For 100_prompts
Title: Nana's Wake
Author:
muse_captive
Fandom: Original (So Journeys the Fool)
Prompt: Funeral
Character/Pairing: General - Carinae Moriarty
Rating: G
Word Count: 1777
Summary: After traveling to Ireland, Carinae meets up with distant relatives to celebrate her nana's life
Authors Notes/Disclaimer:n/a
What was she doing there? she wondered. She and Death just didn’t get along all that well. Granted, it was true that it was an unfortunate truth one had to face quite often, being a doctor desiring to specialize in Emergency Medicine, and while she tended to do as well as one could when placed in such a situation, when it came to her family, she failed miserably.
It was also true that this was a wake and, therefore, could be considered more a ‘memorial’ than a ‘funeral’. But her grandmother was dead, and not coming back, a fact that she was realizing that she was of mixed emotions about. All, of which, she was having difficulties contending with.
As she wandered about, she smiled and greeted the others, who milled about and were doing the very same thing as she. Many had pints in their fists and acted as nothing in the world was amiss. It was, as she understood it, the purpose of a wake. They were celebrating the life of the individual that had died, rather than mourning her death.
Had they done this very thing when her parents had died? The thought niggled at her, and not for the first time that day. What had they said about them? ‘Oh, tragedy that one. Such a lovely couple they were, but they’re gone… so… drink up!’ Had that been the way of it? The possibility of it, left a bad taste in her mouth. So much so that she decided maybe everyone did have the right idea about a pint, after all.
“Well, now… there ya be, Carinae Leigh!”
With a pause in her step and a small, inward groan, she turned to face her uncle. As if she was not contending with enough this day.
Paddy O’, as he was known about the little town, was the village ‘cosherer’ or matchmaker, and ever seemed to be ‘on the clock’. ‘What you’ll be needin’,’ he’d told her earlier that day, ‘is a fine, strappin’ Irish lad. Now that your grandmum, gods rest her soul, has gone on to the Summerlands, it’s time for you to be returnin’ home, Carinae Leigh.’ And, apparently, he had just the plan for how to go about getting her to do just that.
Here he was now, coming around again, and her biggest concern was that in the small amount of time since last she’d seen him, he’d found ‘just the right Irish lad’ to saddle her with.
“Hello, Uncle Paddy…” She was beginning to wonder if she ran fast enough… would he be able to keep up with her?
“What’s ailin’ ya, lass?” he asked.
Apparently, she wasn’t succeeding well in the task of hiding the glum expression that constantly wanted to stray to her face.
With a shake of her head, she quickly forced a smile to her face. “Not a thing is ailing me, really.”
“Hoooo nonsense now.” He dismissed her words with a wave of his hand. “I’ve not laid me eyes on such a glum face since Old Michael McFinnegan’s prized ewe gone and died, she did.”
With a bright, reassuring smile upon his face, he reached his arm up and tried his best to drape it about her shoulders. She was, after all, quite a bit taller than he, which made the very act quite difficult, in and of itself.
“Now, why don’t you go about tellin’ your ol’ Uncle Paddy all about it, and we’ll see what we can do about fixin’ it all up, right and proper.”
“But…” He paused in his words as his gaze drifted over to the bar that had been set up just inside the gathering tent. “I think better we’d be doin’, if we didn’t have such a terrible thirst, we would. Let’s be gettin’ us a pint or two… and you go about tellin’ me all about it then…”
She could not help but smile as she allowed him to lead her over to the bar. He was a true Irishman at heart, and she wondered with a good deal of amusement, if he were to be cut, would his veins bleed Guinness stout, rather than blood.
“It’s nothing, really, Uncle Paddy,” she tried to deny once more. She really didn’t want to go into it. Her emotions, which were straining toward the surface, demanding to make themselves known, had something else in mind for her, however.
Picking up a pint from the bar, she sipped thoughtfully at it before she continued, almost as if her mouth was speaking of its own accord. She’d somehow lost control of it at some point, it seemed. “It’s just…” She heaved a sigh. “I’ve such… mixed emotions about this… all of this,” she said, indicating the wake itself.
“I miss Nana a lot, despite the fact that she drove me three clicks past barmy more times than not. I just wish…” Pausing, she looked over at Paddy. “There is a part of me that wishes I didn’t drown her out so often… so much. You know what I mean? Like all those times that she went on about this thing or that thing? I just have this feeling like… there was so much lost with her passing.”
With a nervous chuckle, she shook her head again before taking a drink from her pint glass. “I know… it sounds like a whole lot of rubbish. A few cards short of a full deck, I know…” She just couldn’t explain it.
“Ahhhhh, there you are my lovelies…”
At hearing the sound of her Aunt Maggie’s voice, she turned to smile, which is more than what could be said for Paddy. While she doubted Maggie could hear it, she, herself, heard a distinct pain filled groan as he went to take a drink from his own glass.
"It ‘tis no wonder why a man like me would be driven to the drink…” he groused under his breath.
“I’m not interruptin’, am I?” Maggie asked as she did her very best to ignore her brother.
Carinae shook her head and smiled reassuringly. “Not in the very least, Aunt Maggie. Uncle Paddy and I were just discussing how much we miss Nana, is all.”
“Ahhhhh… yes. A saintly woman she was. No woman a finer…” Maggie agreed. Paddy, on the other hand, apparently had his own thoughts on the subject.
“A saint… me…” The words following were slightly muffled and grumbled, but clear enough that Carinae could discern that they were not words to be shared in mixed company. Not that she would have minded, of course.
There were times that she, herself, could curse up a blue streak that was undoubtedly enough to make even the drunkest sailor blush. With her aunt there, however, it was probably better that it hadn’t been clearer.
“The woman was a harpy just like every other woman in this bloody family,” he continued. “A bunch of witches, the lot of ya.”
Maggie chuckled slightly. She was undoubtedly used to this. After all, they had grown up together. “Yes… and we’d have turned ya into a frog long ago, we would have, if someone hadn’t beaten us to it, ya little toad.”
Carinae didn’t dare to take another drink from her pint, at least not until the two were separated. After all, she didn’t think it would be fine form to choke on her Guinness, which she surely would at this rate.
This must be, though, what it was like to have a sibling. A fact that she, herself, was not familiar with being that she was an only child. Granted, Gretchen had always been the closest thing to a sister that she had, but there was something infinitely different, she believed, between that and living with a sibling 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“Bah!” he countered with a dismissive wave of his hand. It was almost as though he expected that this would somehow win the battle of words for him. “A harpy in woman’s clothin’, I'm tellin' ya.” Even as he said it, he wandered away, undoubtedly to find someone to commiserate with his perceived woes.
“How are ya holdin’ up, lassie?” Maggie asked, once he was away.
Carinae could only shake her head. She was beginning to think that she had a sign plastered to her forehead that said ‘I’m in mourning. Ask me how I’m doing!’.
“I’m hanging in, Aunt Maggie, really.” She didn’t want to have to explain it again. Little did she know that the other woman wasn’t going to take that story at face value.
“You’re missin’ your nana, aren’t ya, lass?”
Finally, not wishing to maintain the front any longer, she gave in with a heavy sigh. “Yes, Aunt Maggie. I am. I miss her a great deal more than I thought I would.”
Pausing, Maggie glanced around, almost as though she was checking to see whether anyone was standing about to over hear them or not. “She’s not truly gone. Ya know that don’t ya?”
While Carinae was a complete skeptic, she did believe in an afterlife. Where one went after death or what situations she faced afterward, she wasn’t certain, but she did believe that a person didn’t completely cease to exist after taking her last breath. “Yes, I know that,” she replied with a nod.
“No… no… no… I truly mean it, lass. She’s not gone. She’s still about.” At this, her eyes darted around a bit, almost as though she was seriously concerned about being watched at that very moment.
“Yeah… I know, Aunt Maggie…” Though, she was paying the old woman lip service more than anything by this point.
“And she’d be wantin’ ya to go on too, lassie. Ya must go on,” she adamantly replied. “Not only the fate of our family depends on it, but the universe, itself, as well.”
It was at that point, though, that Carinae thought the old woman had totally and completely lost it. She was beginning to spout the same magical mumbo jumbo at her that her nana had while she was still alive. Given that the two women were sisters, though, and she had a good deal of experience dealing with her nana in such situations, she decided to approach this one in the very same way.
“I’ll do that, Aunt Maggie,” she said with a nod. “I’ll go on.” Why, didn’t she feel as though the matter of her confusion and grief had been completely addressed? Oh, well… she thought with a small bit of a sigh. It would take care of itself all in due time, she figured.
Author:
muse_captive
Fandom: Original (So Journeys the Fool)
Prompt: Funeral
Character/Pairing: General - Carinae Moriarty
Rating: G
Word Count: 1777
Summary: After traveling to Ireland, Carinae meets up with distant relatives to celebrate her nana's life
Authors Notes/Disclaimer:n/a
What was she doing there? she wondered. She and Death just didn’t get along all that well. Granted, it was true that it was an unfortunate truth one had to face quite often, being a doctor desiring to specialize in Emergency Medicine, and while she tended to do as well as one could when placed in such a situation, when it came to her family, she failed miserably.
It was also true that this was a wake and, therefore, could be considered more a ‘memorial’ than a ‘funeral’. But her grandmother was dead, and not coming back, a fact that she was realizing that she was of mixed emotions about. All, of which, she was having difficulties contending with.
As she wandered about, she smiled and greeted the others, who milled about and were doing the very same thing as she. Many had pints in their fists and acted as nothing in the world was amiss. It was, as she understood it, the purpose of a wake. They were celebrating the life of the individual that had died, rather than mourning her death.
Had they done this very thing when her parents had died? The thought niggled at her, and not for the first time that day. What had they said about them? ‘Oh, tragedy that one. Such a lovely couple they were, but they’re gone… so… drink up!’ Had that been the way of it? The possibility of it, left a bad taste in her mouth. So much so that she decided maybe everyone did have the right idea about a pint, after all.
“Well, now… there ya be, Carinae Leigh!”
With a pause in her step and a small, inward groan, she turned to face her uncle. As if she was not contending with enough this day.
Paddy O’, as he was known about the little town, was the village ‘cosherer’ or matchmaker, and ever seemed to be ‘on the clock’. ‘What you’ll be needin’,’ he’d told her earlier that day, ‘is a fine, strappin’ Irish lad. Now that your grandmum, gods rest her soul, has gone on to the Summerlands, it’s time for you to be returnin’ home, Carinae Leigh.’ And, apparently, he had just the plan for how to go about getting her to do just that.
Here he was now, coming around again, and her biggest concern was that in the small amount of time since last she’d seen him, he’d found ‘just the right Irish lad’ to saddle her with.
“Hello, Uncle Paddy…” She was beginning to wonder if she ran fast enough… would he be able to keep up with her?
“What’s ailin’ ya, lass?” he asked.
Apparently, she wasn’t succeeding well in the task of hiding the glum expression that constantly wanted to stray to her face.
With a shake of her head, she quickly forced a smile to her face. “Not a thing is ailing me, really.”
“Hoooo nonsense now.” He dismissed her words with a wave of his hand. “I’ve not laid me eyes on such a glum face since Old Michael McFinnegan’s prized ewe gone and died, she did.”
With a bright, reassuring smile upon his face, he reached his arm up and tried his best to drape it about her shoulders. She was, after all, quite a bit taller than he, which made the very act quite difficult, in and of itself.
“Now, why don’t you go about tellin’ your ol’ Uncle Paddy all about it, and we’ll see what we can do about fixin’ it all up, right and proper.”
“But…” He paused in his words as his gaze drifted over to the bar that had been set up just inside the gathering tent. “I think better we’d be doin’, if we didn’t have such a terrible thirst, we would. Let’s be gettin’ us a pint or two… and you go about tellin’ me all about it then…”
She could not help but smile as she allowed him to lead her over to the bar. He was a true Irishman at heart, and she wondered with a good deal of amusement, if he were to be cut, would his veins bleed Guinness stout, rather than blood.
“It’s nothing, really, Uncle Paddy,” she tried to deny once more. She really didn’t want to go into it. Her emotions, which were straining toward the surface, demanding to make themselves known, had something else in mind for her, however.
Picking up a pint from the bar, she sipped thoughtfully at it before she continued, almost as if her mouth was speaking of its own accord. She’d somehow lost control of it at some point, it seemed. “It’s just…” She heaved a sigh. “I’ve such… mixed emotions about this… all of this,” she said, indicating the wake itself.
“I miss Nana a lot, despite the fact that she drove me three clicks past barmy more times than not. I just wish…” Pausing, she looked over at Paddy. “There is a part of me that wishes I didn’t drown her out so often… so much. You know what I mean? Like all those times that she went on about this thing or that thing? I just have this feeling like… there was so much lost with her passing.”
With a nervous chuckle, she shook her head again before taking a drink from her pint glass. “I know… it sounds like a whole lot of rubbish. A few cards short of a full deck, I know…” She just couldn’t explain it.
“Ahhhhh, there you are my lovelies…”
At hearing the sound of her Aunt Maggie’s voice, she turned to smile, which is more than what could be said for Paddy. While she doubted Maggie could hear it, she, herself, heard a distinct pain filled groan as he went to take a drink from his own glass.
"It ‘tis no wonder why a man like me would be driven to the drink…” he groused under his breath.
“I’m not interruptin’, am I?” Maggie asked as she did her very best to ignore her brother.
Carinae shook her head and smiled reassuringly. “Not in the very least, Aunt Maggie. Uncle Paddy and I were just discussing how much we miss Nana, is all.”
“Ahhhhh… yes. A saintly woman she was. No woman a finer…” Maggie agreed. Paddy, on the other hand, apparently had his own thoughts on the subject.
“A saint… me…” The words following were slightly muffled and grumbled, but clear enough that Carinae could discern that they were not words to be shared in mixed company. Not that she would have minded, of course.
There were times that she, herself, could curse up a blue streak that was undoubtedly enough to make even the drunkest sailor blush. With her aunt there, however, it was probably better that it hadn’t been clearer.
“The woman was a harpy just like every other woman in this bloody family,” he continued. “A bunch of witches, the lot of ya.”
Maggie chuckled slightly. She was undoubtedly used to this. After all, they had grown up together. “Yes… and we’d have turned ya into a frog long ago, we would have, if someone hadn’t beaten us to it, ya little toad.”
Carinae didn’t dare to take another drink from her pint, at least not until the two were separated. After all, she didn’t think it would be fine form to choke on her Guinness, which she surely would at this rate.
This must be, though, what it was like to have a sibling. A fact that she, herself, was not familiar with being that she was an only child. Granted, Gretchen had always been the closest thing to a sister that she had, but there was something infinitely different, she believed, between that and living with a sibling 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“Bah!” he countered with a dismissive wave of his hand. It was almost as though he expected that this would somehow win the battle of words for him. “A harpy in woman’s clothin’, I'm tellin' ya.” Even as he said it, he wandered away, undoubtedly to find someone to commiserate with his perceived woes.
“How are ya holdin’ up, lassie?” Maggie asked, once he was away.
Carinae could only shake her head. She was beginning to think that she had a sign plastered to her forehead that said ‘I’m in mourning. Ask me how I’m doing!’.
“I’m hanging in, Aunt Maggie, really.” She didn’t want to have to explain it again. Little did she know that the other woman wasn’t going to take that story at face value.
“You’re missin’ your nana, aren’t ya, lass?”
Finally, not wishing to maintain the front any longer, she gave in with a heavy sigh. “Yes, Aunt Maggie. I am. I miss her a great deal more than I thought I would.”
Pausing, Maggie glanced around, almost as though she was checking to see whether anyone was standing about to over hear them or not. “She’s not truly gone. Ya know that don’t ya?”
While Carinae was a complete skeptic, she did believe in an afterlife. Where one went after death or what situations she faced afterward, she wasn’t certain, but she did believe that a person didn’t completely cease to exist after taking her last breath. “Yes, I know that,” she replied with a nod.
“No… no… no… I truly mean it, lass. She’s not gone. She’s still about.” At this, her eyes darted around a bit, almost as though she was seriously concerned about being watched at that very moment.
“Yeah… I know, Aunt Maggie…” Though, she was paying the old woman lip service more than anything by this point.
“And she’d be wantin’ ya to go on too, lassie. Ya must go on,” she adamantly replied. “Not only the fate of our family depends on it, but the universe, itself, as well.”
It was at that point, though, that Carinae thought the old woman had totally and completely lost it. She was beginning to spout the same magical mumbo jumbo at her that her nana had while she was still alive. Given that the two women were sisters, though, and she had a good deal of experience dealing with her nana in such situations, she decided to approach this one in the very same way.
“I’ll do that, Aunt Maggie,” she said with a nod. “I’ll go on.” Why, didn’t she feel as though the matter of her confusion and grief had been completely addressed? Oh, well… she thought with a small bit of a sigh. It would take care of itself all in due time, she figured.