Motherly Instincts (private, Aydyn please)

[Bladewyn]

15th Candlemark of Solaria
Brightening 21, Third Cycle of Immanis
Autumn of Era I of the Celestine Mandate
Era XV Post Fractum
Chronosynch: Ancient Veil Enshrouds Silrosia

It was time for rosyun in Bladewyn's family, but Luricor was being particularly fussy. He wouldn't sit in his chair or on the sofa, and anywhere she tried to put him, he would inevitably crawl out. Finally, Bladewyn put his wool cap over his head and took him outside, bringing their rosyun with them in a picnic basket. Winter wasn't really the season for picnics, so the pair solicited a reasonable number of curious stares on their way to the fountain.

The monument had become one of Bladewyn and Cor's favorite hangouts. It was in the center of Le Quartier du Sud, bordered on three sides by La Grandiose Theatre, La Couloir de Musique, et Socrates de Ambergois Universite. Sitting on the stone border of the fountain that also served as a bench, Bladewyn could listen to the music of wandering bards and watch the painters that had easels set up in the square. Cor had plenty of birds to watch--this had become one of his favorite hobbies.

His bright blue eyes followed the pigeons that flocked and bathed in the fountain, but he sat still while Bladewyn fed him carrot sticks and leftover salmon from last darkening's pracenda. She ate her own fill of the food and kept one hand across his legs, lest he fall into the water. It wasn't that much of a worry, seeing as Bladewyn suspected that Cor might be part mer anyway... but she had developed certain motherly instincts, and those couldn't be helped.

[Aydyn Blair]

ooc: are we still up to this? Sorry for the wait, Aydyn's been sort of pushed to the backburner with me, but I'm hoping to move her a bit more. Should still be a little slow with her, but hopefully less so!

ic:
Aydyn was still growing accustomed to the city these past few brightenings. It was cold, bitterly so, and Aydyn hugged Noah close against her as they walked through the cobbled streets, as much to keep her daughter warm as to feel the added warmth against her chest and chin. She had bundled up Noah warmly in a woolen yellow coat, then covered her small hands with blue gloves trimmed in the same yellow and topped her off with a matching scarf and hat.

Like her daughter, Aydyn too was bundled warmly, but it didn't seem to help much against the hard bite of the weather. She shivered and hunched her shoulders slightly, curling her daughter around a little more. She glanced around her, noting her surroundings. They had come to a place she did not recognize, something attributed to the fact that she clearly was not yet accustomed to the city yet--and if there was one thing she was learning, it was that large cities and forests were two completely different places to navigate and that Aydyn's sense of direction was far better in the woods than the city.

She jumped slightly as the sound of pigeon wings beating at the air jolted her from her reverie and for a moment she stared at the birds. A child had gone running amidst them--a pretty little girl with blonde hair that ran back over to her father with some giggles as the pigeons resettled themselves. Her eyes were dragged immediately to another figure sitting on the edge of the fountain--a woman and her own child contentedly eating what looked to be an old meal.

With a faint smile, Aydyn approached. She seemed friendly enough, if her calm looks were anything to go by, and the added presence of a child immediately gave Aydyn a sense of...kinship with the woman. She would be no danger to approach, certainly. "Serale, do you mind if I join you?"

[Bladewyn]

OOC: I am if you are!

Bladewyn clamped both hands around Luricor's waist as he tried to stand on the lip of the fountain. He had been crawling ever since she adopted him, and he had just begun to stand and walk tremblingly for a few steps. But Bladewyn still didn't trust him to walk, especially on rough cobblestones covered with slippery ice, or on the rim of a fountain. She placed her squirming son on her lap, trying to keep him still as he tried to jump after the fluttering pigeons.

When the other woman approached, bringing along a bundled-up baby of her own, Bladewyn gave her a smile of welcome. Cor hadn't had many opportunities to socialize with other infants, and Bladewyn had been hoping to speak with a fellow mother (or "mother," as it were) about raising their children.

"Not at all!" she replied, moving their bowls to her other side so Aydyn would have a place to sit. At the sight of the strangers, Cor immediately fell still, curling into Bladewyn's arms for protection. "I'm Bladewyn, and this is Luricor. Say 'serale'!" This was, of course, prompted for the baby, not Aydyn and Noah.

"Nn." Wide blue eyes regarded the strangers, especially the odd little one that so nearly resembled himself.

[Aydyn Blair]

Aydyn smiled faintly as the child in the other woman's child huddled in his mother's lap, looking very much uncomfortable with the presence of someone strange. On contrast, Noah was very much interested in the other child as mother and daughter sat down on the edge of the fountain next to Bladewyn. She leaned in her mother's arms, wide gray-blue eyes staring back at Cor, a delighted smile fawning over her mouth. " 'rale!" Noah was only just starting to talk more. She knew without trouble how to say 'Mama', but 'Dada' eluded her, try as she did to encourage Noah to call Stephan that title when they had lived together for those short cycles in Demios.

Laughing, Aydyn kissed her daughter's head, ruffling the dark hair that was growing longer and thicker as the brightenings swept by. "I'm Aydyn, this is Noah." The little girl was giggling, looking at the boy with almost undue excitement. But then why not? It wasn't often she had any little companion to play with. These moments were few and far between. Sometimes Aydyn wished she had another child, a playmate for her daughter, but the time was not right and Aydyn could think of no man that would suit as a father.

She sat there in companionable silence for a moment, but her daughter's fidgeting was hard to ignore, as was the cause of it. She looked over at the small boy in Bladewyn's lap and asked a question mothers over tended to ask when placed alongside another mother. "How old is he?"

[Bladewyn]

The question was one that Bladewyn knew would come up, yet she bit her lip in a moment of awkward silence before responding. The few other mothers she'd interacted with in the city had no patience to listen to her story of how she had saved Luricor on that cold darkening on the beach. One hint of 'bastard child' and the snooty noblewomen would turn their noses up at Bladewyn and her little 'fish son.' Thinking of them, Bladewyn instinctively hugged Luricor closer. She hoped that Aydyn wouldn't feel similarly to the women who so often made Bladewyn feel inadequate and unprepared.

"Um... Ten months, maybe? Maybe an era. I'm... not really sure." She looked up tentatively at Aydyn, seeing if she could read a reaction on the woman's face. Regardless, she reached into her pocket and gave Luricor one of his favorite toys, a peculiar little octopus stuffed with cotton and beads. The boy began to squeeze it in his arms, and even grew brave enough to hold it out to Aydyn for a moment.

Bladewyn smiled, glad that Cor was taking a liking to the other child. "And yours?"

[Aydyn Blair]

Aydyn had suffered a little prejudice her own since conceiving her child, albeit not because the child was of mixed blood, but rather because of who that father was. Married men did not make the best fathers when the mother of their child was not their wife. She could easily recall the memory of the gypsy camp and the woman who had taken harsh words to Aydyn once she had discovered who the father of the fetus was. And then there had been flames, lots of flames, and she'd been scarred for all to see. The scars were gone now, at least the ones on her neck, but it hadn't been the last time Aydyn had dealt with people who thought a woman should not have lay down with a man not her own.

But how was she to have known when he hadn't said a thing?

Aydyn smiled faintly at the woman's uncertainty, although it was more of a soft, understanding expression than critical. "Ah, so you've adopted him? That's nice of you." The faint smile seemed to blossom with something akin to respect. "I don't think there's many who would do so. He's a lucky boy, then, to find someone so accommodating as you. I've thought of adopting another, to give her someone to play with, but..." She trailed off and bent to nestle her lips against her daughter's dark brown hair. "One is already a handful." Particularly when raising that one child on your own.

The toy dangled out in front of her, Noah was quick to grasp hold of it with her own small fingers. It was a tight grasp and she giggled even as she tugged at it. "Mine."

Very carefully Aydyn reached down and disentangled her daughter's fingers. "No, sweetie. This one is yours." She extracted a cloth, brightly colored dog and tucked it into her daughter's arms. She looked longingly after the octopus, but only for a moment, then she was waving her own animal with a wide smile as if to say--"This is really mine. See what I have and you don't?"

"One ordinance and one month old now. They grow so big, so fast. It's all I can do to keep her from getting down and running around some brightenings. I'm a poor play fellow, unfortunately, though it looks like she's taken with your little boy. If you're in the city for a while, maybe we can have some playdates. I think she'd like that. So would I, really. I don't know many people here just yet," she admitted with a tentative glance towards Bladewyn.

[Bladewyn]

Bladewyn felt a rush of gratitude as Aydyn showed her understanding through her kind reply. 'Lucky boy'... She supposed that Cor really was. He was the kidnapped Prince of the Mers, tossed about the ocean and abandoned on the shore for a cold darkening until Bladewyn took him into her home. She had never really thought about it before, but she guessed that Cor was much happier with her than he would have been with his frigid Mer mother.

When Noah grabbed tight hold of the octopus, Cor began to wail. He had only meant for Noah to feel one of the creature's squishy legs, not to try and take it for her own. His cry, unlike other babies', was oddly soothing even though his face showed an end-of-the-world sense of desperation and distress. Even as Bladewyn felt the odd mersong relax her heart, she knew to comfort her baby first and foremost. She smiled thankfully at Aydyn for distracting Noah from Cor's toy. Cor, for his part, clutched the octopus ever closer, teething on its head and looking curiously and silently at Noah's dog.

She smiled at Aydyn's offer. "I'd like that. I think Cor would too." At the sound of his name, Cor looked briefly up at his mother, then back at Noah and her little dog. "I've lived in Jaedaxia for a while, in the Southern Quarter, and I don't plan to move anytime soon. You and Noah are welcome at our house anytime."

[Aydyn Blair]

Aydyn studied the child curiously as he cried out his dismay. Not the ordinary whine and drone of a child, that was certain. She wondered as to his origins, but Aydyn, polite and respectful of people's secrets, simply quirked an odd smile at Bladewyn and remarked quietly, "He's a darling. If only Noah sounded like that when she was upset." Aydyn laughed a little and ruffled her daughter's dark brown hair. It was almost black in its deepness, much darker than hers had ever or would ever be. Stephan's hair. "Not that I don't love your noise any less," she assured her daughter--who didn't really seem to care that her mother had remarked on her vocal chords at all. She was too busy chewing on chewing on a dog's foot and looking at Cor with that wide, baby-like smile toddlers had.

"The Southern Quarter?" She nodded slightly, eyes shifting as she considered it. "I'll admit, I don't know much about the city at all. It's...new to me. I've come here only last cycle and I'm nowhere near to knowing my way around the place. I've...never been much of a city girl. All the buildings and the streets can be a little overwhelming." She smiled ruefully, shifting Noah in her lap as the girl tried to struggle up. She was making noises, mostly babbling in that toddler tongue to Cor. A few words could be plucked out of the air, but most of it was still nonsense. She was slowly learning.

"What places would you say to visit, since I'm here? Or to avoid?" A protective mother...she couldn't very well go dragging her daughter into the bad spots.

[Bladewyn]

Cor mirrored Noah almost exactly, with one of his octopus' squishy limbs caught between his newly emerging teeth. He certainly was an odd one. Bladewyn still didn't know everything about him, and it made their adventures all the more interesting. When Noah tried to make conversation, Cor simply responded with a soft "mine" and switched to chewing on another leg.

Bladewyn lived for the city, the deadly twists and turns that held who-knew-what behind every corner. But she knew that not everyone felt similarly. Once, she had longed for the open fields and dirt roads that she grew up on. Things had changed.

"There are only a few dangerous spots in Jaedaxia, but luckily they're all compacted into one spot. I would avoid the Cloison arrondissement, where the Wall of Weeping is. It's the... poorer, seedier sort of area. Not very safe." Sure, Bladewyn had had her own share of adventures and near-romance down beneath the haunted wall, but not everyone got excited over the prospect of vampires and ghost-guarded treasure.

"But the places to visit far outweigh the places to avoid." Her tone brightened as she began to think about her favorite haunts. "There's the Chateau Mavloix if you're interested in art. La Rangee du Negociante is where all the shops are, and there's a nice bakery that just opened up. There are a few good restaurants on the eastern side of town, and you can't miss a visit to Jaedah's Mirror either." That was another odd one... but odd, at least, in a better way than the haunted Wall.

[Aydyn Blair]

Noah fussed a little, the dog falling out her hands and landing in a slump on the ground at Aydyn's feet. "Now see what you've done, hm?" Aydyn chided her, smiling faintly. It was awkward bending to retrieve the fallen toy with a toddler on her lap, but it was something she'd grown used to doing these past months--an era and more now--and the movements came easier as she plucked the dog up by an ear and dangled it in front of Noah. The girl giggled as she rattled off a familiar "Fuff Fuff!" (It's name perhaps?) and clutched the creature to her tiny chest, happily engaging in a little sing-song that was mostly a string of 'fuff fuff' and 'mama' and other nonsense words. She still had yet to really expand her vocabulary.

Aydyn listened with an inclined cheek as Bladewyn told her a little bit about the city, more of a local's 'where to visit' guide than anything. It was more helpful than others might believe, although art had never been something Aydyn could ever understand and shopping was done on a need-to basis (but what woman could pass up a good baked treat now and again? particularly if it was chocolate...). These things were all of passing interest to a young druid whose primary concern was her daughter, followed quickly by the cats and horse she had in her care and the nature that blossomed around her. Some might have considered her priorities odd. Perhaps.

"Jaedah's Mirror? I think I've heard people mentioning that now and again, but... No one's ever really clear about what it is. A rock?" She cast a puzzled look to her new companion. "Or something made of ice? I did hear about the ice gardens they have here, although it sounds a bit unnatural to me... Those poor flowers," she murmured absently, brows furrowed. Yes, that was truly puzzling. Who would be so wretched as to throw the natural process of life off with eternal ice?

[Bladewyn]

"Well... It's hard to explain," Bladewyn laughed, bouncing Cor on her knees a little bit. "It's an obelisk, actually, in the Ice Gardens. It... takes you places. Shows you things." That really was all she could say about it. The rest, Aydyn would have to see for herself.

Aydyn hadn't mentioned her druidism, but the look in her eyes when she spoke of the frozen flowers made Bladewyn think that this was a woman who cared quite deeply for nature's works. "I haven't looked into it myself, but I think that the Ice Gardens came from the Everwinter that was cast upon the city a few eras ago. To the best of my recollection, it was an angry mage that did it... made it so Jaedaxia was in a constant state of winter. It was only this past era or so that the spell was lifted." And now here they were again... Bundled up in scarves and coats, shivering outside as the fountain behind them churned water through its nearly-frozen pipes.

"I'm sure that someone would be able to tell you more about the Ice Gardens if you went to the Mirror. I'm not too much of an expert about that area," she said. She didn't want to force Aydyn to visit the obelisk if she was unwilling, but... it really was an experience that she would not pass up if given a third chance.