oh,” Irin said, wiggling her fingers in the air. “It’s nothing.”
MORE STUFF HAPPENS. PERHAPS IT IS INTERESTING.
Maldynado jerked awake when he sensed he was being watched. By more than one pair of eyes. He opened one of his own and beheld an unanticipated sight.
Arrayed along the side of his bed were four Yara children, the youngest on the eldest girl’s hip, so that he could see over the edge of the bed. They all looked at him with a hard, unflinching stare that he recognized from having seen it before on their aunt’s face. Even the toddler wore it. Emperor’s bunions, it had to be hereditary. Nobody’s face just looked like that.
“Good morning, children,” he mumbled, assuming from the faint, pinkish light in the room that it was morning.
As if on cue, synchronized scowls twisted the three older children’s lips. Ah, right. Children did not like being called children by adults. He remembered that from his own youth.
“Our mother says that Aunt Evi probably paid you a lot of money to be here,” began a middling sized boy, whose name he faintly remembered from last night as being Verel, the same as one of Evi’s brothers.
Maldynado’s brows slammed down.
“That is definitely not true.” He sat up and looked sternly at them. They looked back, undaunted. He did not sigh, but said, “I’m here because your aunt wanted me to meet your family.”
The eldest girl — Liri — shifted her youngest brother to her other hip. She was just about twelve, and she looked a lot like he imagined Evrial had at that age, all legs and arms and still plump with baby fat. For this reason, he was predisposed to like her, but that lasting depended on what she said next.
“Don’t listen to him. He’s a child,” she said with the arrogance that eldest siblings seemed to be born with. Maldynado bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling as Verel shot back in indignant tones, “I’m nine, Liri.”
“You’re only eight, and I told you Mama was wrong,” she hissed back. “Aunt Evi has too much integrity to do anything like that.”
Yes. He would like this girl.
