.
The Fairy Queen’s daughters now completely monopolized Diurhimath, with the stone table clearing becoming a sort of fairyland analog of an Earthly operating room. I couldn’t really sort out everything they were doing, but I could sense both mana techniques and spiritual arts that I had not expected anyone other than Elders to know in this world.
“Esteemed Stepmother’s daughters don’t need our help,” Mother decided, and led me into another ‘room’, where mossy carpet-like ground surrounded a flat-topped rock serving as a low table. A mortal girl thinly clad in highly see-through material appeared from the trees with a tea tray while another followed with red bean cakes.
They left after Mother thanked and dismissed them. I had the impression they would have stayed to provide entertainment had she let them. I wasn’t sure how I would deal with that, and Mother’s twinkling eyes told me she knew that it had been worrying me. She didn’t say anything, though.
“So all of those women really are the Fairy Queen’s daughters?” I wondered. “How many daughters does she have?”
“Who knows?” Mother sighed, subconsciously caressing the bump containing my little sister.
“What, seriously?” I retorted. “Isn’t she awfully productive for a fairy?”
Mother let out a laugh. “She has only given birth to four babies, Tiana. The rest are adopted. Many fairies are very negligent of children. They just pop them out and drop them off for some poor mortal to deal with, unless someone responsible like Esteemed Stepmother intercepts them.”
“They just stick some mortal with them?”
She shrugged. “Such a woman will cast a spell to alert her of a cradle death. When she finds one, she slips in, casts an illusion on her baby to match the dead child, and runs away, taking the corpse.”
“Is that where mortals get the idea about changelings?”
Mother nodded while sipping her tea.
“If they don’t want them, why do they have them?”
“Irresponsibility,” she declared. “They get pregnant on a whim, even though they never intend to raise the child. It is nearly impossible for fairies to abort or miscarry, so if they don’t want it, they can only get rid of it once it’s out. But some fairies like Esteemed Stepmother seek out the abandoned ones and raise them as their own. I’ve raised a few, myself.”
After that, we turned to what Mother was doing there. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but Mother wasn’t coincidentally visiting when we showed up. She had temporarily left her command duties to her subordinates in Pendor specifically in order to meet us.
“Esteemed Stepmother requested my help with the two Old Grove knights,” was her explanation. “I’ll go to them once they’ve had a chance to settle their nerves. The poor dears are quite brave, putting themselves in her hands after what their clan has done. I’m sure they are anxious at present.”
“Dilorè insisted they would keep their word once they gave it,” I noted. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have brought them here without more guards. I’m really not sure why they gave their parole so easily, though. They flipped from hostile to cooperative awfully fast.”
“Hm,” Mother responded, taking a sip of tea while she considered it. I took that moment to try the Fairy Queen’s tea myself. It was a magic beverage, brimming with Water and Light mana, at a concentrated level I didn’t think possible.
Perhaps to buy extra time, Mother held up her finger and waggled it three times, at three locations. Fairy lights glowed stronger in the overhanging tree limbs around us.
After contemplating one of them for a few moments, she said, “I should imagine you are the cause, Tiana.”
“Me?” I responded in surprise. “I mean, sure, she decided to seek help here after fighting me, but… that’s not what you meant, right?”
Mother nodded. “I understand you’ve had several encounters with Lady Feraen. She’s incredibly proud, especially when she takes up the sword for a lord. She lives the fairy knight code as passionately and intensely as senior knights like my friend Serera. And I understand that it was a monster extermination mission from her lord that first sent her to you. Add on top of that the fact that many fairies, probably including Feraen, have a deep prejudice against monsters. It’s irrational, it’s based upon a notion of some fundamental difference between fairies and monsters that, frankly, doesn’t exist. All that separates us is biology, and that hardly matters in the end.”
Her soliloquies can get long, but they usually stay on point, so I was getting confused about where this one was headed. She probably read that fact on my face, so she smiled at this point in apology.
“My point is, that Lady Feraen was not prepared to deal with it when a supposedly evil, ostensibly inferior creature turned out to be the stronger and more valiant fairy knight. You did battle with her and bested her, topping that off by being the one who chivalrously healed her from life-threatening wounds, then defeated her grandmother, one of the strongest knight in all of Faerie, and then, once she faced you in battle again, showed her the massive error she was making in her choice of allies, demonstrating which of you two was on the side of the righteous. The very wind of her pride was yanked out from underneath her wings, and so, she plummeted in defeat.”
Mother seemed to have received complete reports on all my activities. I wasn’t surprised, but it was a little embarrassing to know she had been keenly tracking my activities like an over-enthusiastic athletic mom.
“So, do you normally help out here?” I asked.
I was more than a little confused about that as well, you see. I had grown up believing she was very much at odds with the elites who lived in this valley, including her father. His wife, not blood related to Mother, wouldn’t be a very likely ally if that was the case.
“This was a special case,” she stated. “It involved the people targeting my daughter, so I volunteered my help, and the Queen accepted it.”
Although she had said that with a smile on her face, the smile slipped off, leaving a pensive expression. The next thing I knew, a [Realm of Silence] appeared around us. Mother picked up one of the red bean cakes and took a bite, but her eyes said that her mind was on some other subject.
“Mother?” I asked, growing concerned.
She looked at me and managed a smile, of sorts. Then she said, “Tiana, should you really be calling me ‘Mother’, or should I be calling you ‘Grandmother’?”
I felt a weird double emotion fighting within my chest. The part of me that leaned toward feeling appalled was simultaneously happy that she was respecting Senhion as her ancestor.
“Oberon told you,” I said.
“Oberon?” she asked, confused, then understanding lit. “Oh… that’s my father’s name, isn’t it? It’s been thousands of years since I heard it.”
I gave a light laugh. “He said he wasn’t certain whether you knew it. I understand you only call him ‘Your Majesty’.”
She smiled and nodded.
I considered her question. “Mother, I have many lifetimes worth of faded memories in my head. You already knew that this wasn’t my first lifetime, but the truth is, it is only one of many. My first life, in which I was Oberon’s mother, was also my longest, but there have been many lifetimes since then. Other than this and my previous, I don’t really see the rest as ‘myself’. So, I am much more your daughter than your grandmother. Let’s keep it that way.”
With a nod, she said, “Very well. Then, I’m not in trouble for messing with your armor?”
My smile soured. “No, you still…”
I stopped, then hung my head. “I can’t really get angry at you for it, can I? I want very much to be angry, but… the fairy knight image really is that important, isn’t it? I’m sure Uncle Owen doesn’t care what the other fairy knights think, but that’s not the point, right?”
“It’s a question of your lord’s prestige among knights, Tiana. To be my Owen’s knight, you must be more arrogant, more beautiful, more powerful and more dignified than any other.”
“Mother, if that’s the case, then…” I chewed on my lip for a bit before completing the thought. “Then Tiana wasn’t ready to be that, when you first sent her out.”
I felt confident she would pick up on my meaning when I switched to third person.
After considering my words, she nodded, growing pensive. “No. She wasn’t ready. But I thought she would be strong enough to deal with it, and grow to overcome her shortcomings, when she discovered that fact. I made a mistake, didn’t I?”
Something twisted in my heart as I heard the deep sadness in her voice. I hadn’t meant to make her feel bad, so now I regretted bringing it up.
“You couldn’t anticipate that she would run into a dragon,” I answered. “And I think she nearly beat it, in the end. When I revived and fought it, I killed it too easily. She must have already nearly defeated it.”
I could see in her eyes that she knew I was trying to let her off the hook. But I was doing so because it wasn’t Mother’s fault in the first place. Tiana bit off more than she could chew when she tried to save the situation by taking the dragon on by herself, after Ryuu’s original plan went awry.
But Mother didn’t want to accept that. “You might be an ancient Elder, but the Tiana who died was only a fifteen-year-old child. It was my responsibility to prepare her better. It was my responsibility to know she wasn’t ready.”
There were tears forming in her eyes. I’d had no idea she was beating herself up to that level. Really, I didn’t expect it from her fairy mind.
Then, I thought about Melione, Brigitte, and Bruna, who had all faced the harsh adult world at younger ages than fifteen, and knew that I disagreed with her reason.
“Melione and Brigitte left home to become adventurers when Brigitte was fourteen and Melione was only twelve. They were both seasoned veterans by fifteen. Bruna was turning tricks as a prostitute before she was fifteen, and Ceria was only a bit older when she was doing the same. When Allia discovered it, she didn’t drag them back home to wrap them up in a parental cocoon. She made them join her as adventurers, because she knew that fifteen is a child for only a lucky few in this world. For everyone else, it’s an adult. You didn’t do anything wrong by supporting Tiana’s resolve. It’s just…”
As she looked at me, awaiting the rest of the sentence, I struggled to find it, myself. It finally came to me as words from long ago. Were they Senhion’s? Fan Li’s? Someone else’s?
“You cannot grant the future to your child. You can only grant them the will and the opportunity to pursue it. You must not lament or disparage them if they fall. You must instead take pride that they bravely rose far enough to do so.”
An odd smile passed over her lips, then it firmed as she asked, “Does that advice come from my grandmother?”
“I doubt she knew much about child rearing,” I answered after considering it. “Oberon was her first and only child, and she died when he was five years old. I remember saying it, but I believe I said it to my foster son in a completely different lifetime and world.”
She lightly shook her head. “It must be strange, to have those other lives in your memory.”
“I honestly don’t know how to deal with it yet,” I admitted.
She huffed out a breath and set her teacup down. “Well, enough of that. Time to show me the results. Stand up and take that silly cloak off.”
Tiana had been Mother’s dress-up doll since early childhood, and too dutiful to sigh at such a request, but the age of fifteen plus the influence of Robert allowed me to let out at least a small one as I complied.
A frown creased her brow. “I told them to send all of your gear. Did you not receive the amulet?”
“I didn’t,” I confirmed. “What is it, Mother? You never told me.”
She contemplated with pursed lips, then stated, “It’s a lifesaving treasure, but I don’t know precisely how it works. Your great-grandfather gave it to me a very long time ago, so it is probably quite miraculous.”
“My great-grandfather… not the Lord of the Hart River?”
With a tight nod, she said, “The other one.”
Oranos, in other words.
“Do the turn now, Dear. And again after growing your wings.”
I did as requested, modeling the newly revised armor.
After watching, she nodded decisively. “Good. I worried that leaving all that hardware on your arms and legs would turn out too conservative, but with all the bare skin of your torso, you instead taunt the opponent by leaving her only the best targets. You may start a new fashion trend with this!”
With a tip of the head, she added, “If you removed the skirt, it would work even better…”
“NO!” I answered firmly.
After hearing a rare vocal rejection from me, she chuckled fondly.
