To Eirean and Vernon

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TennyoCeres84
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To Eirean and Vernon

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

How did raising Alastriona differ from how Sophia was grown, and how were they similar? Did you both feel like you were raising a child together?
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IamLEAM1983
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"Oh, it was markedly different in several ways. It isn't every day that one spends two weeks in ion-engine travel to the Drifters' typical foldspace point - much less with a dryad sapling in tow! The poor girl was nary a sprout in a large planter that we first fled Hope for London, and from there managed to pay our way out of the solar system after disbursing a tiny sum with a Pilus provider, in order to secure the sapling with the radiation shielding it would need for the trip. Eirean and I were... noticeably beside our usual selves, my usual accoutrements being ill-suited for our trip to Paradise, much less our eventual travel to the Vanguard's Cradle. Nevermind our respective ages, both of us were complete newcomers in this regard - and it certainly contributed to the bond we established with young Trina. She was scarcely more than a whisper inside the tree that she most assuredly felt our worry, our trepidation, our regret of being unable to simply crack her pod open to chance a look at her tiny little bud.

Paradise was disconcerting enough, to be sure, but the Cradle - my word, it must be seen to be believed! A completely closed system of sorts, a literal divot in the fabric of Spacetime and Helena Nasir spent only a few moments in it, when she first made contact. In her perception, these moments became eons of literal exile, her fellow researchers turning as deathless as herself and establishing a small tithe of Eldritch power, so to speak, in a space where only radiation-laden nothingness should've waited. Floating islands spouting waterfalls that evaporate and form the Garden's own atmosphere, soil and seed samples once common to Earth and now changed in fantastic ways I can scarcely describe - and we were going to plant Alastriona there, under the Vanguard's good auspices.

To say that I was humbled would be putting it very, very mildly.

At first, we busied ourselves with the sapling's needs. The Vanguard are an aloof lot; scarcely human after their exposure to the Akari god-forces, like magnified cousins of those tracing their lineage directly back to Titania or Oberon; with a certain sublime nature to them... The mortals of Earth think we Sidhe to deserve qualificatives such as fair, and I may now die knowing that Eirean and I have seen fairness so moving, so arresting, that all of our kind's attempt at magic-enforced realpolitik begin to seem trifling. They provided assistance when needed, but never directly interfered in our travails. We were shown to our quarters and to the lot that had been set aside for Alastriona. We were offered water and food and were allowed to rest - and then our routine settled in. In return, the Vanguard learned to cope with our natures and showed understanding enough.

For eighteen years we worked, or so it seemed within the Cradle. The place's own form of magic was potent, and so all concerns we had regarding our biological child were assuaged: this... demi-plane of sorts effectively froze us as we were on the day of our arrival. Eirean's mild and occasional morning sickness never increased, my beard never grew, and even in those seasons that somehow caused my Mantle to respond and my appetites to surge, my silhouette remained the same. Our Vanguard attendants never complained and never disapproved when the Mantle made me brittle and mercurial, and our neighbours never uttered a word when tempers flared or when passions rose. In all this, we provided the sapling with the care due to young plants, but also with all the stimuli we could manage. I daresay Alastriona has grown up seeing more of myself and Eirean than many in our respective families!

The difficult part effectively involved preparing her for departure - and readying ourselves. I'd enjoyed living as a glorified gardener and pedagogue, and honestly wish I could spend more days simply walking along babbling waterways, taking in the fascinating culture that surrounded us - and occasionally allowing myself the simpler pleasures of a man of my apparent age. I've napped as I never could on Earth, and loved Eirean as our offices would never truly permit.

It was freeing, to be honest. Lord Haskill was in the boxes to be packed, I was simply Vernon. Eirean left her Ladyship behind and almost reluctantly picked it back up as we cleaned out our house. Before long, the all-important dryad was simply Alastriona, or Trina, or sometimes Tina, if not Allie. Once she could separate herself from the Tree's bark, she ate at our table and shared in our stories of the world that awaited her. The Queen sometimes came along for a visit and regaled the girl with stories and coy demonstrations of her abilities, stating that she, herself, effectively was to the Cradle what Allie would become to her next place of residence. In all the ways that matter, we've treated her as our daughter, introduced her to her inert, if alive half-brother of sorts that lay coiled in Eirean's lap... She'd grown, but he or, well, she hadn't."

He sighs.

"Radiation shielding was complemented with a space suit for Trina, and we soon undertook the delicate task of uprooting a tree grown in the Cradle and of preparing it for interstellar travel. The stop in Paradise almost made me as paranoid as the locals; Alastriona's home and anchor was almost instantly seized upon by greedy merchants assuming a tree grown to eventually cap a wild Nexus could make for a hot commodity. A few Oaths took care of the more entreprising ones, the rest were given the cold shoulder. It's about there that the shift in time scales struck us: time had been a non-issue in the Cradle, so our memories were a long and continuous segment. Out in the wider world, Time returned to Einstein's laws. It was a bit of a shock, as could be expected. We now had a deadline. Not only that, but no amount of flag-waving could change the fact that neither of us had seen the Pride War end, which left us blind to new geopolitical developments. All three of us spent the ride back to the space-fold point consuming whatever media it was we could reach, in order to catch up on the last two months of Terran existence.

Eighteen years there, two months here. We made easy Stasis subjects on the way back, and I was particularly hard to rouse, apparently. We would age again, in this peculiar way that is us Fae's of aging, and we would no longer be shielded from the vicissitudes of Existence. I even slept through our final approach and landing, if Allie is to be believed..."
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IamLEAM1983
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"Eighteen years with a Winter Fae who Chose in his later years and who probably needs CPAP... I love Vernon more than anyone else in Hope, but there's a few of those nights in the Cradle that I really won't miss, let's say... There's some I will - a lot of 'em, in fact - but I really wish Nasir's people had magicked Vern' septum straight...

All jokes aside, though, I wouldn't trade this for the world. Fae peers don't usually get honest intimacy or alone time, and we had a lifetime's worth of it. It's when Allie's head sprouted that I more or less came to and thought Right, yeah, we're actually supposed to bring this girl home... It was terrifying enough, let's say. We'd left during the worst of Europe's shellings, and never neard about the Goat tossing his eggs in the same basket. Coming back was difficult; the kid had grown up with stored pictures and described concepts, but whatever the Squid and Karthian architects were building didn't always stick with our mental maps of the city. It made sense, what with the Nexus moving, but it wasn't convenient for anyone involved.

Luckily for us, the angels can scheme as well as your average demon: I just needed to inform one or two folks in badges that were much too clean-cut to be human that we needed to, well, hide an adolescent dryad from view for a few days. The next thing we knew, Mayor Doherty had a ridiculously massive sign set up in front of Holden Hall, thanking everyone involved in the city's defense. We just - set up behind it, in the greenhouse that had been part of the new mansion grounds' plans. Literally just out of sight."

She smiles, a bit of sadness touching her features.

"Sophia was a classic sprout job, controlled and measured from Day One, planted in a public space with plenty of stimuli, and more importantly, plugged into a Terrestrial source of power. Alastriona wasn't it, or not in the same sense as her big sister. She'd only really had us to socialize for almost two decades, and first attuned herself to the Cradle's own source of power. Planting her source in Hope without preparing for it would've overwhelmed her and the Tree, so we'd started by introducing Terran soil samples, and regularly played her samples of what we thought would've been regular soundscapes in and around Holden Hall: Bucky's snoring somewhere on the side lawns, Archie working the new greenhouse, whatever - and added reels of pictures to it all. We made sure she understood Hope was and always would be home, and that her place in the Cradle would be temporary. Like it or not, she was an invasive species in a foreign ecosystem - and the more mature she got, the more the Vanguard tried to subtly remind us that we had to think about leaving... The last thing she'd ever would've wanted probably would've been to endanger people who'd effectively saved her life."

Her smile turns a bit self-reflective.

"We tried not to get attached, but... Well, we mostly failed. We didn't push for or against Mom or Dad, and even tried to Milady and Milord one another, but it never really stuck. I eventually realized that attachments hadn't killed Sophia. Demons had. Alastriona probably sees us more as her very loving legal guardians than as her parents - and also probably as something like a pair of loons that really could've brought another dryad's memoirs along for the ride...

I'm not sure I mind, honestly. She's better off being a young woman first, and a magical fount of power second. I think that involves a healthy dose of normalcy, and normalcy for the Fae usually always skirts the more exuberant ends of human behavior... She'll probably think Aidan and the others are a little on the reserved side and - shit - I don't really want to know how exactly it is that she'll approach Archie's tendency to shut everything away emotionally, not when some of her role models in that department were some of our assistant gardeners..."
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