Fic: The Happy Life
Jun. 9th, 2008 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalI swear, tomorrow it's back to The Ship, no matter how slowly it goes.]
The Terinu universe and related plots and situations are copyright![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaypeta and used here without permission.
“Are you sure she won’t bother him?” Meriven’s mother asked Grandma Zaza.
“No, no. He likes children,” Grandma said. She then did something odd, leaning into Mother’s ear to whisper, “Just don’t let her bring up anything, er, religious.”
“She’s six, Mum, I shouldn’t think she will. She’ll be too busy playing, won’t you, Meri?”
“Does that mean I can go out into the garden, Mother?” the little vulpine girl asked, bouncing up and down on her footpads.
“Yes, dear. But don’t be too loud.”
“Yay!” She didn’t wait for her mother to give any more warnings. Instead she ran through the big glass doors onto the stone porch, down the stairs and into the bright and colorful gardens, kin geese scattering in her wake. First there were the hedgerows to explore, then the beds of flowers filled with roses and skyflowers and crysanthemithimiminiums and then she chased some flutterbyes…
By the time she got to the gazebo, Meri was feeling a bit tired and hungry, so she plopped down on a bench and dug out a fang chew candy that she’d saved from yesterday out of her pocket. She’d brought halfway up to her mouth before she noticed the old male sitting the shade on the other side of the gazebo. “Hello, who are you?” she asked.
He was very, very old, she thought. She could tell because his muzzle was completely white and so were the tips of his black ears, and there was white streaks in the fur of his black paws and feet, and his face was sort of saggy. In fact, he looked like the oldest person she’d ever met.
“Who are you, young lady?” the old fellow asked, and then smiled.
“I asked first!” Then she added, “I’m Meriven Greycoat. Would you like part of my fang chew?”
He shook head. “You can have it, Meri. I’m your Great Uncle Marturari, but you can just call me Uncle Marty if you like.”
“Oh, you’re my Uncle Marty!” She hopped off her bench to give him a hug. He hugged her back and helped her up on the bench to sit beside him. “My da said you were a luna-tack.”
Uncle Marty raised his eyebrows at her. “Did he now?”
“Mummy got angry when he did though, so it must be a bad word. Why would Da call you a bad word?”
Uncle Marty looked like he was thinking about it very carefully. “Well, it’s not a really a bad word, but it is a bit mean. It means that people believe you don’t think like normal people, that you see the world differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…” Uncle Marty thought again and pointed to a cherry tree blossoming in the garden. “What color are the flowers in that tree, Meri?”
“They’re pink!” she answered.
“What if someone told you that those pink flowers sounded like a drum?”
She giggled. “That’s silly. Flowers don’t sound like drums.”
“For some people they do. They see colors as sounds, and can hear instead of taste their food. That’s called aphasia. What it really means is that their brains are wired just a bit differently, but not in a way that hurts them.” He pointed to the cherry tree again. “Now, what if I told you that I believed that tree over there hid a squad of creo commandos, from the bad old days when they served the Dominion, and were going to snatch us up and take us to their Varn masters?”
“Is there?!” She looked carefully. “They can’t be, the tree is too skinny for them to hide behind!”
“Exactly. But for some people, even if you told them that over and over, they wouldn’t be able to believe you. That’s called paranoia, and it’s very sad, because it usually means the poor person is scared all the time, even of people who love them very much and want them to get better.”
“That is sad,” she agreed, and chewed on her candy a bit. “Are you paranoid?”
“No, not at all. I’m not scared of anything anymore,” he said.
“Do you smell colors?”
He laughed and tapped the side of his muzzle. “No, I see and smell just fine.”
“Then why did Da call you a luna-tack?”
“Lunatic, dear. I think it’s because I see the Holy Den Mother.”
“You do? So do I, when I dream at night sometimes. She looks like my mother, I think, except even prettier and she’s always smiling.”
“I think she looks a bit like my mother too, Meri,” Uncle Marty said. “But you see, people think I’m a lunatic because see her all the time.”
“You do?”
“Oh, yes.” He pointed to the bench on the opposite side of the gazebo. “She’s sitting there right now, watching us and smiling because she loves us so very, very much.”
Meri looked very carefully, but she didn’t see anything. “Is she invisible?”
“Not to me.”
“Is she saying anything?”
“Not at the moment. She used to talk to me all the time, but after a while we only spoke when we needed to. Old friends are like that. It gets to be that you just enjoy each other’s company, with no need for words.”
She started bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement. “Can I see her? Please, may I see her, Uncle Marty?”
“I’m sorry, dear. I really like it if you could, but I’m the only one that ever does. That’s the problem you see. Since no else can either, they think I’m a liar, or I’m a lunatic.”
“Are you a liar?” She didn’t think this was likely, given how nice Uncle Marty was.
He smiled gently. “No, Meri, I’m not a liar.”
“Are you a lunatic, then?”
“I never thought so. But more people than just your father have said I must be, so who knows?”
“Did you always see her?”
“No, not always. I believed in her of course, because my mother had taught me all about her, but I’d never seen her.” His voice dropped to a whisper in her ear, “I couldn’t even talk about her, really, except very quietly. This was back in the Time of Subjugation, when the only gods allowed were the Varn.”
“That’s not true!” she said. “You would have to be older than Grandma Zaza!”
“I am older than her. She’s my niece.”
“How old are you then?”
“I am one hundred and thirty-three years old,” he told her proudly. “Though I don’t feel a day over one hundred and twenty.”
“Wow!” She scratched her ear in the way her mother had always told her not to in public. “But if you couldn’t even talk out loud to the Holy Den Mother, how did you ever come to see her?”
“Well, when I much younger, just twenty-four years old, I found myself in a great deal of trouble. I was arrested you see, and sent to prison!”
“Oh, no! But… does that mean you were a bad person?” She drew back a little from him. “You didn’t steal anything or hurt anyone, did you?”
He shook his head. “No, my dear. I never hurt anyone… well, before then. You see, the Varn were very cruel. You didn’t have to commit a crime in order to be thrown into prison. You just had to not like being ruled by the Varn. If they even suspected that, they would send you to a re-education camp.”
“Re-educa--- is that like cub school?”
“Not exactly. But I didn’t even get sent there. I was sent to a world named Barbados. It’s very cold there, with wind and snow blowing all the time. And it was a hidden world. The Varn didn’t want anyone to know what was going on there, so only their most loyal servants were sent to watch over the prisoners. And ruling over everyone there was the Varn Mindstrider.”
“What happened to you there?”
“I was put a cell block, along with my fellow prisoners. Now, I will tell you that some of them had done some awful things, but they were all there because the Varn feared that they might prove troublemakers, and help ferment rebellion against the Dominion.
“Were you a rebel, Uncle?”
“No, I wasn’t,” he told her. “I was there because I was afraid of flying.”
“Afraid of flying!” she exclaimed. “But you’re a Greycoat!”
“Yes, but I was a Greycoat that couldn’t fly. The very idea terrified me. That is called acrophobia. It made my parents very sad when they learned that I couldn’t be a pilot like they and my sisters were, and it made me ashamed.”
“Now, the Varn Mindstrider had gathered us all in one place, all of these potential rebels, because she wanted to see how rebellions are made, how the ones who do this sort of thing think. And so to make sure they really wanted to try to defeat the Dominion…” Uncle Marty paused for a long moment. “Well, she started hurting me.”
“Hurting you? Oh, Uncle!”
He gathered her up in his lap and hugged then, petting her head. “It’s all right, dear. It was a very long time ago. But in a very terrible way, what she did was quite clever. For the other prisoners could see how I was suffering and it made them angry. Angry enough to try and rebel, when the sensible thing would have been just to endure her nasty little games.”
In a very small voice she asked, “What did she do you?”
“She blocked me ears so I couldn’t hear. She gagged my mouth so I couldn’t speak. She blinded my eyes so I couldn’t see. Then when she had done that, she put me in a tank of water and made me float, in the dark and silence. Remember how I said I was afraid of flying?”
She nodded.
“Imagine feeling like you were falling. Falling for weeks. All I knew was that I was falling, falling, falling through the air, and that there was no help coming. I prayed, oh how I prayed to the Goddess to send someone to save me.”
“Is that when she started talking to you?”
“No,” he said. “No one answered, no one came to my rescue. It was so terrible, that the thought went through my head that maybe the Holy Den Mother didn’t really exist. Maybe the Varn were the only gods in the world, and I had angered them and would never be rescued!”
“The Holy Den Mother not exist! That’s a very naughty thing to think, Uncle Marty.”
Then, Uncle Marty smiled. “You want to know something, Meri? That’s exactly what she said when I thought that.”
Her face lit up. "You mean she did come to rescue you?"
"In a way." Her uncle's eyes looked like they were seeing something very far away, and very beautiful. "I felt her arms take hold of me, and guide to her den so I could sit beside her fire. She held me and told me she loved me, that she loved all of her vulpine children. Then she told me that my mother, my father and my sisters, who had all been very worried for me when they found out I had been sent to prison, were coming to rescue me."
"That was nice of her!'
"It was. Then she told me the best news of all. She said that the Time of Subjugation was coming to an end. That with the help of all the other races that had been conquered by the Dominion, especially our new human friends, we were going to be free again, and make sure the Varn would never be able to hurt anyone ever again."
"Yay!" Meri shouted and clapped her hands. "I bet you were very happy to see your mummy and daddy again."
Uncle Marty smiled, but not all the way to his eyes. "Well, happy and sad. You see, my mother came down to the prison with some soldiers to free me and the other prisoners, while my sisters and my father fought Mindstrider's fighters above the planet. Except that there were an awful lot of them, and my da was killed when his ship took a very bad hit. But before that happened he fought bravely indeed. I think it was because when they found out I couldn't be a pilot, he was the one most ashamed of me, so when it came time to rescue me, he wanted to make up to me as much as he could."
"Oh, that's sad." Her face brightened. "Did you tell them about seeing the Holy Den Mother?"
"Yes I did. In fact, when we got away from Barbados and the Resistance started forming around us, I told every vulpine I could meet about it, especially on planets where the Subjugation had been so bad that they had stopped believing in Her, like I had stopped believing for just a little while when I was Mindstrider's prisoner."
"Good for you!" She stopped to think for a bit. "But if you were telling them about meeting the Holy Den Mother, why did they call you a lunatic?"
"Well, you see, that came later. The trouble was, when the Twenty Year War was over, I wouldn't stop talking about the Holy Den Mother. I could still see and talk to her you see, and no one else could. So eventually they decided that maybe I couldn't really see her, and being in Mindstrider's awful tank for so long had made me sick in my mind, like you feel sick in your tummy if you eat too much of those fang chews."
"But that's not fair!"
Her uncle smiled again. "It wasn't that bad. I was tired for a long time after the war, so when we returned to Vulpine Prime and started to rebuild the estate, I was content to live with my sister Jessiver, your great grandmother, and help put the garden back together. I had always loved plants, so that was fine with me. And I learned not to talk about the Holy Den Mother so much, which was fine with everyone else."
"That still doesn't seem very fair."
"Oh, it's not such a bad life, being thought a lunatic. You can say all sorts of outrageous things in polite company and people will do their best to just nod and smile and say "Well, that's just old Marty." It's especially fun if it's about something they ought to be ashamed of. Besides, no matter what anyone else thinks of me, I know the Holy Den Mother is always there with me, and She understands me better than anyone."
"I suppose that's true," she agreed. "I still wish I could see her myself."
He smiled again, eyes bright. "But you're looking at her right now."
"She's invisible though!"
"No, no. You see her all the time. You see her when you look in the mirror, or at your own mother's face. When you smell the flowers or play in the grass. She's everywhere and everything, so you see her all the time, and she sees you too."
"Oh," Meri said. "Does she love me, like she loves you?"
"Of course she does. All of her children, you, me, your mother and grandmother and every other vulpine that ever lived are her cherished offspring."
"Meriven! It's time to come in for luncheon!" she heard her mother call from the porch.
"I have to go," she said. "Will come in and have lunch with us, Uncle?"
"No, my dear," he said, stretching his arms over his head. "I'll just stay here in the garden and take a little nap." But first he helped her down from the bench and kneeled down in front of her to kiss her on the forehead. "The Holy Mother of the Den's blessings on you, Meriven Greycoat. Walk on her grace, and you will never feel lonely."
"Thank you, Uncle Marty." She gave him another hug and ran back to her mother, who was still calling for her.
When she got there, her mother asked, "Where is your Uncle Marty? Did you him see while you were playing?"
"Oh, yes. He was in the gazebo," she told her mother. "We talked for a long while. He said he was going to take a nap there instead of having luncheon."
"Really," her mother said, an odd tone in her voice. "Did he, er, talk about anything in particular?"
Something in the back Meri's mind made her think that she didn't really want to say anything about what her uncle had told her about seeing the Holy Den Mother, so instead she said, "He talked about how he liked plants, and how he helped Grandma Jess with the garden, when everyone came back to Vulpine Prime after the war."
"Oh, that's all right then," her mother said, looking relieved. She flagged down a servant. "Go to the gazebo and ask Uncle Marturari if he wouldn't reconsider joining us for luncheon. He's been out there all morning."
"Yes, milady," the servant said, jogging off towards the gazebo. They had gone inside and were sitting themselves down to eat when the servant came back, running into the dining room. "Lady Greycoat," he gasped to Grandma Zaza, "Lord Maturari... I found him... he's..." He looked at Meri and then to Grandma, who stood up and pulled him outside of the dining room. Meriven could hear them talking in hush tones, and caught the words, "...slumped over... ...for hours... ...body is cold...."
"Meriven," her grandmother said, walking back into the dining room and looking very grave indeed. "When did you talk to your uncle?"
"Just a few minutes ago," she said.
"Lady Meriven Greycoat, do not lie to me."
"I'm not!" she exclaimed. "He was telling me all about when he was young and was in prison, and then was rescued by his mum and daddy and Great Grandma Jessiver and how he didn't mind if everyone thought he was a lunatic..."
"Stop, Meriven. That's not possible. Your uncle... " her voice caught in her throat. "...your uncle must have died a little while after he went to the gardens. They found his body just now, it's quite cold."
"But we did..." She thought a moment, then said, "I thought we did."
Gently, her mother said, "She must have stumbled over his body earlier. I imagine it was a bit of a shock to her. She's so young."
"Yes, yes, that makes sense," her grandmother agreed.
She said nothing to contradict this notion, even in the days leading up to the funeral. Though she often wondered in the years that followed, whether if she had squinted a bit, she might have caught a glimpse of the Holy Den Mother too.
The Terinu universe and related plots and situations are copyright
chaypeta and used here without permission.“Are you sure she won’t bother him?” Meriven’s mother asked Grandma Zaza.
“No, no. He likes children,” Grandma said. She then did something odd, leaning into Mother’s ear to whisper, “Just don’t let her bring up anything, er, religious.”
“She’s six, Mum, I shouldn’t think she will. She’ll be too busy playing, won’t you, Meri?”
“Does that mean I can go out into the garden, Mother?” the little vulpine girl asked, bouncing up and down on her footpads.
“Yes, dear. But don’t be too loud.”
“Yay!” She didn’t wait for her mother to give any more warnings. Instead she ran through the big glass doors onto the stone porch, down the stairs and into the bright and colorful gardens, kin geese scattering in her wake. First there were the hedgerows to explore, then the beds of flowers filled with roses and skyflowers and crysanthemithimiminiums and then she chased some flutterbyes…
By the time she got to the gazebo, Meri was feeling a bit tired and hungry, so she plopped down on a bench and dug out a fang chew candy that she’d saved from yesterday out of her pocket. She’d brought halfway up to her mouth before she noticed the old male sitting the shade on the other side of the gazebo. “Hello, who are you?” she asked.
He was very, very old, she thought. She could tell because his muzzle was completely white and so were the tips of his black ears, and there was white streaks in the fur of his black paws and feet, and his face was sort of saggy. In fact, he looked like the oldest person she’d ever met.
“Who are you, young lady?” the old fellow asked, and then smiled.
“I asked first!” Then she added, “I’m Meriven Greycoat. Would you like part of my fang chew?”
He shook head. “You can have it, Meri. I’m your Great Uncle Marturari, but you can just call me Uncle Marty if you like.”
“Oh, you’re my Uncle Marty!” She hopped off her bench to give him a hug. He hugged her back and helped her up on the bench to sit beside him. “My da said you were a luna-tack.”
Uncle Marty raised his eyebrows at her. “Did he now?”
“Mummy got angry when he did though, so it must be a bad word. Why would Da call you a bad word?”
Uncle Marty looked like he was thinking about it very carefully. “Well, it’s not a really a bad word, but it is a bit mean. It means that people believe you don’t think like normal people, that you see the world differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…” Uncle Marty thought again and pointed to a cherry tree blossoming in the garden. “What color are the flowers in that tree, Meri?”
“They’re pink!” she answered.
“What if someone told you that those pink flowers sounded like a drum?”
She giggled. “That’s silly. Flowers don’t sound like drums.”
“For some people they do. They see colors as sounds, and can hear instead of taste their food. That’s called aphasia. What it really means is that their brains are wired just a bit differently, but not in a way that hurts them.” He pointed to the cherry tree again. “Now, what if I told you that I believed that tree over there hid a squad of creo commandos, from the bad old days when they served the Dominion, and were going to snatch us up and take us to their Varn masters?”
“Is there?!” She looked carefully. “They can’t be, the tree is too skinny for them to hide behind!”
“Exactly. But for some people, even if you told them that over and over, they wouldn’t be able to believe you. That’s called paranoia, and it’s very sad, because it usually means the poor person is scared all the time, even of people who love them very much and want them to get better.”
“That is sad,” she agreed, and chewed on her candy a bit. “Are you paranoid?”
“No, not at all. I’m not scared of anything anymore,” he said.
“Do you smell colors?”
He laughed and tapped the side of his muzzle. “No, I see and smell just fine.”
“Then why did Da call you a luna-tack?”
“Lunatic, dear. I think it’s because I see the Holy Den Mother.”
“You do? So do I, when I dream at night sometimes. She looks like my mother, I think, except even prettier and she’s always smiling.”
“I think she looks a bit like my mother too, Meri,” Uncle Marty said. “But you see, people think I’m a lunatic because see her all the time.”
“You do?”
“Oh, yes.” He pointed to the bench on the opposite side of the gazebo. “She’s sitting there right now, watching us and smiling because she loves us so very, very much.”
Meri looked very carefully, but she didn’t see anything. “Is she invisible?”
“Not to me.”
“Is she saying anything?”
“Not at the moment. She used to talk to me all the time, but after a while we only spoke when we needed to. Old friends are like that. It gets to be that you just enjoy each other’s company, with no need for words.”
She started bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement. “Can I see her? Please, may I see her, Uncle Marty?”
“I’m sorry, dear. I really like it if you could, but I’m the only one that ever does. That’s the problem you see. Since no else can either, they think I’m a liar, or I’m a lunatic.”
“Are you a liar?” She didn’t think this was likely, given how nice Uncle Marty was.
He smiled gently. “No, Meri, I’m not a liar.”
“Are you a lunatic, then?”
“I never thought so. But more people than just your father have said I must be, so who knows?”
“Did you always see her?”
“No, not always. I believed in her of course, because my mother had taught me all about her, but I’d never seen her.” His voice dropped to a whisper in her ear, “I couldn’t even talk about her, really, except very quietly. This was back in the Time of Subjugation, when the only gods allowed were the Varn.”
“That’s not true!” she said. “You would have to be older than Grandma Zaza!”
“I am older than her. She’s my niece.”
“How old are you then?”
“I am one hundred and thirty-three years old,” he told her proudly. “Though I don’t feel a day over one hundred and twenty.”
“Wow!” She scratched her ear in the way her mother had always told her not to in public. “But if you couldn’t even talk out loud to the Holy Den Mother, how did you ever come to see her?”
“Well, when I much younger, just twenty-four years old, I found myself in a great deal of trouble. I was arrested you see, and sent to prison!”
“Oh, no! But… does that mean you were a bad person?” She drew back a little from him. “You didn’t steal anything or hurt anyone, did you?”
He shook his head. “No, my dear. I never hurt anyone… well, before then. You see, the Varn were very cruel. You didn’t have to commit a crime in order to be thrown into prison. You just had to not like being ruled by the Varn. If they even suspected that, they would send you to a re-education camp.”
“Re-educa--- is that like cub school?”
“Not exactly. But I didn’t even get sent there. I was sent to a world named Barbados. It’s very cold there, with wind and snow blowing all the time. And it was a hidden world. The Varn didn’t want anyone to know what was going on there, so only their most loyal servants were sent to watch over the prisoners. And ruling over everyone there was the Varn Mindstrider.”
“What happened to you there?”
“I was put a cell block, along with my fellow prisoners. Now, I will tell you that some of them had done some awful things, but they were all there because the Varn feared that they might prove troublemakers, and help ferment rebellion against the Dominion.
“Were you a rebel, Uncle?”
“No, I wasn’t,” he told her. “I was there because I was afraid of flying.”
“Afraid of flying!” she exclaimed. “But you’re a Greycoat!”
“Yes, but I was a Greycoat that couldn’t fly. The very idea terrified me. That is called acrophobia. It made my parents very sad when they learned that I couldn’t be a pilot like they and my sisters were, and it made me ashamed.”
“Now, the Varn Mindstrider had gathered us all in one place, all of these potential rebels, because she wanted to see how rebellions are made, how the ones who do this sort of thing think. And so to make sure they really wanted to try to defeat the Dominion…” Uncle Marty paused for a long moment. “Well, she started hurting me.”
“Hurting you? Oh, Uncle!”
He gathered her up in his lap and hugged then, petting her head. “It’s all right, dear. It was a very long time ago. But in a very terrible way, what she did was quite clever. For the other prisoners could see how I was suffering and it made them angry. Angry enough to try and rebel, when the sensible thing would have been just to endure her nasty little games.”
In a very small voice she asked, “What did she do you?”
“She blocked me ears so I couldn’t hear. She gagged my mouth so I couldn’t speak. She blinded my eyes so I couldn’t see. Then when she had done that, she put me in a tank of water and made me float, in the dark and silence. Remember how I said I was afraid of flying?”
She nodded.
“Imagine feeling like you were falling. Falling for weeks. All I knew was that I was falling, falling, falling through the air, and that there was no help coming. I prayed, oh how I prayed to the Goddess to send someone to save me.”
“Is that when she started talking to you?”
“No,” he said. “No one answered, no one came to my rescue. It was so terrible, that the thought went through my head that maybe the Holy Den Mother didn’t really exist. Maybe the Varn were the only gods in the world, and I had angered them and would never be rescued!”
“The Holy Den Mother not exist! That’s a very naughty thing to think, Uncle Marty.”
Then, Uncle Marty smiled. “You want to know something, Meri? That’s exactly what she said when I thought that.”
Her face lit up. "You mean she did come to rescue you?"
"In a way." Her uncle's eyes looked like they were seeing something very far away, and very beautiful. "I felt her arms take hold of me, and guide to her den so I could sit beside her fire. She held me and told me she loved me, that she loved all of her vulpine children. Then she told me that my mother, my father and my sisters, who had all been very worried for me when they found out I had been sent to prison, were coming to rescue me."
"That was nice of her!'
"It was. Then she told me the best news of all. She said that the Time of Subjugation was coming to an end. That with the help of all the other races that had been conquered by the Dominion, especially our new human friends, we were going to be free again, and make sure the Varn would never be able to hurt anyone ever again."
"Yay!" Meri shouted and clapped her hands. "I bet you were very happy to see your mummy and daddy again."
Uncle Marty smiled, but not all the way to his eyes. "Well, happy and sad. You see, my mother came down to the prison with some soldiers to free me and the other prisoners, while my sisters and my father fought Mindstrider's fighters above the planet. Except that there were an awful lot of them, and my da was killed when his ship took a very bad hit. But before that happened he fought bravely indeed. I think it was because when they found out I couldn't be a pilot, he was the one most ashamed of me, so when it came time to rescue me, he wanted to make up to me as much as he could."
"Oh, that's sad." Her face brightened. "Did you tell them about seeing the Holy Den Mother?"
"Yes I did. In fact, when we got away from Barbados and the Resistance started forming around us, I told every vulpine I could meet about it, especially on planets where the Subjugation had been so bad that they had stopped believing in Her, like I had stopped believing for just a little while when I was Mindstrider's prisoner."
"Good for you!" She stopped to think for a bit. "But if you were telling them about meeting the Holy Den Mother, why did they call you a lunatic?"
"Well, you see, that came later. The trouble was, when the Twenty Year War was over, I wouldn't stop talking about the Holy Den Mother. I could still see and talk to her you see, and no one else could. So eventually they decided that maybe I couldn't really see her, and being in Mindstrider's awful tank for so long had made me sick in my mind, like you feel sick in your tummy if you eat too much of those fang chews."
"But that's not fair!"
Her uncle smiled again. "It wasn't that bad. I was tired for a long time after the war, so when we returned to Vulpine Prime and started to rebuild the estate, I was content to live with my sister Jessiver, your great grandmother, and help put the garden back together. I had always loved plants, so that was fine with me. And I learned not to talk about the Holy Den Mother so much, which was fine with everyone else."
"That still doesn't seem very fair."
"Oh, it's not such a bad life, being thought a lunatic. You can say all sorts of outrageous things in polite company and people will do their best to just nod and smile and say "Well, that's just old Marty." It's especially fun if it's about something they ought to be ashamed of. Besides, no matter what anyone else thinks of me, I know the Holy Den Mother is always there with me, and She understands me better than anyone."
"I suppose that's true," she agreed. "I still wish I could see her myself."
He smiled again, eyes bright. "But you're looking at her right now."
"She's invisible though!"
"No, no. You see her all the time. You see her when you look in the mirror, or at your own mother's face. When you smell the flowers or play in the grass. She's everywhere and everything, so you see her all the time, and she sees you too."
"Oh," Meri said. "Does she love me, like she loves you?"
"Of course she does. All of her children, you, me, your mother and grandmother and every other vulpine that ever lived are her cherished offspring."
"Meriven! It's time to come in for luncheon!" she heard her mother call from the porch.
"I have to go," she said. "Will come in and have lunch with us, Uncle?"
"No, my dear," he said, stretching his arms over his head. "I'll just stay here in the garden and take a little nap." But first he helped her down from the bench and kneeled down in front of her to kiss her on the forehead. "The Holy Mother of the Den's blessings on you, Meriven Greycoat. Walk on her grace, and you will never feel lonely."
"Thank you, Uncle Marty." She gave him another hug and ran back to her mother, who was still calling for her.
When she got there, her mother asked, "Where is your Uncle Marty? Did you him see while you were playing?"
"Oh, yes. He was in the gazebo," she told her mother. "We talked for a long while. He said he was going to take a nap there instead of having luncheon."
"Really," her mother said, an odd tone in her voice. "Did he, er, talk about anything in particular?"
Something in the back Meri's mind made her think that she didn't really want to say anything about what her uncle had told her about seeing the Holy Den Mother, so instead she said, "He talked about how he liked plants, and how he helped Grandma Jess with the garden, when everyone came back to Vulpine Prime after the war."
"Oh, that's all right then," her mother said, looking relieved. She flagged down a servant. "Go to the gazebo and ask Uncle Marturari if he wouldn't reconsider joining us for luncheon. He's been out there all morning."
"Yes, milady," the servant said, jogging off towards the gazebo. They had gone inside and were sitting themselves down to eat when the servant came back, running into the dining room. "Lady Greycoat," he gasped to Grandma Zaza, "Lord Maturari... I found him... he's..." He looked at Meri and then to Grandma, who stood up and pulled him outside of the dining room. Meriven could hear them talking in hush tones, and caught the words, "...slumped over... ...for hours... ...body is cold...."
"Meriven," her grandmother said, walking back into the dining room and looking very grave indeed. "When did you talk to your uncle?"
"Just a few minutes ago," she said.
"Lady Meriven Greycoat, do not lie to me."
"I'm not!" she exclaimed. "He was telling me all about when he was young and was in prison, and then was rescued by his mum and daddy and Great Grandma Jessiver and how he didn't mind if everyone thought he was a lunatic..."
"Stop, Meriven. That's not possible. Your uncle... " her voice caught in her throat. "...your uncle must have died a little while after he went to the gardens. They found his body just now, it's quite cold."
"But we did..." She thought a moment, then said, "I thought we did."
Gently, her mother said, "She must have stumbled over his body earlier. I imagine it was a bit of a shock to her. She's so young."
"Yes, yes, that makes sense," her grandmother agreed.
She said nothing to contradict this notion, even in the days leading up to the funeral. Though she often wondered in the years that followed, whether if she had squinted a bit, she might have caught a glimpse of the Holy Den Mother too.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 04:42 am (UTC)YAY for Weird Uncles!
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Date: 2008-06-10 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 03:02 pm (UTC)Instead, I think I'll halfheartedly crack it at myself for thinking that... because if you had been just working on "The Ship" I (and others who read your journal) would have missed out on a beautifully done and very moving piece of writing. I originally was just going to scan it only, but found myself reading it and feeling like I was there..and sorry to see it end.
but I will sorta crack it at you too... 'cause if you can do that sort of prose in someone else's world... I can't wait to see what you will do in one you've created!
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Date: 2008-06-10 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 06:52 pm (UTC)And...the only way to GET to know them is to write, doofus! (lovingly said)
Sheesh, can't even pay you a decent compliment!