Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras

by Andrea Höst

  That made me blink, but then I understood. "Maze really loves Rye, doesn't he? But you like Sen more, I think. So you both decided you wanted children?"

  "We could have adopted, of course. We might still. And we're not on Tare any more, where it would be so difficult to gain permission to raise a child alone. But–" Her expression changed, and she shook her head. "But there's no 'we', and what kind of situation is that to bring children into?"

  I found a towel and wiped my face unnecessarily, thinking that Maze must be great at talking people into things, to have managed to convince Alay that they could have a marriage of convenience. It was no surprise to me that actually having sex with Maze had given Alay more doubts than the month or so she'd thought it over beforehand. I doubt anyone could get into bed with Maze and think that the situation would stay convenient.

  Standing up, I handed her a second towel. "One thing that's been obvious to me all along is that everyone in First Squad loves Maze. And that Maze loves everyone in First Squad. Maybe not the same way he loved Helese, but maybe not so differently." I smiled. "One other thing I know is that Mara's going to be annoyed. She expected to be pregnant already, and now you and Maze are going to be first."

  With some doubtful reassurances about the kids not telling – Sen was very serious about not gossiping, but if she gets excited she tends to forget – we split to go have showers. When I came out, I gave Maze a big hug and congratulated him, and he was still wide-eyed, but pleased. And very concerned for Alay – after all, she mightn't be Helese, but I've no doubt he cares about her. He kissed her as well as hugging her when they went out to freeze on the patio for another talk (and then I took myself off upstairs so as not to continue treating them like my own private soap opera).

  My replacement bodyguards are Enma and Bree of Second, who I'm not so close to I have any trouble not mentioning these developments. But I'm finding myself more than a little upset. For Maze and Alay, but mainly about Zan.

  Of all the people who I've thought were interested in Maze, Zan was the only one I was really hoping would get somewhere with him. My own little OTP. I was hoping Twelfth would be posted here soon, and that he'd finally see – oh, I don't know. I wanted both of them to be happy. It seems an awful thing to me that Maze has apparently decided that he won't ever be able to move on, that he's settled for some kind of half-happiness which is just going to make Alay miserable.

  And I want to warn Zan. I hate the thought of her hearing about this via general gossip. And if Maze and Alay don't hide that it's a convenience arrangement, how much worse will that be? I'm writing my diary to stop myself writing emails.

  So hard. Really needed to pour all this out so I can manage to not be completely non-gossipy.

  Chapter 8

  July

  July 28

  Finally

  Maze and Alay have made it official and registered their engagement, sent out invites to an engagement party and to a wedding in two months, and mentioned that btw Alay's pregnant. Thankfully, by the time they did this I was truly glad for them.

  It took the whole month for Alay to decide to go ahead with the marriage part. I'm pretty sure if she hadn't immediately fallen pregnant, she would have run a mile from Maze's convenient arrangement. As it was, Maze scheduled them to be my bodyguards once a week so they could think about it some more.

  The first week they just talked. Alay seemed like her normal self, but I could tell by the way Sen kept bringing her cushions that she was finding it impossibly difficult. Maze was, I think, quietly dismayed that he'd hurt Alay doing something he'd thought would make them both happy.

  The second week she looked so tired and drained that not only Maze was worried about her. Thankfully most of my minders that week were from Fourth, so I avoided too many awkward conversations. I don't know what broke the impasse, but that night Alay stayed the whole night in Maze's room, and while she wasn't exactly cheerful the next morning, she seemed, I guess, determined to go through with the decision she'd made when she had herself taken off birth control.

  The difference was in Maze. The third week, on the few occasions I saw him, he seemed permanently distracted. Almost fidgety. Alay was off at Zurenath most of the time, assisting with the settlement-seeding, and though I think he was trying to give her space, Maze shuffled the assignments so he was assisting at Zurenath as well. The next time they were playing my minders, they'd gone completely tentative with each other. Just talking, but watching each other's reactions all the time. Touching each other's hands.

  And the day before yesterday, the fourth occasion of what Kaoren was by that time calling Rendezvous at Arcadia, Maze was wandering around stunned and thoughtful, and so very happy. Alay just glowed, and I didn't need them to tell me that they'd managed to get past any lingering doubts. In any case they had to go ahead and announce something soon because anyone seeing them together these past couple of days couldn't miss their feelings.

  Kaoren found the idea of Maze using our house as romance central tremendously funny, but both of us are relieved that the secrecy is over with. I had a lot of fun today – they announced it while the kids were at school and I had Mara and Ketzaren as bodyguards (or torturers, since they were forcing me to seriously dodge them or get all bruised from being tackled) with Lohn watching and making impish comments. When the invitation arrived by email, Lohn read it first, while Mara and Ketz were doing their best to push me without swatting me, and Mara ended up accidentally knocking me onto my ass when Lohn suddenly yelped out the Taren equivalent of: "Holy shit!"

  Ketz picked me up while Mara gave Lohn a reproachful look, but he just gabbled: "Read your email, read your email!" and so we did and there was a very sweetly worded email from Maze and Alay inviting everyone to a party that night to celebrate their engagement and coming child. I had to pretend to be preoccupied with my bruised ass so that I could turn away and hide my grin at their complete dumbstruck disbelief.

  They all opened channels with Maze and Alay and tried not to sound too amazed while they gave them their congratulations. I kept quiet, doing the one thing I'd long planned for when the news came out – sending a carefully prepared email off to Zan which gave her enough detail so she would understand the situation. I had written most of the email over the last month, filling it in with general news along with the stuff about Maze and Alay, so that it wouldn't be an obvious "I know you like him but he's taken now" message.

  She hasn't replied yet, and I'm fretting, and feeling guilty for being so pleased for Alay.

  Everyone in First and Second seems delighted, at least, most of them gathering at my house on the day of the announcement to have a big gossip session. Nils all of a sudden pounced on me and asked "How long have you known?"

  "Since Sen greeted Alay with a joyous cry of 'Baby' about a month ago," I admitted, and he laughed and said Maze must make more convincing threats about spankings, and they were all surprised but sort of reassured that I'd known about it.

  The engagement party was fun. Sen announced that the baby's name was 'Secret' (Katen), which Maze and Alay thought very sweet, but they're underestimating how much she means it. The party was at Maze's parents' house, which I hadn't visited before, and again involved interesting traditional baked treats. Since it's not picnic or patio weather it was a tight fit, even though they'd restricted the guest list down to closest friends and family. Alay got taken off and given a stern talking to by the rest of her squad. Nils teased Keer about him having to hurry up and get engaged to one (or all) of the few remaining Senior Setari still available, and less lightly teased Zee about getting left behind (he wants to marry her, but she wants to hold off). I spotted Mara talking a bit sadly to Lohn – it bugs her a lot that she didn't immediately fall pregnant.

  We didn't stay too long: I did some projections (to explain ice-skating) and we left the party fairly early to put Sen to bed. And maybe to think about some of the complexities of being parents ourselves.

  Lira might (technically) be a l
ittle younger than Ys (we've settled on next month as her twelfth birthday), but she's far more physically developed. I've already bought her training bras, though she refuses to wear them just yet. Kaoren and I had the funniest conversation at the party, because we'd both noticed Del (Mara's nephew) and Lore (Ketzaren's young brother) watching Lira with unmistakeable interest, and both of us immediately wanted to hide her away. She is undoubtedly going to have a great many guys after her, not only because she's getting more and more gorgeous, but because of the whole tragic Lantaren heroine almost-princess thing. And she has a certain proud charisma which can be very compelling. For the moment she's following Ys' lead and being painstakingly polite and wholly unwelcoming to anyone, male or female, who pushes to get closer to her, but I don't think that's going to last. She's perfectly conscious that people think she's beautiful, and enjoys that, and she's somehow transformed Enna into an admiring follower. [Lira's actually done Enna a world of good, just because Enna really wants Lira to like her, and is so absorbed with getting Lira to accept her that she's distracted from her nightmares and the overwhelming grief of losing her family.]

  But Lira is also a touch capricious, now that she's no longer isolated and angry. She constantly shifts her interests, exploring something, growing quite fascinated by it, then dropping it completely, bored. Art, music, dancing. Her latest is cooking, and she's still in the very interested stage of that, but I have no faith in her not dropping it entirely next week. I don't particularly care – to a degree I even encourage her to try out as many things as possible – and the only stricture I place on her is that she has to complete her set school work, and participate in family activities. But I'm hoping to teach her to be aware that if she behaves that way with people she could really hurt them. Perhaps I'm being unjust – she's remained very firmly Ys' compatriot – and she was lonely long enough to not want to hurt people. But she sometimes doesn't think things through, and I don't know if she is going to be able to handle the immense interest she is starting to inspire half so well as Maze.

  Ys is perfectly aware of social consequences, for all she picks and chooses who to bestow her compassion upon. She clocked Del and Lore ogling Lira just as readily as we did, and was very scornful of them as a result. Scorn is still Ys' default reaction to most things, but that's a cover for a wider range of responses. Just looking at her reading access list tells me so much about Ys that I start feeling guilty for something which I do think is parently-appropriate. I made sure she's aware I can look, anyway, and I think she decided it was okay.

  Currently she mainly reads great heaps of history and sciences – lower high school level for the most part, dipping into more advanced books when she wants to pursue an explanation of something. She's already more than equal to handling anything her age level at school can throw at her and well beyond. Ys is so intelligent I'm surprised she didn't work out how to read just by looking at an alphabet, and her only weakness is that the classes are always starting on areas which she's never studied at all and she has to do catch-up before handling the current work.

  But she also gets through huge galloping realms of fiction – she allows herself a novel a day, slotted between school reading, extra reading on the subjects on her courses, and a thorough review of the newspapers and interface sites she has bookmarked (all the kids, even Sen, are incapable of not checking to see what people are saying about them each day). Her fiction interests range all over the place – she especially loves Earth fantasy stories and is forcing me to both keep conjuring up new books to read to her, and also to write up a proper translation dictionary of Taren to English. Dinner every day involves me adding a mandatory three words to the dictionary while we eat, and then answering Ys' cross-examination of the fine detail of their definitions. Kaoren says it's very useful, and is keeping up with the lessons as well (Lira, Rye and Sen to a lesser extent), but none of them can rival Ys, who simply doesn't forget anything she doesn't want to. She wanted ten words a day, but that would have made dinner very long.

  But along with history and science she has an absolute soft spot for teen romances and schoolgirl 'chum' stories about close knit groups of friends overcoming spite and pettiness. Being brilliant doesn't stop Ys from being human, and she wants acceptance and romance every bit as much as I did at her age. The influx of Taren students at the talent school is helping her get past the way she was raised (though making clear the education hurdles she'll have to overcome to catch up), but she's never going to forget being 'three against the world', and she doesn't trust unknown Nurans at all.

  The visits to Isten Notra are fantastic at cheering her up and giving her an outlet, but I think she's starting to realise that finding a boy her own age who even comes close to her intellectually is going to be a challenge. Sometimes I see her looking at Lira – luminous skin, masses of waving hair, thick sooty eyelashes, gorgeous features and the beginnings of curves – and it's obvious she's running a comparison with her thin figure and inclined-to-be-short hair. I think in a few years Ys' looks will settle into a not-unattractive whole, but I know it would have been hard for me to have Lira as a sister! Fortunately Ys doesn't seem inclined to resent Lira for it – Lira's far too important to her.

  If Ys ever lets her guard down she might find that more people are drawn to her than she expects. For the moment I think she has a crush on Shon (who scored brownie points both by being great with Rye, and by being related to Isten Notra, and pretty damn intelligent on his own account). She pretends to find him boring, of course, but Isten Notra is not the only reason she's so careful about her appearance when she goes on her monthly visits.

  I'm such a softie about Ys. I went to one of the few custom clothes-makers in Pandora a couple of weeks ago to talk wedding dresses (to make projections of what I mean by wedding dresses and to try and design one which doesn't look completely out of place) and my primary preoccupation was that I needed flower girl dresses that were both girly and yet suited Ys. Ys won't wear girly clothes because she thinks she doesn't suit them, so my secret mission is to find something which looks so good on her she can't help but want to wear it. Fortunately the dress-maker seemed to properly understand what I wanted, and to take the request seriously. [Of course, being able to say she designed Caszandra's wedding outfits gives her plenty of incentive to take me seriously – I have to admit I find this fame useful at times.]

  That's about all the planning I've managed for my wedding. Maze and Alay's baby will be born just before it. I did agonise for quite some time over whether to postpone getting married until I can try to bring Mum here, but Kaoren had to struggle to hide how much he hated that idea, and I think Sen would be too upset.

  Other than First Squad romances, it's been a quiet month, the highlight being Kaoren's and then Sen's birthday (I had a winged fairy princess dress made for her, which she would wear for every moment of every day if she were allowed to). Kaoren thinks we're over the first bad stage of her Sights development, and we've been having more unbroken nights, and Siame is being very useful and encouraging and giving Sen confidence that things will get better. [Siame is getting along very well with everyone but me. Me she still tries to have as little to do with as possible, and we're letting it go at that for the moment.]

  Siame spends most of her time being fascinated by snow, and has been making very white paintings – and naturally all the kids find snowball fights and building snowmen and discovering icicles to be amazing and new and fun. Only a light snow layer at the moment – the heavy snowstorms haven't started yet – and first weekend after it starts to snow properly we're going to go across to Siriath and have another epic snowball fight, but this time with children and random family members involved. We're going to make a yearly tradition of it.

  Rye's rather mournful for the effect of Winter on his garden, but was handily distracted into documenting the Winter habits of all the animals he's discovered in Summer. And is practicing faithfully for snowball throwing.

  Lira's twelfth birthday is
in two weeks and I'm really stuck on what to get her. It would be easy to buy her a statue, but she seems tremendously judgmental about the statues she doesn't like, so I think I'd better leave her statue-collecting to her.

  Chapter 9

  August

  August 15

  Epic Fight is Epic

  So much fun. The big snow dump finally came, and 'First Park' (as we've taken to calling the park between Lohn and Mara's and Jeh, Ketz and Grif's houses) was a fantastic place for it – we knew where the benches and rocks were, and there were enough trees for a little bit of cover, but not enough to be getting in the way. The fight was in two parts – first a massive, silly free-for-all which all the younger kids got to participate in. It was great to see Deal running about shrieking with the rest of the younger kids – and also that he went and clung to Grif when he got a bit overwhelmed. He's still a pretty trembly sort of kid whenever anything unexpected happens, but is no longer constantly dependant on Zaranar, and has become rather possessive of his three new parents – he gets jealous if they pay too much attention to anyone but himself, Zaranar or Enna.

  After the first fight, Alay and Ketzaren took all the younger kids for a snowman building competition on the patio of Ketz, Jeh and Grif's house, and the snowball fight became 'serious business'. Well, as serious as it can be with ten year-olds. The second game was a paired hunt, and each Setari was paired with a relative to make winning harder. Kaoren was paired with Rye, of course, and I teamed with Ys while Lira teamed with Siame until deciding to pretend that she'd been injured and going to Lohn and Mara's to watch (and obligingly help) Mara's grandparents prepare some of the truly massive amount of lunch needed – her interest in cooking hasn't waned yet. The hunt was a frantic affair with so many people (all Setari on Muina had been invited, plus any relatives they wanted to bring) and though everyone was supposed to keep it light-hearted, it got rather intense in spots. It was a very close fight – Raiten's younger brother has a strong Combat Sight and together they were extraordinarily good, and there were plenty of other excellent teams. Rye doesn't have Combat Sight, and he was totally white with nerves beforehand because he hates the idea of letting Kaoren down. Fortunately Kaoren's just god-like at these things, and also rather good at creating opportunities for Rye to get shots off, and though he didn't win as totally as last time, he still brought 'Team Ruuel' in first. He said afterwards that wanting Rye to win was excellent motivation for doing his best, and I have a nice image for my collection of Rye's celebratory hug with Kaoren. Kaoren totally looks like Rye's Dad in the picture (except for only being ten years older) and it's one of the few images I have of him publicly smiling.