Tavi of Calderon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
student_of_impossibility) wrote2015-06-02 05:47 am
student_of_impossibility) wrote2015-06-02 05:47 am
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[OOM: Garrison] A Little Consultation
“Will you please humor me?” Tavi’s voice asked from the inner room of the quarters he had used for the last week. Isana paused to listen, surprised at the sheer exasperation in his voice.
The sigh that followed was equally so. “I have told you, Aleran, there is no need for all the ridiculous fuss your kind make over it,” Kitai huffed. “It is perfectly natural, and…”
“And there is no reason not to at least check, not when all the best watercrafters in the Realm are in one place—”
“All of whom will doubtless try to subject me to whatever lunacy—”
“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort!” Isana tried to remember when she’d heard strain like that from Tavi directed at Kitai, and found she couldn’t. True, she hadn’t seen much of him since he had left Calderon, but she couldn’t think of any arguments like this between them. “We agreed to trust each other on this, didn’t we?” For a long moment the silence lay heavily over the room, before at long last Kitai sighed again.
“Chala…”
Thinking it best to interrupt before it went further, Isana stepped in view of the door and cleared her throat enough to be heard. Both children—she couldn’t help but think of them as children, even though Tavi was past twenty—turned towards the door, startled. Noting that her son was holding Kitai’s hands in a familiar, almost pleading gesture, Isana raised an eyebrow at them.
Tavi’s smile, almost immediate and without any nervousness, comforted her. “Hello, Mother.”
“Tavi,” she replied warmly as he let go of Kitai to give her a hug. “I was just…”
“Yes, I’ll be there for dinner,” Tavi interrupted ruefully. “I’ve already been reminded three times.”
Kitai rolled her eyes. “Five, chala.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Two of those were the same people. They don’t count. I did have lunch,” he added in protest as Isana looked at him reproachfully. His smile tightened slightly. “I’m hardly going to exhaust myself needlessly at this point.”
To her surprise, Isana felt his usual emotional shield crack slightly in a flash of mixed bitterness, grief, and almost frighteningly fierce determination. More disturbing still, she recognized the blend—but, to her relief, it lacked the loneliness and bone-deep weariness in Gaius Sextus when he had felt much the same way. As she glanced at Kitai, watching Tavi intently as she reached out to touch his arm, Isana felt deeply grateful to the Marat girl. It still startled her how deep the connection between the two ran.
Nothing would match the realization that Kitai’s furycrafting was more or less on par with Tavi’s, though. At least Isana had at least some reason to expect it. The Citizenry was still in shock—the ones who weren’t outright panicking, at least. From what Isana gathered, Kitai’s sadistic glee far outstripped Tavi’s nearly laconic amusement.
A knock on the frame of the door prevented Isana’s response. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sire,” Ehren’s voice began, “but Lord Riva—”
Her son’s shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly, and Isana felt his emotions close back over. “Oh, yes. I’ll be right along. Are you coming?” he added to Kitai.
She shook her head. “There’s something I wish to see to.”
Tavi arched an eyebrow briefly, but to Isana’s surprise appeared to think better of asking. “Think about what I said, please?” He ignored the way Kitai’s lips thinned slightly and simply leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “I’ll see you both at dinner.”
Isana waited until the door had closed before turning to Kitai. She gave the girl the same stern look she used to give Tavi, in the days when he was young and prone to unfortunately inventive bouts of relieving boredom or restlessness. It always surprised her that he always seemed to find new and exhausting ways to entertain himself…
But that was neither here nor there, and Isana had little expectation that the same expression would work on Kitai, who seemed to remain carelessly indifferent to limits of any kind. As such, she was quite surprised to see the girl look almost hesitant.
Unexpectedly Kitai sighed explosively. “It can be irritating when he is correct,” she admitted. “He makes everything sound so reasonable that one can almost forget to tell the difference between those times and the times he is not reasonable.”
Isana laughed. “He’s been using that since he was a child. I lost track of the headaches I got trying to resist the more suspicious attempts at reason. Now,” she said firmly, “why is he so determined that you see a watercrafter? Are you not well?” Kitai hesitated visibly, and Isana relented a little. “I’ll be more than discreet enough,” she pointed out with amusement.
Kitai relaxed a little into a smile, to Isana’s relief. “I am well. He just worries unnecessarily, because he has very little time and no experience with this, and I cannot check on it myself.” She offered her hand before Isana had a chance to ask what she meant.
Accepting the hand and implicit permission, Isana focused her watercrafting on the girl. For the most part Kitai seemed well enough; to Isana’s own highly sensitive perception, there were clear signs of healed wounds all over her. Tavi hadn’t seemed to need serious medical attention since the battle ended, and had been so busy Isana had had no chance to give him a quick glance-over, but if Kitai was any indication… Isana shuddered momentarily at the thought of what he must have gone through.
Still, it seemed Kitai—and thus, in all likelihood, Tavi—was well-healed and likely not in pain. Even better, it seemed as if the strain of the battle had had no adverse effects on…
Isana felt her jaw drop open slightly in shock.
Oh.
Kitai clearly felt the realization hit her and nodded slightly. “I tell him it’s perfectly normal, but…”
“He worries,” Isana completed. She smiled a little at a distant but crystal-clear memory. “His father was much the same. But, Kitai… should you really be—”
“I know Alerans get ponderously cautious about such things, but I am not letting this change anything. As long as the child is well, there is hardly any need to.” Her fierce tone startled Isana in its intensity. Clearly she had already had this discussion with Tavi.
Which suddenly reminded Isana of the rather glaring oversight both of them seemed to have made. For a moment Isana almost wanted to give up in sheer exasperation. She had thought Kitai, if not Tavi, would have had more sense than this—but it wouldn’t do to let the girl feel that now. Still, it raised the question, and now she wasn’t sure how to ask it.
“Do you have any idea how long?” she asked instead, to stall for time. “This is, ah, obviously slightly out of even my experience…”
Kitai’s lips curved up in amusement briefly, and Isana knew she had to be thinking about Alerans stating the obvious. She chose not to voice it, however, saying instead, “It has been a few months. It would be another six, if the father were Marat, but I cannot be sure. I expect we will not marry until after the child has come.”
Isana couldn’t help her slight sigh of relief, though she felt a little shame at it. At least she hadn’t had to ask. Once again she was grateful for Kitai’s surprising grasp of delicacy. At least they had apparently discussed the matter, even if they hadn’t said anything yet. Still, not until after the baby was born? It was concerning “You think so?”
“There is so much to do,” she explained, “and Aleran custom dictates such things have absurdly overwrought ceremonies, yes?”
“They do,” Isana admitted. She thought back ruefully to her own marriage, and not for the first time was grateful it had taken place in such obscurity. Septimus had hardly cared, and with Alia and Araris there, they hadn’t needed anyone else or anything more. “Especially for Tavi, I’m afraid.”
Even more, as the Senate will have confirmed him as First Lord before then.
“Then it will take time. It is hardly the most important thing, after all, with what’s left of the Vord to kill.” Again the girl shrugged, and Isana nodded. They would all be very busy, far too much to plan a wedding any time in the near future—
Oh.
With Kitai present, Isana did her best to suppress the realization that she and Araris might have quite a problem on their hands. Tavi’s wedding would likely be the biggest production in the fifty years—other than, she thought wryly, whatever was done for his confirmation—but if people would expect the same for her, now…
The thought made her ill. She tried to shake it off, not wanting to have this particular discussion with Kitai, not right now—but her unnervingly knowing glance made Isana suspect she knew. Hastily, Isana searched for a way to redirect the subject. “Yes. After all, you are both leaving Calderon tomorrow with the First Aleran, aren’t you?”
As Kitai nodded, the implication sank in. Isana took a deep breath. “You’ve been here a week.”
Kitai raised an eyebrow.
“You leave tomorrow.”
The eyebrow arched more, and Isana saw a hint of silent laughter in her face.
“Did either of you have any intention of mentioning this?”
Laughing outright, Kitai simply gave her an arch look. “Regardless of his nonsense, I did intend to ask you to confirm there is no use for that. And you are his mother. You have right to know. Doroga, too. But my Aleran?” She rolled her eyes expressively, and despite herself Isana bit her lip against her own smile. “I do not think he would tell anyone anything if he possibly could. He thinks it amusing.”
That tone of long-suffering patience was far too familiar. Isana just pinched the bridge of her nose, smiling nonetheless. “That boy,” she sighed.
He just got worse and worse. As if his antics hadn’t been bad enough to begin with. But they would see him at dinner—and Isana had every intention of making absolutely sure he knew her feelings on this.
The sigh that followed was equally so. “I have told you, Aleran, there is no need for all the ridiculous fuss your kind make over it,” Kitai huffed. “It is perfectly natural, and…”
“And there is no reason not to at least check, not when all the best watercrafters in the Realm are in one place—”
“All of whom will doubtless try to subject me to whatever lunacy—”
“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort!” Isana tried to remember when she’d heard strain like that from Tavi directed at Kitai, and found she couldn’t. True, she hadn’t seen much of him since he had left Calderon, but she couldn’t think of any arguments like this between them. “We agreed to trust each other on this, didn’t we?” For a long moment the silence lay heavily over the room, before at long last Kitai sighed again.
“Chala…”
Thinking it best to interrupt before it went further, Isana stepped in view of the door and cleared her throat enough to be heard. Both children—she couldn’t help but think of them as children, even though Tavi was past twenty—turned towards the door, startled. Noting that her son was holding Kitai’s hands in a familiar, almost pleading gesture, Isana raised an eyebrow at them.
Tavi’s smile, almost immediate and without any nervousness, comforted her. “Hello, Mother.”
“Tavi,” she replied warmly as he let go of Kitai to give her a hug. “I was just…”
“Yes, I’ll be there for dinner,” Tavi interrupted ruefully. “I’ve already been reminded three times.”
Kitai rolled her eyes. “Five, chala.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Two of those were the same people. They don’t count. I did have lunch,” he added in protest as Isana looked at him reproachfully. His smile tightened slightly. “I’m hardly going to exhaust myself needlessly at this point.”
To her surprise, Isana felt his usual emotional shield crack slightly in a flash of mixed bitterness, grief, and almost frighteningly fierce determination. More disturbing still, she recognized the blend—but, to her relief, it lacked the loneliness and bone-deep weariness in Gaius Sextus when he had felt much the same way. As she glanced at Kitai, watching Tavi intently as she reached out to touch his arm, Isana felt deeply grateful to the Marat girl. It still startled her how deep the connection between the two ran.
Nothing would match the realization that Kitai’s furycrafting was more or less on par with Tavi’s, though. At least Isana had at least some reason to expect it. The Citizenry was still in shock—the ones who weren’t outright panicking, at least. From what Isana gathered, Kitai’s sadistic glee far outstripped Tavi’s nearly laconic amusement.
A knock on the frame of the door prevented Isana’s response. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sire,” Ehren’s voice began, “but Lord Riva—”
Her son’s shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly, and Isana felt his emotions close back over. “Oh, yes. I’ll be right along. Are you coming?” he added to Kitai.
She shook her head. “There’s something I wish to see to.”
Tavi arched an eyebrow briefly, but to Isana’s surprise appeared to think better of asking. “Think about what I said, please?” He ignored the way Kitai’s lips thinned slightly and simply leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “I’ll see you both at dinner.”
Isana waited until the door had closed before turning to Kitai. She gave the girl the same stern look she used to give Tavi, in the days when he was young and prone to unfortunately inventive bouts of relieving boredom or restlessness. It always surprised her that he always seemed to find new and exhausting ways to entertain himself…
But that was neither here nor there, and Isana had little expectation that the same expression would work on Kitai, who seemed to remain carelessly indifferent to limits of any kind. As such, she was quite surprised to see the girl look almost hesitant.
Unexpectedly Kitai sighed explosively. “It can be irritating when he is correct,” she admitted. “He makes everything sound so reasonable that one can almost forget to tell the difference between those times and the times he is not reasonable.”
Isana laughed. “He’s been using that since he was a child. I lost track of the headaches I got trying to resist the more suspicious attempts at reason. Now,” she said firmly, “why is he so determined that you see a watercrafter? Are you not well?” Kitai hesitated visibly, and Isana relented a little. “I’ll be more than discreet enough,” she pointed out with amusement.
Kitai relaxed a little into a smile, to Isana’s relief. “I am well. He just worries unnecessarily, because he has very little time and no experience with this, and I cannot check on it myself.” She offered her hand before Isana had a chance to ask what she meant.
Accepting the hand and implicit permission, Isana focused her watercrafting on the girl. For the most part Kitai seemed well enough; to Isana’s own highly sensitive perception, there were clear signs of healed wounds all over her. Tavi hadn’t seemed to need serious medical attention since the battle ended, and had been so busy Isana had had no chance to give him a quick glance-over, but if Kitai was any indication… Isana shuddered momentarily at the thought of what he must have gone through.
Still, it seemed Kitai—and thus, in all likelihood, Tavi—was well-healed and likely not in pain. Even better, it seemed as if the strain of the battle had had no adverse effects on…
Isana felt her jaw drop open slightly in shock.
Oh.
Kitai clearly felt the realization hit her and nodded slightly. “I tell him it’s perfectly normal, but…”
“He worries,” Isana completed. She smiled a little at a distant but crystal-clear memory. “His father was much the same. But, Kitai… should you really be—”
“I know Alerans get ponderously cautious about such things, but I am not letting this change anything. As long as the child is well, there is hardly any need to.” Her fierce tone startled Isana in its intensity. Clearly she had already had this discussion with Tavi.
Which suddenly reminded Isana of the rather glaring oversight both of them seemed to have made. For a moment Isana almost wanted to give up in sheer exasperation. She had thought Kitai, if not Tavi, would have had more sense than this—but it wouldn’t do to let the girl feel that now. Still, it raised the question, and now she wasn’t sure how to ask it.
“Do you have any idea how long?” she asked instead, to stall for time. “This is, ah, obviously slightly out of even my experience…”
Kitai’s lips curved up in amusement briefly, and Isana knew she had to be thinking about Alerans stating the obvious. She chose not to voice it, however, saying instead, “It has been a few months. It would be another six, if the father were Marat, but I cannot be sure. I expect we will not marry until after the child has come.”
Isana couldn’t help her slight sigh of relief, though she felt a little shame at it. At least she hadn’t had to ask. Once again she was grateful for Kitai’s surprising grasp of delicacy. At least they had apparently discussed the matter, even if they hadn’t said anything yet. Still, not until after the baby was born? It was concerning “You think so?”
“There is so much to do,” she explained, “and Aleran custom dictates such things have absurdly overwrought ceremonies, yes?”
“They do,” Isana admitted. She thought back ruefully to her own marriage, and not for the first time was grateful it had taken place in such obscurity. Septimus had hardly cared, and with Alia and Araris there, they hadn’t needed anyone else or anything more. “Especially for Tavi, I’m afraid.”
Even more, as the Senate will have confirmed him as First Lord before then.
“Then it will take time. It is hardly the most important thing, after all, with what’s left of the Vord to kill.” Again the girl shrugged, and Isana nodded. They would all be very busy, far too much to plan a wedding any time in the near future—
Oh.
With Kitai present, Isana did her best to suppress the realization that she and Araris might have quite a problem on their hands. Tavi’s wedding would likely be the biggest production in the fifty years—other than, she thought wryly, whatever was done for his confirmation—but if people would expect the same for her, now…
The thought made her ill. She tried to shake it off, not wanting to have this particular discussion with Kitai, not right now—but her unnervingly knowing glance made Isana suspect she knew. Hastily, Isana searched for a way to redirect the subject. “Yes. After all, you are both leaving Calderon tomorrow with the First Aleran, aren’t you?”
As Kitai nodded, the implication sank in. Isana took a deep breath. “You’ve been here a week.”
Kitai raised an eyebrow.
“You leave tomorrow.”
The eyebrow arched more, and Isana saw a hint of silent laughter in her face.
“Did either of you have any intention of mentioning this?”
Laughing outright, Kitai simply gave her an arch look. “Regardless of his nonsense, I did intend to ask you to confirm there is no use for that. And you are his mother. You have right to know. Doroga, too. But my Aleran?” She rolled her eyes expressively, and despite herself Isana bit her lip against her own smile. “I do not think he would tell anyone anything if he possibly could. He thinks it amusing.”
That tone of long-suffering patience was far too familiar. Isana just pinched the bridge of her nose, smiling nonetheless. “That boy,” she sighed.
He just got worse and worse. As if his antics hadn’t been bad enough to begin with. But they would see him at dinner—and Isana had every intention of making absolutely sure he knew her feelings on this.