(no subject)
Sybil Ramkin Vimes's son was two and a half months away from being three years old. He would have, at that point, spent a third of his life on a small, verdant island with no dragons but dinosaurs, and no sluggish river but a vast and roiling sea. The air was clean and the people were generally kind, and there were learned, intelligent, clever people to teach him what she and his father could not.
And there was his father. Not just every day at six o'clock, but every day in the morning, and in the afternoon, and usually all through the evening until the little boy went to bed. She had noticed, as his speech developed and he learned more grown up expression, that his father appeared more and more in his face and phrasing. It gave Sybil more joy than she'd ever thought to experience, past the actual having of the boy. It had seemed enough to make the world as perfect a place as she could hope for that Young Sam Vimes existed. But to see him have days with his father, and an indefinite amount of further days stretching ahead of them, well, that was all she could have asked for. She had, upon the beginning of their courtship, endeavored to give Sam Vimes thoroughly everything she thought he deserved, that his years of rather hard living had earned him, though not half so much as what his unalterable self did. She had more blessings than were countable.
And a dragon that wanted to mate.
The dragon had been silver and was turning blue, and had started producing corrosive expulsions of gas from both ends and thin, wheedling little licks of flame at the sight of anything roughly his own size. It was slightly vexing.
"We're going," Sybil told the antsy little creature as it scuttled about and stretched its wings impotently, at the far side of the pasture on their way back to his stone holding, "have to find you a friend."
And there was his father. Not just every day at six o'clock, but every day in the morning, and in the afternoon, and usually all through the evening until the little boy went to bed. She had noticed, as his speech developed and he learned more grown up expression, that his father appeared more and more in his face and phrasing. It gave Sybil more joy than she'd ever thought to experience, past the actual having of the boy. It had seemed enough to make the world as perfect a place as she could hope for that Young Sam Vimes existed. But to see him have days with his father, and an indefinite amount of further days stretching ahead of them, well, that was all she could have asked for. She had, upon the beginning of their courtship, endeavored to give Sam Vimes thoroughly everything she thought he deserved, that his years of rather hard living had earned him, though not half so much as what his unalterable self did. She had more blessings than were countable.
And a dragon that wanted to mate.
The dragon had been silver and was turning blue, and had started producing corrosive expulsions of gas from both ends and thin, wheedling little licks of flame at the sight of anything roughly his own size. It was slightly vexing.
"We're going," Sybil told the antsy little creature as it scuttled about and stretched its wings impotently, at the far side of the pasture on their way back to his stone holding, "have to find you a friend."