Life in Ulster - a tale of the four years
Aug. 2nd, 2008 10:36 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
annwfyn.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
zg_shadows"So, you're in love with two men?" she said, conversationally over the glass of mead she held in her hand.
I didn't say anything. I had nothing to say on this subject and I had no idea who this girl was.
Unusually, she didn't seem particularly put off by the blank wall of silence and just settled down next to me. Closer to, I could see that she was small and pretty, with a long dark fringe and huge dark eyes that didn't seem to have any whites to them, rather like a horse's eyes. A single long furry ear poked through her mass of hair and when she crossed her legs, I realized she had hooves instead of boots.
This explained a lot.
Satyr or Pooka? I wasn't quite sure, but I thought the latter.
I didn't have to be quite so polite to commoners. Maybe I was half bred, but all my blood was Sidhe.
The girl smiled at me engagingly.
"It's all very romantic," she said cheerfully. "And is the reason why all the promises that we make with the Garou keep being broken. Fairy men and women are very bad at staying where they are put. Although it seems that Garou can be just as bad. They aren't temperementally suited to yearning, which is a shame when one considers the stories."
I had no idea who this girl was. She was at a Moot, which meant she had some connection to the Nation. I had seen her perched on Diarmed's lap earlier, which meant nothing. Diarmed's lap has its own small gravitational field for pretty girls. She was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, which were almost a uniform for the traditional Sept raised Garou or kin. She had no jewellery that I could see, and no tattoos. She had the marks of no tribe, and no one other than I (I'd bet) could see the hooves, ears, or the huge dark eyes. Even with them she was strikingly pretty, so she was probably even prettier without. Maybe she had just arrived on Diarmed's arm. It wouldn't have surprised me. Yet he was nowhere to be seen now.
She smiled engagingly.
"I don't know if I've ever met Michael Stands Ready," she said and looked thoughtful. "I've been to London, but I'm not meant to stay there. I have my own promises that I'm keeping very badly. Why does one always fall in love with the worst possible people?"
I couldn't help but smile.
"I don't know," I said. "Love isn't very sensible or well thought through. It just sort of happens, I think. Often without consultation."
She nodded in agreement.
"Entirely!" she said. "There you are, minding your own business, occasionally killing squirrels..."
"Killing squirrels?" I said.
"They were there," she said. "Well, when I say there, they were running away at high speed. But I thought they might be spies."
"Are squirrels often spies?" I said, mildly confused, but less so than I could have been."
"Often," she said. "It depends on where you are, and whether the squirrels have spikey bone spurs to the back of their heels and barbs in their tales. Squirrels like that are almost invariably evil. Which I don't object to but I feel makes them valid targets when one is in the area."
I'd never seen squirrels like that, but felt an almost irresistable urge to introduce this girl to Leslie, so she could describe them properly. I felt sure that barb tailed squirrels could be running around the trees by the Chantry of the Living River in days.
"I'm Tegan," I said, smiling at this girl for the first time. I had to give her some payment for the story about the squirrels.
"Oh," she said. "Does this mean you want a name from me? I'm very bad at them. I think tonight I'm going to be Rhiannon."
"The goddess of horses?" I said.
She beamed.
"Well, yes." she said. "But it's also a quite ordinary Welsh name, and I could be Welsh."
"Except you're not."
"But I could be. If I wanted to be. Technically, I'm Scottish."
"On what technicality?"
"The smaller breed of pony comes from Shetland. And that's where the kelpies live."
She had a faint Irish accent which seemed to make a lie of both statements, but she was (I had decided) almost definitely a Pooka, and there is no point demanding too much from Pookas. Rhiannon was, at least, a pretty name, and she smiled when she said it.
"It's nice to meet you, Rhiannon," I said, and then "you've been to London? When?"
She tilted her head to one side.
"Two weeks ago. I went looking for a boy with blue eyes, but he had gone away so I settled for a man with a pile of books and stories he wanted to tell me."
She sighed, and looked almost melancholy.
"I can't find my boy with blue eyes..." she said, and her voice faded away for a second, before she looked up with that bright smile back again. "Your other love isn't in London anymore. He's gone to the seaside."
I glanced about nervously. "Don't talk too openly about him here, please," I said. "I don't want to bring more trouble on him."
I looked down at my feet.
"I've brought enough trouble on him so far..."
She tilted her head to one side. "Of course you have," she said. "That's your blood, isn't it? You can't do anything else."
I smiled, slightly bitterly. "Yes," I said. "So it seems."
I paused for a moment, and then for the first time in years I started talking again. "I never wanted it to be this way," I said. "Not for Fergal. Not for Michael. Neither of them deserve this."
I stared into the fire. Rhiannon didn't say anything, and let me talk.
"I do love Fergal," I said. "I always have done. He makes me want to tear my hair out, and then he makes me want to dance and sing. He's like this fire inside me, so hot it almost burns.
"But Michael..."
And I paused again.
"I'm never scared when I'm with Michael," I said. "When he holds me, I feel safer than I feel anywhere else. Fergal isn't safe. He's terrifying and incredible and even when we're at our best it feels like I'm falling. With Michael, it feels as if I'm already home.
"They aren't alike, at all. I know that. I think if they were, I wouldn't love both of them. Why on earth would I want another Fergal? Why would I need another Michael? I don't. But I do love them both..."
I looked at her sideways.
"And because I love them both," I said, "I get to live every single day with this hole inside me. And that's never going to change. I'm never going to feel better. Not all the time. Sometimes I can ignore it, but then something comes back which makes my stomach tip over and makes me feel sick. And there are days when everything I do is a betrayal of one of them. Everything. Even just loving the other.
"And I don't want it to be this way. I don't understand why this had to happen..."
"It's in your blood," she said, not unsympathetically.
I paused for a moment, the weight of the story I'd given her tugging slightly at my ribcage.
"Do you have a story?" I said.
She smiled, and for the first time it was a little more wistful, with a touch of sorrow to it.
"Oh, my story isn't very interesting," she said. "Or very romantic. It features dubious sexual encounters in fields and forests, and reveals the fact that kissing - with tongues - may have more of an effect than previously expected."
She shook her head so her fringe fell down over her eyes and peered into it.
"I like blue eyes," she said. "And I like boys that make me smile. I don't like grand and important men. I just want a boy who looks at me like I'm a princess to him, even though I'm just a pony who doesn't really fit in any story except the one where I drown children, which is really a bit of a two note tale."
She rested her chin on her knees.
"But I've got a promise," she said. "And he's got a promise, even if he doesn't know it. And so he is far away, and I am here. Did you know that Diarmed of the Silver Smile has bedded no fewer than 24 women this year alone? And it's only January 2nd."
I stared at her. Either she was lying (which was not unusual in a pooka) or Diarmed had been very busy. The scary thing was that I wasn't quite sure which was which.
She nodded engagingly.
"He sometimes stacks them up three at a time," she said, and grinned. "And sometimes he fits them in in dreams. If you're talking about real women, there have been far fewer."
I exhaled slightly in relief. Diarmed was my husband's pack beta, and had been living on our sofa for the last three months for reasons which made little sense to me, but featured his small flat in the village being burnt out, his most recent girlfriend throwing him out after she caught him in bed with her sister, and him having a mild fit of depression which meant he felt better clinging on to Fergal, in a very not-gay manner. Whilst he was living with me, I think I preferred the thought of him not being quite so romantically energetic as he was normally.
Rhiannon looked up and me and grinned impishly.
"He's only had 11 women since yesterday," she said. "And that's God's own truth."
I blinked in surprise and she grinned, that amazingly bright grin at me again.
"I'll leave you to think about that," she said. And then, in a quick glitter of starlight, she was gone.
I asked Diarmed about her the next day, and he looked mildly frustrated.
"Oh sweet Gaia," he said. "I've not idea what her fucking name is. She's given me about five so far and they keep changing. She's a top girl, but just keeping track of her..."
He sighed.
"Why people insist on getting involved with the fucking fairies I've no idea."
He glanced at Fergal, who grinned unrepetently.
"Because that way you get the prettiest wife in the whole fucking Sept, boy," he said, and poured hot water into his mug of coffee. I smiled at him. This morning everything felt wrong, and I wanted to be back in London with Michael, but there were days like that occasionally. It would fade. It had to fade.
"So, you're dating her?" I asked uncertainly.
Diarmed shook his head.
"Fuck no!" he said. "I met her at a Moot. We hang out occasionally. She talks shite and can drink me under the table. I made a move once. She said 'no' and said she was busy yearning and then talked for half an hour about the rules of Romance."
"There are rules of Romance?" Fergal said in confusion.
I grinned.
"Of course there are," I said, and remembered my days running with the Fae. "Lots of them. Just like all stories have rules. Aren't you a Galliard, Diarmed?"
Diarmed's expression was hard to read. It might have been wry amusement, or it might have been mild irritation.
"Aye," he said. "But I don't expect to have to live the life of anyone out of the old tales. Those folks had it fucked up."
"The old tales are real," I said. "They have weight. I can feel it. What are the rules of her story?"
Diarmed shrugged.
"I'm not sure," he said. "I didn't listen. I'd had two bottles of whiskey and eight pints by that point."
"Jesus!" I exclaimed. "You should be dead."
He grinned.
"I'm just that fucking good," he said, and brushed his hair out of his eyes. Fergal laughed.
"We're Fianna, sweetheart," he said, and took a swig of his coffee. "And bloody hell, this coffee tastes good."
I smiled at him, and wandered away, to the great windowsil at the end of the landing which was 5 ft across, and felt like a tiny room, raised two foot off the ground, where I kept my sketchbook and paints stacked up. Caitlin was sprawled there today for some reason, trying to plait some kind of brightly coloured thread into her hair.
"Good morning, baby girl," I said.
Caitlin wrinkled her nose at me.
"Mam!" she said. "I'm not a baby anymore. I'm nearly thirteen!"
I grinned.
"Totally," I said, and blew her a kiss, which I briefly gave form, and a ghostly pair of lips flickered through the air for half a second. Caitlin looked even more disgusted.
"You use too much magic," she said, and went back to plaiting her hair with intense concentration. "No one else has a mother who uses magic."
"Oh," I said. "We both know that's a lie."
She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly.
"OK," she said. "No one normal has a mother who uses magic."
I smiled, and took out my sketch book. How I produced a child who viewed 'normal' as 'kinfolk and Garou', I don't know. One day she'll have to leave this world and I'm scared for her. But maybe it's a good thing that she's got to this age, sheltered and happy. It's something I never had, and I think maybe she'll be spared half of my mistakes because of it.
"Did you have fun at the Moot last night?" I asked.
She shrugged slightly.
"It was OK," she said. "I met the weirdest guy there. I think he's a mule..."
I hate the fact that my daughter had picked up the traditional Fianna tone of disgust when talking about metis.
"...and he was all white. He came from England, or somewhere, and just wouldn't go away. He kept asking me questions..."
I tilted my head to one side.
"What kind of questions?" I asked.
"Oh, just dumb questions. How do I feel about the way I'm treated, am I territory, has being kin made my life better or worse..."
She shrugged.
"I mean, what am I meant to say? Yeah...Da can be an eejit at times. So can you."
She glanced at me sideways. "and having parents with a grand epic romance going on is kinda tiring and a bit embarassing at times."
I looked back at her.
"Tiring?" I said.
She grinned.
"Yeah. Well. I spend the first part of my life only seeing my own mother when she delivers me secret stuffed toys. Although that was cool. And then you turn up again and now I have to deal with you and Da snogging all over the house. At least when he had girlfriends that I wasn't meant to know about, he didn't insist on shagging them in the room right next to me."
My eyes widened in shock.
"Caitlin!" I said.
She grinned, sharp tongued and unrepentent. It appears that my daughter has a streak of precocity in her that has appeared from nowhere over the last year.
"What?" she said. "I'm not a kid anymore..."
She finished plaiting her hair with some satisfaction.
"I just wish Da would see that," she said. "He says that until I'm 18 and we know for sure whether I'm going to Change or not, I don't get to date, I don't get to do anything..."
I smiled at her.
"I think we'll know sooner than that," I said. Her eyes are the most amazing lavender blue and she's a thousand times prettier than I ever was. She's touched by the fae, as strongly as I have been, and that's where the blood will call her, I think. If she goes my path, that'll manifest soon enough, and we'll know she won't change.
She seemed to track my thoughts and smiled.
"Maybe," she said and "I think it would be cool to know. And if I'm not going to change, I could go travelling."
I looked at her suspiciously.
She looked back at me.
"Didn't you take off when you were about my age?" she said.
"Yes," I said, "but..." and I was quiet because I don't want my daughter to know about the squats, or turning tricks for a little while, or begging, or being so hungry I'd have done damn near anything for a meal. I don't want her to know that the first time I met her father, I offered him sex in return for a meal. So instead I just smiled and held out my hand.
"Kiss me, precious girl," I said, and she did with good grace.
After she had gone, I sat in the window. The sense of wrongness was subsiding. Of course I belonged here, with Fergal and Caitlin. This was my life. I was happy here.
Still, as she wandered away and I stared out of the window I felt that little rip inside me somewhere. And I wondered if it would always be this way. Is it possible to love two men?
I don't know.
But I don't know any other way to be. Not anymore...
I didn't say anything. I had nothing to say on this subject and I had no idea who this girl was.
Unusually, she didn't seem particularly put off by the blank wall of silence and just settled down next to me. Closer to, I could see that she was small and pretty, with a long dark fringe and huge dark eyes that didn't seem to have any whites to them, rather like a horse's eyes. A single long furry ear poked through her mass of hair and when she crossed her legs, I realized she had hooves instead of boots.
This explained a lot.
Satyr or Pooka? I wasn't quite sure, but I thought the latter.
I didn't have to be quite so polite to commoners. Maybe I was half bred, but all my blood was Sidhe.
The girl smiled at me engagingly.
"It's all very romantic," she said cheerfully. "And is the reason why all the promises that we make with the Garou keep being broken. Fairy men and women are very bad at staying where they are put. Although it seems that Garou can be just as bad. They aren't temperementally suited to yearning, which is a shame when one considers the stories."
I had no idea who this girl was. She was at a Moot, which meant she had some connection to the Nation. I had seen her perched on Diarmed's lap earlier, which meant nothing. Diarmed's lap has its own small gravitational field for pretty girls. She was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, which were almost a uniform for the traditional Sept raised Garou or kin. She had no jewellery that I could see, and no tattoos. She had the marks of no tribe, and no one other than I (I'd bet) could see the hooves, ears, or the huge dark eyes. Even with them she was strikingly pretty, so she was probably even prettier without. Maybe she had just arrived on Diarmed's arm. It wouldn't have surprised me. Yet he was nowhere to be seen now.
She smiled engagingly.
"I don't know if I've ever met Michael Stands Ready," she said and looked thoughtful. "I've been to London, but I'm not meant to stay there. I have my own promises that I'm keeping very badly. Why does one always fall in love with the worst possible people?"
I couldn't help but smile.
"I don't know," I said. "Love isn't very sensible or well thought through. It just sort of happens, I think. Often without consultation."
She nodded in agreement.
"Entirely!" she said. "There you are, minding your own business, occasionally killing squirrels..."
"Killing squirrels?" I said.
"They were there," she said. "Well, when I say there, they were running away at high speed. But I thought they might be spies."
"Are squirrels often spies?" I said, mildly confused, but less so than I could have been."
"Often," she said. "It depends on where you are, and whether the squirrels have spikey bone spurs to the back of their heels and barbs in their tales. Squirrels like that are almost invariably evil. Which I don't object to but I feel makes them valid targets when one is in the area."
I'd never seen squirrels like that, but felt an almost irresistable urge to introduce this girl to Leslie, so she could describe them properly. I felt sure that barb tailed squirrels could be running around the trees by the Chantry of the Living River in days.
"I'm Tegan," I said, smiling at this girl for the first time. I had to give her some payment for the story about the squirrels.
"Oh," she said. "Does this mean you want a name from me? I'm very bad at them. I think tonight I'm going to be Rhiannon."
"The goddess of horses?" I said.
She beamed.
"Well, yes." she said. "But it's also a quite ordinary Welsh name, and I could be Welsh."
"Except you're not."
"But I could be. If I wanted to be. Technically, I'm Scottish."
"On what technicality?"
"The smaller breed of pony comes from Shetland. And that's where the kelpies live."
She had a faint Irish accent which seemed to make a lie of both statements, but she was (I had decided) almost definitely a Pooka, and there is no point demanding too much from Pookas. Rhiannon was, at least, a pretty name, and she smiled when she said it.
"It's nice to meet you, Rhiannon," I said, and then "you've been to London? When?"
She tilted her head to one side.
"Two weeks ago. I went looking for a boy with blue eyes, but he had gone away so I settled for a man with a pile of books and stories he wanted to tell me."
She sighed, and looked almost melancholy.
"I can't find my boy with blue eyes..." she said, and her voice faded away for a second, before she looked up with that bright smile back again. "Your other love isn't in London anymore. He's gone to the seaside."
I glanced about nervously. "Don't talk too openly about him here, please," I said. "I don't want to bring more trouble on him."
I looked down at my feet.
"I've brought enough trouble on him so far..."
She tilted her head to one side. "Of course you have," she said. "That's your blood, isn't it? You can't do anything else."
I smiled, slightly bitterly. "Yes," I said. "So it seems."
I paused for a moment, and then for the first time in years I started talking again. "I never wanted it to be this way," I said. "Not for Fergal. Not for Michael. Neither of them deserve this."
I stared into the fire. Rhiannon didn't say anything, and let me talk.
"I do love Fergal," I said. "I always have done. He makes me want to tear my hair out, and then he makes me want to dance and sing. He's like this fire inside me, so hot it almost burns.
"But Michael..."
And I paused again.
"I'm never scared when I'm with Michael," I said. "When he holds me, I feel safer than I feel anywhere else. Fergal isn't safe. He's terrifying and incredible and even when we're at our best it feels like I'm falling. With Michael, it feels as if I'm already home.
"They aren't alike, at all. I know that. I think if they were, I wouldn't love both of them. Why on earth would I want another Fergal? Why would I need another Michael? I don't. But I do love them both..."
I looked at her sideways.
"And because I love them both," I said, "I get to live every single day with this hole inside me. And that's never going to change. I'm never going to feel better. Not all the time. Sometimes I can ignore it, but then something comes back which makes my stomach tip over and makes me feel sick. And there are days when everything I do is a betrayal of one of them. Everything. Even just loving the other.
"And I don't want it to be this way. I don't understand why this had to happen..."
"It's in your blood," she said, not unsympathetically.
I paused for a moment, the weight of the story I'd given her tugging slightly at my ribcage.
"Do you have a story?" I said.
She smiled, and for the first time it was a little more wistful, with a touch of sorrow to it.
"Oh, my story isn't very interesting," she said. "Or very romantic. It features dubious sexual encounters in fields and forests, and reveals the fact that kissing - with tongues - may have more of an effect than previously expected."
She shook her head so her fringe fell down over her eyes and peered into it.
"I like blue eyes," she said. "And I like boys that make me smile. I don't like grand and important men. I just want a boy who looks at me like I'm a princess to him, even though I'm just a pony who doesn't really fit in any story except the one where I drown children, which is really a bit of a two note tale."
She rested her chin on her knees.
"But I've got a promise," she said. "And he's got a promise, even if he doesn't know it. And so he is far away, and I am here. Did you know that Diarmed of the Silver Smile has bedded no fewer than 24 women this year alone? And it's only January 2nd."
I stared at her. Either she was lying (which was not unusual in a pooka) or Diarmed had been very busy. The scary thing was that I wasn't quite sure which was which.
She nodded engagingly.
"He sometimes stacks them up three at a time," she said, and grinned. "And sometimes he fits them in in dreams. If you're talking about real women, there have been far fewer."
I exhaled slightly in relief. Diarmed was my husband's pack beta, and had been living on our sofa for the last three months for reasons which made little sense to me, but featured his small flat in the village being burnt out, his most recent girlfriend throwing him out after she caught him in bed with her sister, and him having a mild fit of depression which meant he felt better clinging on to Fergal, in a very not-gay manner. Whilst he was living with me, I think I preferred the thought of him not being quite so romantically energetic as he was normally.
Rhiannon looked up and me and grinned impishly.
"He's only had 11 women since yesterday," she said. "And that's God's own truth."
I blinked in surprise and she grinned, that amazingly bright grin at me again.
"I'll leave you to think about that," she said. And then, in a quick glitter of starlight, she was gone.
I asked Diarmed about her the next day, and he looked mildly frustrated.
"Oh sweet Gaia," he said. "I've not idea what her fucking name is. She's given me about five so far and they keep changing. She's a top girl, but just keeping track of her..."
He sighed.
"Why people insist on getting involved with the fucking fairies I've no idea."
He glanced at Fergal, who grinned unrepetently.
"Because that way you get the prettiest wife in the whole fucking Sept, boy," he said, and poured hot water into his mug of coffee. I smiled at him. This morning everything felt wrong, and I wanted to be back in London with Michael, but there were days like that occasionally. It would fade. It had to fade.
"So, you're dating her?" I asked uncertainly.
Diarmed shook his head.
"Fuck no!" he said. "I met her at a Moot. We hang out occasionally. She talks shite and can drink me under the table. I made a move once. She said 'no' and said she was busy yearning and then talked for half an hour about the rules of Romance."
"There are rules of Romance?" Fergal said in confusion.
I grinned.
"Of course there are," I said, and remembered my days running with the Fae. "Lots of them. Just like all stories have rules. Aren't you a Galliard, Diarmed?"
Diarmed's expression was hard to read. It might have been wry amusement, or it might have been mild irritation.
"Aye," he said. "But I don't expect to have to live the life of anyone out of the old tales. Those folks had it fucked up."
"The old tales are real," I said. "They have weight. I can feel it. What are the rules of her story?"
Diarmed shrugged.
"I'm not sure," he said. "I didn't listen. I'd had two bottles of whiskey and eight pints by that point."
"Jesus!" I exclaimed. "You should be dead."
He grinned.
"I'm just that fucking good," he said, and brushed his hair out of his eyes. Fergal laughed.
"We're Fianna, sweetheart," he said, and took a swig of his coffee. "And bloody hell, this coffee tastes good."
I smiled at him, and wandered away, to the great windowsil at the end of the landing which was 5 ft across, and felt like a tiny room, raised two foot off the ground, where I kept my sketchbook and paints stacked up. Caitlin was sprawled there today for some reason, trying to plait some kind of brightly coloured thread into her hair.
"Good morning, baby girl," I said.
Caitlin wrinkled her nose at me.
"Mam!" she said. "I'm not a baby anymore. I'm nearly thirteen!"
I grinned.
"Totally," I said, and blew her a kiss, which I briefly gave form, and a ghostly pair of lips flickered through the air for half a second. Caitlin looked even more disgusted.
"You use too much magic," she said, and went back to plaiting her hair with intense concentration. "No one else has a mother who uses magic."
"Oh," I said. "We both know that's a lie."
She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly.
"OK," she said. "No one normal has a mother who uses magic."
I smiled, and took out my sketch book. How I produced a child who viewed 'normal' as 'kinfolk and Garou', I don't know. One day she'll have to leave this world and I'm scared for her. But maybe it's a good thing that she's got to this age, sheltered and happy. It's something I never had, and I think maybe she'll be spared half of my mistakes because of it.
"Did you have fun at the Moot last night?" I asked.
She shrugged slightly.
"It was OK," she said. "I met the weirdest guy there. I think he's a mule..."
I hate the fact that my daughter had picked up the traditional Fianna tone of disgust when talking about metis.
"...and he was all white. He came from England, or somewhere, and just wouldn't go away. He kept asking me questions..."
I tilted my head to one side.
"What kind of questions?" I asked.
"Oh, just dumb questions. How do I feel about the way I'm treated, am I territory, has being kin made my life better or worse..."
She shrugged.
"I mean, what am I meant to say? Yeah...Da can be an eejit at times. So can you."
She glanced at me sideways. "and having parents with a grand epic romance going on is kinda tiring and a bit embarassing at times."
I looked back at her.
"Tiring?" I said.
She grinned.
"Yeah. Well. I spend the first part of my life only seeing my own mother when she delivers me secret stuffed toys. Although that was cool. And then you turn up again and now I have to deal with you and Da snogging all over the house. At least when he had girlfriends that I wasn't meant to know about, he didn't insist on shagging them in the room right next to me."
My eyes widened in shock.
"Caitlin!" I said.
She grinned, sharp tongued and unrepentent. It appears that my daughter has a streak of precocity in her that has appeared from nowhere over the last year.
"What?" she said. "I'm not a kid anymore..."
She finished plaiting her hair with some satisfaction.
"I just wish Da would see that," she said. "He says that until I'm 18 and we know for sure whether I'm going to Change or not, I don't get to date, I don't get to do anything..."
I smiled at her.
"I think we'll know sooner than that," I said. Her eyes are the most amazing lavender blue and she's a thousand times prettier than I ever was. She's touched by the fae, as strongly as I have been, and that's where the blood will call her, I think. If she goes my path, that'll manifest soon enough, and we'll know she won't change.
She seemed to track my thoughts and smiled.
"Maybe," she said and "I think it would be cool to know. And if I'm not going to change, I could go travelling."
I looked at her suspiciously.
She looked back at me.
"Didn't you take off when you were about my age?" she said.
"Yes," I said, "but..." and I was quiet because I don't want my daughter to know about the squats, or turning tricks for a little while, or begging, or being so hungry I'd have done damn near anything for a meal. I don't want her to know that the first time I met her father, I offered him sex in return for a meal. So instead I just smiled and held out my hand.
"Kiss me, precious girl," I said, and she did with good grace.
After she had gone, I sat in the window. The sense of wrongness was subsiding. Of course I belonged here, with Fergal and Caitlin. This was my life. I was happy here.
Still, as she wandered away and I stared out of the window I felt that little rip inside me somewhere. And I wondered if it would always be this way. Is it possible to love two men?
I don't know.
But I don't know any other way to be. Not anymore...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 09:47 am (UTC)Nice story btw
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 05:22 pm (UTC)The good thing is what I *want* is to fix the world and make it all better and shiny!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 09:53 am (UTC)Especially Caitlin :)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 10:34 am (UTC)And I've also realized that TWO of my PCs have teenage daughters now.
This is worrying.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 06:24 am (UTC)...just thinking about the relationship Nikki had with his "mother" makes me think he would be the worst dad ever
Llyr probably wouldnt be too bad, but yeah... cant see that happening anytime soon.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 04:56 pm (UTC)I like writing Lynne. She's getting a proper voice in my head and this makes me happy.