"Mariel?"
"Mariel," she agrees, watching him from silent blue eyes - not uncooperative, but certainly not going out of her way to help out, either. Holder kids - and she is, from what L'lygion said - tend to be rather more enthusiastic about a first trip to the Nidus; the younger girl, cuddled into her sister's side, is certainly round-eyed, if also quiet.
"And your sister is Veil?"
Both nod, this time - well, maybe they're just shy. He has to admit, though, that meeting Mariel's self-possessed gaze, she doesn't look it...
"Well met then, Mariel, Veil..." He extends a hand, and withdraws it a moment later, because the younger child's still only staring and her sister's regarding his proferred palm like it was a fish - and not one that she finds appetizing, either. "I'm D'ari; my blue friend back there's Myth. We're the ones unlucky enough to get drafted into noting all the self-important old Domini who decide to drop by this week." Veil does meet his eyes this time and though she's not quite laughing that's definitely a smile that's found its way to her lips, looking lost. "I must admit, though, that Myth's contribution so far seems to be taking all my breaks for me," he adds, encouraged; his beloved bond, who'd looked up at his name, shoots a glare that D'ari deftly ignores.
"D'ari would know this, of course, because he's never in the office himself," he retorts, smoothly, to Veil's giggling appreciation. Mariel looks impassive, maybe disproving, though D'ari tries his most charming smile on her. He's not sure quite why he bothers - the cold shoulder's certainly not unexpected this time.
Like a bit of frivolity now and again would kill her, he remarks to Myth, not quite charitably; the blue laughs at him, though silently.
Miss Ice Queen's going to have to put up with straight interrogation then, if light conversation's so offensive and she's not volunteering any answers. "How old are you two? What brings you to Abri?"
"I'm sixteen; Veil is five." Mariel seems the appointed speaker; if she doesn't like the position, her voice doesn't show it. "We've lived on a small farm, beholden to Castellum Arytres," she tells him, quiet and not unpleasantly, "until recently. It was only my grandfather and Veil and I. Our mother passed away in the winter after Veil's birth, and our father - well. And Grandfather died not long ago - I sent a message, then, asking for conveyance here. I couldn't run the farm on my own." She pauses, here, though those blue-black eyes don't leave his. "We'd like to stay in the Nidus, if we may."
Straight enough story; easy to approve. Transferring into Abri, he adds to their papers, nodding - nice to play the good guy, even if it's such a simple matter. He rather likes little Veil's smile - Mariel has the same, he assumes, and she might be prettier if she tried it sometimes. "Certainly," he assures them, a final resolute period added to the form. "That I'm sure the Prima will approve. Myth, make yourself useful - find these girls a nidulus."
"Sorry about your loss, Mariel," he adds belatedly; trailing her sister out the office door, she pauses, seriously looks at him.
"Actually, I don't miss him, really." And her dark eyes are innocent, oh so wide... "Is that very wrong?"
"A lie," Mariel whispers, but only in the darkness when Veil's breath has slowed in peaceful sleep. "I lied."
She doesn't like the way it sounds, but she's always truthful with herself.
She has spent all her life in the tropics, where the greedy sun hangs low and scorching for as much of the year as it can steal for the purpose; she should be used to the heavy heat. Logic, she admits, though has never been her strongest point, and this rational's weak against jealous longing. Would it have killed her grandfather to take a claim farther north - closer to the Nidus, closer to the sea? The land's so dry here half the year, anyway - it'd have been easier there, surely...
But - "Our family's always held under Arytres' Domini," Grandfather says, and that's that.
Mother went up north, once, she remembers, scowling - this she heard not from her mother but some leering sanctimonious great-aunt. Mother joined a caravan, taking the family's best stock to trade up by Lyndol where there's no one with the horse-sense to breed their own - Grandfather hadn't wanted it, thinking she'd find some man with a pretty smile and prettier manners once he's counted out money for a cheap drink, thinking his youngest daughter wouldn't ever come back. Well - and Mariel's smile is humorless - Grandfather was right on only one count of three; Father wasn't so kind or so gentle when you actually had to live and work with him year on year, and Mother, all young-bride-smiling, had come back.
Mother was always the nicest of her family, or the dimmest - her siblings made fast tracks out of this dead end as soon as they could, and didn't even bother sending gloating notes back.
Their mere absence makes them wiser, in Mariel's eyes. She, she's sure, would not come back.
Slander? Not really; she can't see it that way. You see the dead with clearest eyes - you can look past the blinders tact slaps on you and take the good and the bad with no hurt feelings.
The bad, the complaints, the criticisms - those are innumerable. The good?
She loved Mother. Really.
But Grey, the big feather-fetlocked draft, is nudging; he lips her hair; he understands work better than crazy, confusing things like love. And he does the work, the work that keeps their debts paid and simple food on the table, with guidance...
Grandfather used to walk behind the plough; Mariel does this now.
Yes, she lied to D'ari. She could have kept the farm; it's clung on to the bottom edge of "acceptable profit" and then "just enough to live by" for years now because she refused to let go.
The Domini, taking a share of each harvest so cool and proud up in the Castellum proper, never knew.
They had owned their own holding once. That was back before Veil had been born, though; the man Mariel called Father was already gone by then, for he'd never really liked farming. And when Mother died, "It'd be better if you girls lived with me," Grandfather'd said. Mariel was not quite sure who was supposed to be taking care of whom.
Most of the work had ended up on her plate, at any rate - as Veil'd become old enough to be some help Grandfather had gotten worse. Hadn't his back been straighter once - hadn't he been stronger and able to walk further, hadn't he done more than sleep? She thinks it was so, but the sun beats down heavy on her head, and the line between memory and wishful thinking blurs. Was it ever there in the first place?
A faint, hot breeze blows strands of hair dark and sweat-matted into her face, and she pushes them back with one hand, back behind her ears where a thick braid confines most of her hair. She'd like to cut it, she thinks, boy-short and practical, but then Grandfather'd grumble and tell her how Mother kept her hair long and shining...
Maybe she'll do it anyway.
But don't think right now, don't worry any further than tonight - just keep the plough straight and then at the end of this row you can walk for a while in Grey's shadow...
She stops upon reaching the edge of the field, in point of fact, takes a sip from the canteen slung over one shoulder. It's ginger-water, sweet and bitter and almost still cold from when she made it this morning; pure cold water would make her heatsick. One sip, two, and that's enough; she can't drink too much even of this, because it needs to last.
She could go back to the shade of the low stone house to refill the canteen, of course, but she doesn't trust herself to come back out to the heat.
So she'll save the water. It's only just past noon.
She feeds Grey first, scooping grain out of the sack hung on the stall door with one of her abortive attempts at pottery. It doesn't look a tremendous pile, rather lost in the manger; the gelding turns hopeful brown eyes on her and she sighs, running a finger down his soft nose. "Sorry, pet - that's it."
It does give one a better appreciation for the flat bread she rolls with beans and the eggs Veil's extracted from the fussy, aggressive hens. The younger girl's waiting by their rough table already, and she eats fast but quietly when Mariel serves her. Grandfather puts in no appearance; sighing, she peers into the bedroom off their home's main room.
The old man is slumped in the worn armchair they can't replace, sun-lined face relaxed, jowls slack. She touches his heavy shoulder lightly. "Grandfather? Dinner's ready..."
He snorts awake, opening grey eyes nearly lost among the wrinkles of weathered skin. "Hmn? Oh, Mariel..."
She takes a age-spotted hand in both of hers without his asking and leans back against his weight; it's just enough to get him to his feet, though he sways for a moment then on swollen feet. He doesn't let go immediately, and though distasteful, she's not going to grab her hands away. Walk slowly she remembers, with gritted teeth - and she does, all the way to the kitchen, while he shuffles beside her.
Once he's seated, she frowns at him dubiously: "You haven't taken your medicine, have you?" It's a question asked only for tradition's sake - he never does without prompting, though the medicus's said that he can't live without it. The disease that's disabled him is caused by too much of the wrong food, the same medicus also speculates; Mariel knows only that Grandfather requires the dose before every meal. She fetches the needlethorn for him and, practiced, fills it automatically; then, she looks for an excuse to be elsewhere while he unbuttons his shirt enough to jab the needle unflinchingly into one fatty fold of his worm-white belly.
"Thanks, honey," he rumbles, heavy lips twisting in a contorted smile, and she takes back the needle and returns the smile until her back is turned.
She scrubs her palms brutally before eating, but the grease she's sure she feels seems indelible. She must be imagining it.
Grandfather can at least feed himself, if sloppily. She bolts her own meal, without watching.
The southern nights were darker, Mariel thinks - here, though there's more stone around and above and below her than any other place she's ever been, the lamps are never all extinguished - the sounds of life don't fade. She's never been with so many people at once before, never mind the wealth of creatures here in Abri. No wonder Veil couldn't stop staring when the draconar and his purple brought them in this morning...
Automatically, she checks on Veil, but her sister sleeps soundly, even breath wafting her dark bangs from her face. Blue Myth did find them a double nidulus, but Veil abandoned her bed and scootched in with Mariel early on - she didn't know Mariel was awake, and nor did she correct her. Veil's never slept by herself, she realizes; though she's glad to hold her sister in her arms tonight, she hopes that it will change... Veil must have everything that she could not have had on the farm.
What will Mariel's choice mean, otherwise?
She knew that Grandfather was not doing well, but then he hadn't been truly well for years. So though the medicine was administered as always, she went out to the fields after that - and she took Veil.
"Are we planting today?" her sister asks now, skipping beside her, to which Mariel nods. Veil's smile broadens, and she glances up with the big blues eyes that are Mariel's inheritance too. "Can I help, then? I can do it, I'm big enough, really!"
She's taking two hop-skipping steps for every one of Mariel's longer strides; she's breathing not a little hard. But Mariel smiles at her, chokes back laughter - "You may help, Veil. I'd like that."
They have to stop for a while then, because neither can walk while Veil's clinging ecstatically 'round Mariel's waist.
But even despite this she's not felt easy all morning - Grandfather's not well, she's sure. It's happened before. The last attack frightened her when she was small, when Mother was still around to take a horse galloping for the medicus - Mother's gone now, though. Their faster, lighter horses are long sold, too - a larger problem in the circumstances. All Grey's sweet-tempered loyalty won't get her anywhere faster than his standard steady plod.
She could do something maybe, if she was with Grandfather, if he was sicker - but even if this something saved him, what would happen then? They'd go back to scraping by, she'd go back to nursing him, and it'd happen again in a week or a month or a year, and the time between spent only just hiding her disgust with this sleepy stranger out of control of his own body who's replaced the person she once loved...
Veil loves him. Veil never knew him when he was stronger and used to play with them, but Veil's love is the unconditional idolatry of all five year olds for their older relatives.
And she looks up at Veil, who's managed to be pink and hot and dusty already but is trotting along the rows steadily and resolutely not looking back at Mariel with "A break, please?" in her eyes.
Well, Mother loved him. And it must have been so much harder for her, who was closer already and remembered her father young and loving in his prime - to see him aging and only half living. Mother never criticized, and even Mariel never caught disgust in her eyes...
... but Mother died here, and she was not truly happy, and she didn't manage to get anyone out - not herself, not her children or the father she was staying for.
And death is better than having nothing to live or work for, in any case, she thinks - for Grandfather. Not for her, not for Veil. Perhaps she will choose her own death over lingering, disgusting age, when she should have passed away...
But she and Veil will live long happy lives. This is neither happiness nor living.
Working with Veil, she does not stay out through lunch time. When they walk home to wear out the hottest part of the day, she's not surprised to find an old man with skin cold and lifeless there. Grandfather is not there. Has Grandfather been there in years?
It is for Grandfather that Veil sobs, though. Mariel holds her tightly against her chest, and she's glad that her sister is blinded by crying. Veil does not see that Mariel has no tears.
She runs a cool damp cloth over Veil's face, ostensibly to wipe away the grime from the fields; she does accomplish this, though the red and puffy eyes still remain. Then, quietly, she buries deep the body Veil calls "Grandfather" with a voice hoarse from crying.
She lets Veil watch and drop down her own crumpled flowers, freshly plucked from their lives, before the earth is replaced. It would be crueler to keep her away.
Back inside, they cling together on their shared bed until Veil falls asleep, as exhausted as Mariel expected. Then, oh so careful, she disentangles herself, arranges Veil more comfortably on the bed, and searches for a piece of paper and a pen.
Then, she begins to write:
Since my grandfather's death, I find myself and my young sister no longer able to live on Kuolin Farm. I request a transport to the Nidus, where we may begin a new life...
It's not that she killed him, exactly, though his death is on her hands. But, oh but, she'd rather live with that knowledge than live knowing that her life and Veil's life are wasted because she couldn't leave...
And it wasn't her grandfather who died so recently, anyway. Her grandfather who twirled her with laughing eyes, who always had a sugarsweet for her in his pocket, has not lived for many a year now.
If she keeps this knowledge, she will not cry. She cannot cry, because it's all over now in any case, because crying would do nothing...
She cannot cry, for she must keep Veil smiling.
She does not cry. She falls asleep surprisingly quickly, all considering.
Veil's wonder is nearly constant now, here in this place where surprises come up every day like the sun. Mariel knows this because she sees the delight in her sister's eyes and hears her laughter; she keeps Veil close by constantly, even during the most menial of chore routines.
She must have slipped up once, though, because Veil's acquired a new pet: a fluffy equine creature with a feline face and exotic coloring. His name is Yi'may and he calls himself a salir; he's going to be bigger than Grey when full-grown, she can see. He is not the companion she'd have chosen for her little sister.
Veil calls him "friend" though, so Yi'may won't be told to leave by Mariel.
The Nidus-folk are quick to provide distractions for all they don't know that she needs them; perhaps they're simply glad of someone willing to work. That rider, though, D'ari - Mariel'd not have said what she did if she'd known that she'd be running into him so often. It'd be harder to meet one person in such a crowd, she would have thought...
Perhaps he's curious; perhaps he's looking for her.
She doesn't want questions.
So she fills out the transfer application again. "You mighta decided where you wanted to be before you came here," the paro grumbles, but he takes them - she and Veil and Yi'may - away, anyway.