Post by rainstormamaya on Feb 14, 2010 9:10:44 GMT 10
Title: Home Fires Burning
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Possibly disturbing portrayal of mental health gone seriously downhill.
Summary: The home life of Lord Domitan of Masbolle in his exquisite seat, Fief Masbolle, with his charming daughter Lynet in attendance. Although Lord Domitan does not enjoy the best of health lately, Lady Lynet is an excellent nurse.
A/N: The bunny just wouldn’t go away! I’m sorry! Don’t hurt me!... Features the family that mushroomed in my writing about Kel/Dom during Smackdown: Kesi, Bear, Reynard and Lynn (Lynet.)
*******
Lynn rose. She dressed quickly and without help –breastband, shift, petticoat, skirt, bodice, lacing the bodice herself with hasty fingers, belt- splashed water over her face, then brushed out her hair so that sparks crackled, tangles ripped, and it floated around her in a clinging cloud of mid-brown. She plaited her hair, pinned it up, left her room, and bumped into her maid on the way out.
Lily glared at her. “And there was me thinking, miss, that if I managed to get up before the sun I might catch you asleep for once. I’m here to look after you, miss.”
“Not today, Lily,” Lynn said, and attempted to jostle her way past the older girl, but Lily had six younger brothers and was immoveable, so Lynn gave up. “Has there been any change, in the night?”
Lily shook her head. “He’s much as ever he was, or so Nurse Milla said, and she last checked on him. He’s asking for Lady Kel.”
Lynn dragged her teeth uncertainly over her bottom lip; blood sprang into the flesh, reddening it. “I sometimes wonder if he ever really knew she was dead. Lily, move, I need to go to him.”
“You haven’t washed your face nor brushed your teeth, miss, and your skirt is back to front.”
“Only you would dare comment on that, and I have, actually, washed my face. Lily. Move.”
In the absence of Kesi, Bear and Reynard, and given that her mother was dead and her father very sick, his mind wandering, Lady Lynet was undoubted mistress of the house. Not even Lily, who had been chivvying her over her breakfast, out of her account books, and into her vegetables since Lady Keladry had died, could disobey a direct order from her, so Lily just glared some more and moved aside. “You’ll be goin’ to Himself’s rooms, I take it,” she said loudly to Lynn’s retreating back. “I’ll be bringin’ you a breakfast tray, then.”
“Thank you, Lily,” Lynn sang out, skipping round the corner. Lily shook her head, and stamped down to the kitchens.
Outside, the first few rays of sunlight washed over Masbolle.
Lynn knocked at the door.
“Come in,” came a weak voice.
Lynn obeyed, fumbling with the ring of keys on her belt to unlock his door. It was still dark in the room, because the nurses refused point-blank to allow any light before dawn had truly arrived; Lynn pointed out, time and time again, that her father always woke well before dawn, no matter when he was put to bed or what sleeping draughts he was given, and that it was probably the memory of endless early-morning weapons practice with his dead wife that was doing it, which was something that no-one, not even the finest medical science or the strongest healers, could fix. Time and time again, she got the classic indulgent-but-unyielding smile, and time and time again, she wished that she had either the inches to loom over them, the age to assert her authority, or the courage to take her glaive to them (it would probably be a messy death, since Lynn’s practice had been squeezed out of her day by caring for her father and the fief, but it would be suitably final.)
Honestly. Sometimes it felt like she, Lily, and Master Tobe, when he found the time to visit, were the only people who genuinely understood that Domitan of Masbolle was dying. Consumption was not something a man of sixty-five who didn’t want to live was going to survive, and his delusions, his persistent inability to bring himself to know the future, meant that he really didn’t want to live. He didn’t want the life he had; he wanted it as he had known it, his wife laughing and strong and alive, his elder daughter the brightest squire in the kingdom, his elder son working for a life in his father’s footsteps in the King’s Own, his younger son running through his lessons at a rate of knots and clearly destined for the University, and his youngest child, his baby daughter, his Lynn, running after him and tugging at the hem of his tunic. Da, come see what I made. Da, look what I did. Da, I galloped today and I didn’t fall off once.
He’d been like this for years, Lynn reflected as she flung the curtains open and poked at the fire, but lately it was much, much worse. Until last year, they hadn’t been forced to lock his door at night, but then there had been that horrible evening close to Midwinter when he’d been seized with the notion that Kel was out there in the rose gardens, waiting for him. They had only realised he was missing when Bear had arrived, scant hours after his father had made his escape, and gone up full of cheer to see him. When he came running back down again, white-faced, and the explanation had spilled out of him, search parties had immediately been formed and sent out. It only took half an hour to find Lynn’s father, sitting in the snow-covered rose gardens in front of his dead wife’s headstone, conversing with it like a human being.
That had brought on the cough that never went, and that had turned into consumption, and that, Lynn reflected as she tipped another log onto the fire and shoved it further into the hearth with the poker, beating it into flames and heat, was why he was dying.
“You’re very busy,” Lord Domitan said in a tone of mild amusement. “Jess- Jessamine, cousin, really, you needn’t go to such trouble.”
Oh, Goddess, no. He’d done it again. There was a considerable resemblance, to be fair, between Lynn and her father’s cousin Jessamine; the nose and the face shape were identical, and they were much of a height, and approximately the same shape (or at least, they had been, when Jessamine was the same age as Lynn.) But the eye colour, the hair colour, the shape of the mouth, the eyebrows- in all this, they were different, and Lynn’s own father couldn’t see it.
Lynn turned. “Da. Father, I’m not Jessamine.”
“Very funny, Jess,” Lord Domitan sighed, patiently.
Lynn lit a taper, and lit a candle with that- or tried to; it blew out on the first go. She tried again, and achieved success, then walked to her father’s bedside and held the candle close to her face. “I’m not Jessamine. I’m your daughter. I’m your youngest daughter, I’m Lynet, I’m Lynn, Da, don’t you remember me?”
“Lynn’s a little girl,” her father asserted. “My Lynn, my little Lynet. She looks most like me, of all my children, she’s the only one with eyes like mine. I sometimes think she’ll be very like you when she grows up, Jess.”
Lynn stared into his eyes and gave up, for today. Tomorrow, she would try again to make him understand who she was, but by now she knew that continuing to insist that she was Lynet of Masbolle rather than Jessamine of Disart, born Jessamine of Queenscove, would just upset him. “Would you like me to sit with you, cousin?” she made herself say, choking on the words. “I have some embroidery. I could be company for you.”
“Jess, you’re terrible at embroidery!” Lord Domitan laughed. “We’ll have to get the company healer in to put your fingers back together.”
“I’ve improved,” Lynn said dully, getting up to fetch her sewing basket. It was true that she hadn’t been an excellent embroiderer as a girl, and her fingers had been pincushions, but it turned out that practice would improve just about anything, and given the long hours she spent at her father’s bedside, practice wasn’t a problem. They’d had an almost identical conversation yesterday, though. She had hoped...
“Where’s Kesi?” Lord Domitan demanded suddenly. “Kel wrote that she and Kesi would be home before the winter snows, but the winter snows are here, aren’t they?”
“They’re just going, Da- er, Dom,” Lynn said, glancing out of the window. “The snows, I mean. I don’t know where Kesi is.”
This was entirely true. However, it was less a question of ‘where exactly on the road from Corus to Masbolle is Kesi?’ than ‘where exactly, in any of the many countries around the Emerald Sea, is Kesi?’ The Yamani Islands were unlikely, given Kesi’s exuberance, and Galla or Scanra were probably too cold or too boring for her tastes, and it was a reasonable point that Kesi had set out in the direction of Tyra, and her last letter had come from Maren; but then again, this being Kesi, it was impossible to know. Always a terrible correspondent, lately the only news of her that Masbolle got were letters from Alan of Pirate’s Swoop, who was both sympathetic and well-connected and who regularly compiled and sent to Masbolle the latest rumours of Kisanna, Warrior Lady, Kesan the All-Conquering , or Kesanne, Slayer of A Thousand Hurroks; these garbled fragments passed for news of Lady Knight Kesanne of Masbolle, and they were pitifully few.
“Kesi, Kesi,” Domitan mused. “Have you looked in the stables?”
“Yes, Dom,” Lynn said, bringing her embroidery back to the bedside, lighting two more candles and shaking out her embroidery: a piece of iron-grey velvet destined for a bodice, which was slowly acquiring an intricate pattern of owls sitting in trees in various pale shades of blue.
“Have you asked Kel?”
“No, I haven’t,” Lynn said. “Kel isn’t here.”
“She is here. She is here! If only you’d look harder. Jessamine, she is here, find her for me, please, please, I need her-“
“Father, stop it, stop it!” Lynn wailed, leaping up as her father grabbed for her trailing sleeve, blue eyes wild, The embroidery cascaded to the floor, pins and needles clattering, bright thread unspooling. “Da! No, no, stop-“
Too late- the frantic waving of arms had its inevitable effect. The candles were swept from the bedside and clattered to the floor- Lynn screamed, and darted across the room for the ewer of water, grabbing it and sloshing it over the bright, flickering flames catching at the rug.
Their crackling stopped, and the hissing of steam whispered in the silence. Gasping for breath, the ewer slick with water still clutched in her hands, Lynn looked at her father. He was staring at her in horror, clutching the bedclothes. “Bad girl,” he whispered, and for a moment Lynn entertained the tiniest spring of hope as Lily and her tray burst into the room, accompanied by two nurses and a man-at-arms. “Bad girl. You shouldn’t do that. Fire is dangerous. You mustn’t play with it, do you hear me, Jessamine?”
Lynn burst into tears.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Possibly disturbing portrayal of mental health gone seriously downhill.
Summary: The home life of Lord Domitan of Masbolle in his exquisite seat, Fief Masbolle, with his charming daughter Lynet in attendance. Although Lord Domitan does not enjoy the best of health lately, Lady Lynet is an excellent nurse.
A/N: The bunny just wouldn’t go away! I’m sorry! Don’t hurt me!... Features the family that mushroomed in my writing about Kel/Dom during Smackdown: Kesi, Bear, Reynard and Lynn (Lynet.)
*******
Lynn rose. She dressed quickly and without help –breastband, shift, petticoat, skirt, bodice, lacing the bodice herself with hasty fingers, belt- splashed water over her face, then brushed out her hair so that sparks crackled, tangles ripped, and it floated around her in a clinging cloud of mid-brown. She plaited her hair, pinned it up, left her room, and bumped into her maid on the way out.
Lily glared at her. “And there was me thinking, miss, that if I managed to get up before the sun I might catch you asleep for once. I’m here to look after you, miss.”
“Not today, Lily,” Lynn said, and attempted to jostle her way past the older girl, but Lily had six younger brothers and was immoveable, so Lynn gave up. “Has there been any change, in the night?”
Lily shook her head. “He’s much as ever he was, or so Nurse Milla said, and she last checked on him. He’s asking for Lady Kel.”
Lynn dragged her teeth uncertainly over her bottom lip; blood sprang into the flesh, reddening it. “I sometimes wonder if he ever really knew she was dead. Lily, move, I need to go to him.”
“You haven’t washed your face nor brushed your teeth, miss, and your skirt is back to front.”
“Only you would dare comment on that, and I have, actually, washed my face. Lily. Move.”
In the absence of Kesi, Bear and Reynard, and given that her mother was dead and her father very sick, his mind wandering, Lady Lynet was undoubted mistress of the house. Not even Lily, who had been chivvying her over her breakfast, out of her account books, and into her vegetables since Lady Keladry had died, could disobey a direct order from her, so Lily just glared some more and moved aside. “You’ll be goin’ to Himself’s rooms, I take it,” she said loudly to Lynn’s retreating back. “I’ll be bringin’ you a breakfast tray, then.”
“Thank you, Lily,” Lynn sang out, skipping round the corner. Lily shook her head, and stamped down to the kitchens.
Outside, the first few rays of sunlight washed over Masbolle.
***
Lynn knocked at the door.
“Come in,” came a weak voice.
Lynn obeyed, fumbling with the ring of keys on her belt to unlock his door. It was still dark in the room, because the nurses refused point-blank to allow any light before dawn had truly arrived; Lynn pointed out, time and time again, that her father always woke well before dawn, no matter when he was put to bed or what sleeping draughts he was given, and that it was probably the memory of endless early-morning weapons practice with his dead wife that was doing it, which was something that no-one, not even the finest medical science or the strongest healers, could fix. Time and time again, she got the classic indulgent-but-unyielding smile, and time and time again, she wished that she had either the inches to loom over them, the age to assert her authority, or the courage to take her glaive to them (it would probably be a messy death, since Lynn’s practice had been squeezed out of her day by caring for her father and the fief, but it would be suitably final.)
Honestly. Sometimes it felt like she, Lily, and Master Tobe, when he found the time to visit, were the only people who genuinely understood that Domitan of Masbolle was dying. Consumption was not something a man of sixty-five who didn’t want to live was going to survive, and his delusions, his persistent inability to bring himself to know the future, meant that he really didn’t want to live. He didn’t want the life he had; he wanted it as he had known it, his wife laughing and strong and alive, his elder daughter the brightest squire in the kingdom, his elder son working for a life in his father’s footsteps in the King’s Own, his younger son running through his lessons at a rate of knots and clearly destined for the University, and his youngest child, his baby daughter, his Lynn, running after him and tugging at the hem of his tunic. Da, come see what I made. Da, look what I did. Da, I galloped today and I didn’t fall off once.
He’d been like this for years, Lynn reflected as she flung the curtains open and poked at the fire, but lately it was much, much worse. Until last year, they hadn’t been forced to lock his door at night, but then there had been that horrible evening close to Midwinter when he’d been seized with the notion that Kel was out there in the rose gardens, waiting for him. They had only realised he was missing when Bear had arrived, scant hours after his father had made his escape, and gone up full of cheer to see him. When he came running back down again, white-faced, and the explanation had spilled out of him, search parties had immediately been formed and sent out. It only took half an hour to find Lynn’s father, sitting in the snow-covered rose gardens in front of his dead wife’s headstone, conversing with it like a human being.
That had brought on the cough that never went, and that had turned into consumption, and that, Lynn reflected as she tipped another log onto the fire and shoved it further into the hearth with the poker, beating it into flames and heat, was why he was dying.
“You’re very busy,” Lord Domitan said in a tone of mild amusement. “Jess- Jessamine, cousin, really, you needn’t go to such trouble.”
Oh, Goddess, no. He’d done it again. There was a considerable resemblance, to be fair, between Lynn and her father’s cousin Jessamine; the nose and the face shape were identical, and they were much of a height, and approximately the same shape (or at least, they had been, when Jessamine was the same age as Lynn.) But the eye colour, the hair colour, the shape of the mouth, the eyebrows- in all this, they were different, and Lynn’s own father couldn’t see it.
Lynn turned. “Da. Father, I’m not Jessamine.”
“Very funny, Jess,” Lord Domitan sighed, patiently.
Lynn lit a taper, and lit a candle with that- or tried to; it blew out on the first go. She tried again, and achieved success, then walked to her father’s bedside and held the candle close to her face. “I’m not Jessamine. I’m your daughter. I’m your youngest daughter, I’m Lynet, I’m Lynn, Da, don’t you remember me?”
“Lynn’s a little girl,” her father asserted. “My Lynn, my little Lynet. She looks most like me, of all my children, she’s the only one with eyes like mine. I sometimes think she’ll be very like you when she grows up, Jess.”
Lynn stared into his eyes and gave up, for today. Tomorrow, she would try again to make him understand who she was, but by now she knew that continuing to insist that she was Lynet of Masbolle rather than Jessamine of Disart, born Jessamine of Queenscove, would just upset him. “Would you like me to sit with you, cousin?” she made herself say, choking on the words. “I have some embroidery. I could be company for you.”
“Jess, you’re terrible at embroidery!” Lord Domitan laughed. “We’ll have to get the company healer in to put your fingers back together.”
“I’ve improved,” Lynn said dully, getting up to fetch her sewing basket. It was true that she hadn’t been an excellent embroiderer as a girl, and her fingers had been pincushions, but it turned out that practice would improve just about anything, and given the long hours she spent at her father’s bedside, practice wasn’t a problem. They’d had an almost identical conversation yesterday, though. She had hoped...
“Where’s Kesi?” Lord Domitan demanded suddenly. “Kel wrote that she and Kesi would be home before the winter snows, but the winter snows are here, aren’t they?”
“They’re just going, Da- er, Dom,” Lynn said, glancing out of the window. “The snows, I mean. I don’t know where Kesi is.”
This was entirely true. However, it was less a question of ‘where exactly on the road from Corus to Masbolle is Kesi?’ than ‘where exactly, in any of the many countries around the Emerald Sea, is Kesi?’ The Yamani Islands were unlikely, given Kesi’s exuberance, and Galla or Scanra were probably too cold or too boring for her tastes, and it was a reasonable point that Kesi had set out in the direction of Tyra, and her last letter had come from Maren; but then again, this being Kesi, it was impossible to know. Always a terrible correspondent, lately the only news of her that Masbolle got were letters from Alan of Pirate’s Swoop, who was both sympathetic and well-connected and who regularly compiled and sent to Masbolle the latest rumours of Kisanna, Warrior Lady, Kesan the All-Conquering , or Kesanne, Slayer of A Thousand Hurroks; these garbled fragments passed for news of Lady Knight Kesanne of Masbolle, and they were pitifully few.
“Kesi, Kesi,” Domitan mused. “Have you looked in the stables?”
“Yes, Dom,” Lynn said, bringing her embroidery back to the bedside, lighting two more candles and shaking out her embroidery: a piece of iron-grey velvet destined for a bodice, which was slowly acquiring an intricate pattern of owls sitting in trees in various pale shades of blue.
“Have you asked Kel?”
“No, I haven’t,” Lynn said. “Kel isn’t here.”
“She is here. She is here! If only you’d look harder. Jessamine, she is here, find her for me, please, please, I need her-“
“Father, stop it, stop it!” Lynn wailed, leaping up as her father grabbed for her trailing sleeve, blue eyes wild, The embroidery cascaded to the floor, pins and needles clattering, bright thread unspooling. “Da! No, no, stop-“
Too late- the frantic waving of arms had its inevitable effect. The candles were swept from the bedside and clattered to the floor- Lynn screamed, and darted across the room for the ewer of water, grabbing it and sloshing it over the bright, flickering flames catching at the rug.
Their crackling stopped, and the hissing of steam whispered in the silence. Gasping for breath, the ewer slick with water still clutched in her hands, Lynn looked at her father. He was staring at her in horror, clutching the bedclothes. “Bad girl,” he whispered, and for a moment Lynn entertained the tiniest spring of hope as Lily and her tray burst into the room, accompanied by two nurses and a man-at-arms. “Bad girl. You shouldn’t do that. Fire is dangerous. You mustn’t play with it, do you hear me, Jessamine?”
Lynn burst into tears.