Quickly Enough
Fela, Delilah, Andros, Gauvian
He snatches Delilah's arm before she can rush out into the sunlight, pulling her back into the entryway of their rented home, keeping her in the cool shade and away from the bright dusty streets a moment longer. She swings around into him, giving an indignant huff and staring up at him in petulance with the dark sonando-eyes that they both share. Andros is unmoved, running his hands over her fair cheeks.
"Put your lotion on."
His edict is met with a whine, a head shake. His sister is thirteen now, pale as snow with soft yellow hair and yet she still fights him over this every time.
"It's slimy and it smells bad," she protests. The benefits of avoiding a blistering burn are clearly escaping her. She seems to think that merely because she was born in this hot southern world that her childish fidelity will protect her. In her mind, her mother does not burn and her brother does not burn and thus neither will she. Delilah is too much like her father for it to be true. She would have big blue eyes if their mother could have been released from the sonando's cravings during the term.
For her brother, there was never the hope of color. He may have their mother's dusky skin, but all the rest came from his father: black eyes and strong features, dark magic.
"We'll find a nicer one next time," Andros soothes her, used to Delilah's temper and her excitement. "I have some coins saved, we'll look for on that smells better. But today you use the one we have."
She gives him one last sulking look before she scurries back up the stairs to the apartment their mother has taken for them. There are cracks in the stonework, leaks in the ceiling, and no furniture, but they know how their mother tries, knows they'll be leaving this place soon enough.
Andros follows up, to be certain she rubs the into her face and her neck and to kiss her goodbye, despite the medicinal smell she dislikes so much.
"Come back in an hour," he requests. "We'll wake mother then, and all eat together."
This Delilah consents to, kissing him back before she's back down the stares, taking them lithely two at a time, leaving her brother to watch over their mother.
Fela is asleep in the large swathe of sunlight that comes in through the uncovered window. She loves to lie in the sun, has been known to climb up on the roof as well. The light makes the markings on her face all the more obvious though: the dark stains around her eyes and the shape of two fingertips in the center of her forehead. There is another line hidden across her tongue: the markings of the Bohrre-na, the dreamchaser, the sonando slave.
Andros knows he and Delilah were lucky to escape the poison, though it had still marked them both and he had not fled quite so completely as his sister. They were lucky they each had strong fathers with strong glitter to protect them inside of her. Though, perhaps Andros would not have been born at all if only the sonando had overwhelmed him in the womb. It was a cruel substance, the sonando, it was greedy, for money, for memory, for life. His mother forgot her own children's names if separated from them for too long, and if Andros had died, the sonando's smoke would have seen she forget his father had ever harmed her.
He sits down beside her quietly, watches the peaceful in and out of breath, though he knows his mother never truly sleeps, knows she is merely wandering the dreams of others, that she will wake uncertain of what day it is, of what city they are in, and how they came to be there. He and Delilah will remind her, they will show her the calender and they will show her the notes she has left herself; the notes from them and from her brother as well.
Andros misses his uncle. Despite hardly knowing his half-sister, Benito had been the first to find her after the Northern soldier hurt her. Benito had helped to raise him, had taught him how to be quick and smart and to keep his mother safe in her drifting and forgetting. Benito had made Gauvain come back, which Andros was sometimes unsure of, unsure of whether that was a service or not.
He had been unsure of the man since the first time he had found him with his mother. Gauvain was a bit rude, undoubtedly arrogant, as a child there hadn't been much for Andros to say in protest, only to hold his arms out and wait for his mother to come. He'd had that certainty, that his mother would always favor him above any suitor, though as he grew older he was less and less sure that he deserved it.
It was Benito who had first told him how his father had hurt Fela. The knowledge had pierced through him too deeply for any tears, but the weight of it was there on his shoulders. It was difficult to lift his head when his uncle beckoned him to do so.
"Your mother, your sister, and I love you, regardless of what your father has done."
The rest of his mother's family repeated the sentiment: every brother and sister they came across. But he was still ashamed.
Andros reaches down and gathers his mother's hair away from her face, begins to braid it idly as he's learned to do for Delilah. He wonders where his mother is, whose dreams. He knows he could look, take a touch of her sonando on his tongue and follow her, but his presence is like a thunderstorm in the dreaming, dark and threatening. His father's blood taints everything. His father would mock his desire to dream with his mother. He's certain Nekoda would do the same; his half-siblings are so much more like Starling, much stronger than Andros.
They do not love him the way the dreamchaser's do, and yet he cannot help but wish for it, a vain search for something stronger than his shame. Lucia, their eldest, tells him he will never find it. That there is no peace as Starling's child. Nekoda, their father's favorite, taunts him with the promise of it. Torments and abuses him in ways Andros will let no one know of, not his mother, not Delilah, and not his uncle.
It startles him when Delilah appears suddenly in the room, has used their sleeping mother as a gateway for her dreamwalking. Gauvain's blood is so strong and bright in her, has given her pride and freedom. All Andros wants is for her to keep those things in happiness.
"You're back early," he notes, finishing up his mother's braid, laying it out across the pillow.
"I got lunch," she answers, sounding very pleased with herself as she holds out the wrapped sandwiches.
They wake their mother together, pulling strings like wheeling in a kite from the maw of the wind. Fela murmurs sleepily as she sits up, notices the braid when it hits her arm and reaches to stroke her son's cheek.
"It's just past noon, you've only been gone the night," Andros tells her without needing to be asked.
"And I got your favorite," Delilah chimes, pressing food into her hands. A sweet bread with slices of salty prosciutto and tangy, yellow, pickled peppers.
Fela is hardly awake enough to eat, but she still smiles and accepts it. She is pleased enough to see them smiling and fed, accepts Delilah in close as well when the excitable little thing needs to nap after eating. She smiles and nods when Andros says he will go out for a while.
0
Delilah takes her father's namesake in the dreaming. A white crow that wheels effortlessly through the minds of the sleeping. She cannot make any influence on what she sees, not like her mother can, but she doesn't mind. She can find her family the way she is, can find all of her aunts and uncles, can find uncle Christopher's children and uncle Benito's mother, but most importantly she can find her grandfather.
She and Jast are the only ones who can. Jast and Acacio are like a pair of birds, always guided back to together again. Delilah is not certain exactly what Jast is, knows he is no dreamchaser, no witch, but she knows her grandfather loves him and that young-looking Jast loves him in return.
It's very romantic, she thinks, romantic like her mother and father are: that no matter the distance set between them they will always come back together again.
The situations are not quite the same, but then Delilah has no real understanding of Jast's power, of how devoted he is to his duty, or how important he is as the seer of his order. She doesn't understand how those responsibilities keep him from staying at her grandfather's side, or how Acacio's own sense of duty as a dreamchaser keeps him drifting anyway, just like Fela.
But duty and responsibility are not words that hold much meaning to Gauvain Crowe or his daughter. That Delilah was unintended is a fact never spoken of, but made no less true for the omission. He had never intended a family with the dreamchaser woman, had intended to have his fun and be forgotten. Her son was a problem, at times, but Fela's brother would watch over him and Gauvain could still whisk her away when it pleased him to.
But then she'd been pregnant, which was not entirely unappealing and he certainly laid no claim to fatherhood until the brother tracked him down. There was no mistaking Delilah as anything but his own then and though he could have declined any contact with her, he did not.
A fact Fela often lost track of, more frustrated by his carefree attitude and bent for cowardice: always using his powers to run, to teleport away from any problem, never taking a stand on anything. Though he always came back to her, and Delilah at least, was convinced of their affection for one another. Even if her mother was angry with him too often, even if her father didn't always stay with them.
Benito tells her she's right. Andros just wishes someone would love his mother properly without leaving her alone.
0
Fela is a strong woman. She has a warm heart and a playful nature and good principles. She loves to dream, she loves to laugh, she loves her children and to help others. It is the right of a true Bohrre-na, to bring peace and to bring hope. Even in their war torn world, with she and her children hunted as abominations for the magic in their blood, she keeps her head up. Even though the sonando steals her memories, she keeps her children fed and safe.
Very strong, but even she knows her weaknesses.
It is Andros who breaks her most often, when he tells her he is afraid she will not want him, when she sees the guilt and shame in his face and cannot understand why it is there. It breaks her heart that he doubts her love. It torments her that she cannot always remember if that doubt is deserved or not.
And these feelings... she has no one to tell them to. Forgets them before anyone could come to hear them, and would not burden her children or her few meetings with Benito with such uncertainties. She hardly considers Gauvain's thin shoulders a place of support.
She sheds her tears alone and the feeling passes quickly enough.
0
There is nowhere below the border that they can stay safely. Like her father before her, Fela drifts from town to town, only she brings two children in her wake. Andros, her quiet sixteen-year-old, and Delilah who is only just thirteen a few weeks now.
They never consider leaving their mother, though Gauvain's powers or their mother's family could easily see them past the border. Their uncle Christopher's wealth would have them a house of their own, clothes and food and toys.
Instead they have checkpoints, in and out of every town they travel to. Checkpoints where they must stand apart from their mother, knowing much too well the soldiers' propensity for sending them ahead without her, or even denying them entrance to the city while forcing Fela beyond the gate. It's upsetting when they choose to hit their mother. Andros can care for Delilah, but without them, their mother loses everything, forgets where she's come from, or worse that she should find them.
Delilah could go to be with her outside the gate, but that would mean leaving Andros alone instead and that is just as unacceptable. Fela would be furious if they separated, but they worry for her desperately when she's gone, Delilah in tears until she's gone to get her father and beg him to help.
Gauvain refuses his daughter nothing, and certainly not this. One day, they won't need him anymore, Delilah will be able to pull a person through the dreaming along with her. Gauvain wonders if he dreads that day. Doesn't dwell on it long before he's sent Delilah back to her brother, before he's taken hold of his love for Fela and pushed and there she is, wandering uncertainly around the city, determined to get in before she loses the need to.
She's already forgotten him, startles when he appears, but he looks so very much like Delilah she never fears him for long anymroe.
"Come, Fela," he invites, tries to take more time reminding her of himself usually but, "Delilah is crying, we need to go to them."
She takes his hand when he offers it, trusts his words and his face, and is with her children again as soon as he wraps his arms around her.
0
It's Gauvain who gets their apartment this time. A dry, furnished place with paint on the walls and clean floors. The children hardly notice. They eat the food they're given and fall asleep curled around one another.
Gauvain remembers when there were no children, when he could have moments alone with Fela, just like this. Drinks, dancing, maybe dinner, it depend on how good he was at navigating her temper. She didn't like to be treated like meat, would gladly strike anyone who tried to demean her. Gauvain is fairly certain her temper is how she had earned herself Andros. A fine prize, in Gauvain's opinion, he's a good boy, looks after his mother and his sister faithfully, even if Gauvain's relationship to him is... nonexistant, really. He's not put in the work to be more than the man who had fathered Delilah. He's afraid to give more, afraid to be rejected by mother and son alike, still afraid of the ties he has to this family.
He loves them, Delilah and Fela and so Andros too, but Delilah accepts him implicitly. As for Fela... their daughter is thirteen and he still does not know Fela's feelings, they have not been offered and he has not been brave enough to ask. When Delilah is old enough to be on her own, will Fela still suffer his presence?
"So, my crow does come when he's called," Fela murmurs. There's a cigarette in her hands, smoke heavy and fragrant with the sonando drifting around her. He stares at her silently for a moment, because she is the most beautiful woman he has ever met. He gets up from his chair, comes to kneel in front of her.
"Not always." He would come for her, always. He fears the day Delilah comes to tell him the Prents have taken her, but he will come, even then.
Her expression changes imperceptibly, a pinch in her brow, lips parting slightly, but her gaze goes to the window, cigarette at her full mouth again. He waits, always watching, always waiting: he isn't a patient man, one of many flaws. She's told him before that he's just an arrogant coward, he wonders if she remembers, he wonders if she still agrees with it every time she sees that memory inside of him.
She looks back at him when he gathers up one of her brown calves and kisses her knee. He does nothing else, will do nothing else with the children a room away. Her expression is not particularly warm, he doesn't think: pursed lips, brow pinched again. But then it softens and she hands the rest of her cigarette down to him, beckons him up to sit in the window. He doesn't refuse her anything and she settles back against him. He can feel her pressing in against his thoughts... He hides his uncertainty before he lets her in, but he loves this dreamchaser woman's touch, no a matter what form it takes.
0
He leaves in the morning without saying a word, because he doesn't know how to say goodbye, how he could possibly make himself leave her.
Fela is not surprised. He used to say goodbye, when it was assured he would never have to see her again until it was convenient to him. The coward. She's still cold when she wakes up, cold and angry. She's still simmering when Delilah asks her if Gauvain will be back later, she murmurs bitterly that they shouldn't expect him.
Andros sees his mother's pain, distracts Delilah by quietly offering her breakfast.
"We'll go look for a new lotion," he cajoles. It doesn't take much to redirect his sister, she beams at him before relating their scheme to their mother.
Fela smiles at them, goes to get the beaded purse she carries, intent on giving them whatever coin she has, telling Andros to save his own. She frowns when she finds her coin pouch very full and heavy. She hesitates, contemplating tossing the entire thing out the window in a fit of pique, but... she gives it to the children instead.
"Mother..." Andros starts to say, but she closes his fingers around the pouch for him.
"Go, have fun."
"You're not coming?" Delilah asks, oblivious to her mother's feelings.
"Not today, darling," Fela tells her, holds her smile very well, all the way until she's seen them out the door and past the windows. She retreats back to bed then.
She sheds her tears alone, the feeling will pass quickly enough.
He snatches Delilah's arm before she can rush out into the sunlight, pulling her back into the entryway of their rented home, keeping her in the cool shade and away from the bright dusty streets a moment longer. She swings around into him, giving an indignant huff and staring up at him in petulance with the dark sonando-eyes that they both share. Andros is unmoved, running his hands over her fair cheeks.
"Put your lotion on."
His edict is met with a whine, a head shake. His sister is thirteen now, pale as snow with soft yellow hair and yet she still fights him over this every time.
"It's slimy and it smells bad," she protests. The benefits of avoiding a blistering burn are clearly escaping her. She seems to think that merely because she was born in this hot southern world that her childish fidelity will protect her. In her mind, her mother does not burn and her brother does not burn and thus neither will she. Delilah is too much like her father for it to be true. She would have big blue eyes if their mother could have been released from the sonando's cravings during the term.
For her brother, there was never the hope of color. He may have their mother's dusky skin, but all the rest came from his father: black eyes and strong features, dark magic.
"We'll find a nicer one next time," Andros soothes her, used to Delilah's temper and her excitement. "I have some coins saved, we'll look for on that smells better. But today you use the one we have."
She gives him one last sulking look before she scurries back up the stairs to the apartment their mother has taken for them. There are cracks in the stonework, leaks in the ceiling, and no furniture, but they know how their mother tries, knows they'll be leaving this place soon enough.
Andros follows up, to be certain she rubs the into her face and her neck and to kiss her goodbye, despite the medicinal smell she dislikes so much.
"Come back in an hour," he requests. "We'll wake mother then, and all eat together."
This Delilah consents to, kissing him back before she's back down the stares, taking them lithely two at a time, leaving her brother to watch over their mother.
Fela is asleep in the large swathe of sunlight that comes in through the uncovered window. She loves to lie in the sun, has been known to climb up on the roof as well. The light makes the markings on her face all the more obvious though: the dark stains around her eyes and the shape of two fingertips in the center of her forehead. There is another line hidden across her tongue: the markings of the Bohrre-na, the dreamchaser, the sonando slave.
Andros knows he and Delilah were lucky to escape the poison, though it had still marked them both and he had not fled quite so completely as his sister. They were lucky they each had strong fathers with strong glitter to protect them inside of her. Though, perhaps Andros would not have been born at all if only the sonando had overwhelmed him in the womb. It was a cruel substance, the sonando, it was greedy, for money, for memory, for life. His mother forgot her own children's names if separated from them for too long, and if Andros had died, the sonando's smoke would have seen she forget his father had ever harmed her.
He sits down beside her quietly, watches the peaceful in and out of breath, though he knows his mother never truly sleeps, knows she is merely wandering the dreams of others, that she will wake uncertain of what day it is, of what city they are in, and how they came to be there. He and Delilah will remind her, they will show her the calender and they will show her the notes she has left herself; the notes from them and from her brother as well.
Andros misses his uncle. Despite hardly knowing his half-sister, Benito had been the first to find her after the Northern soldier hurt her. Benito had helped to raise him, had taught him how to be quick and smart and to keep his mother safe in her drifting and forgetting. Benito had made Gauvain come back, which Andros was sometimes unsure of, unsure of whether that was a service or not.
He had been unsure of the man since the first time he had found him with his mother. Gauvain was a bit rude, undoubtedly arrogant, as a child there hadn't been much for Andros to say in protest, only to hold his arms out and wait for his mother to come. He'd had that certainty, that his mother would always favor him above any suitor, though as he grew older he was less and less sure that he deserved it.
It was Benito who had first told him how his father had hurt Fela. The knowledge had pierced through him too deeply for any tears, but the weight of it was there on his shoulders. It was difficult to lift his head when his uncle beckoned him to do so.
"Your mother, your sister, and I love you, regardless of what your father has done."
The rest of his mother's family repeated the sentiment: every brother and sister they came across. But he was still ashamed.
Andros reaches down and gathers his mother's hair away from her face, begins to braid it idly as he's learned to do for Delilah. He wonders where his mother is, whose dreams. He knows he could look, take a touch of her sonando on his tongue and follow her, but his presence is like a thunderstorm in the dreaming, dark and threatening. His father's blood taints everything. His father would mock his desire to dream with his mother. He's certain Nekoda would do the same; his half-siblings are so much more like Starling, much stronger than Andros.
They do not love him the way the dreamchaser's do, and yet he cannot help but wish for it, a vain search for something stronger than his shame. Lucia, their eldest, tells him he will never find it. That there is no peace as Starling's child. Nekoda, their father's favorite, taunts him with the promise of it. Torments and abuses him in ways Andros will let no one know of, not his mother, not Delilah, and not his uncle.
It startles him when Delilah appears suddenly in the room, has used their sleeping mother as a gateway for her dreamwalking. Gauvain's blood is so strong and bright in her, has given her pride and freedom. All Andros wants is for her to keep those things in happiness.
"You're back early," he notes, finishing up his mother's braid, laying it out across the pillow.
"I got lunch," she answers, sounding very pleased with herself as she holds out the wrapped sandwiches.
They wake their mother together, pulling strings like wheeling in a kite from the maw of the wind. Fela murmurs sleepily as she sits up, notices the braid when it hits her arm and reaches to stroke her son's cheek.
"It's just past noon, you've only been gone the night," Andros tells her without needing to be asked.
"And I got your favorite," Delilah chimes, pressing food into her hands. A sweet bread with slices of salty prosciutto and tangy, yellow, pickled peppers.
Fela is hardly awake enough to eat, but she still smiles and accepts it. She is pleased enough to see them smiling and fed, accepts Delilah in close as well when the excitable little thing needs to nap after eating. She smiles and nods when Andros says he will go out for a while.
0
Delilah takes her father's namesake in the dreaming. A white crow that wheels effortlessly through the minds of the sleeping. She cannot make any influence on what she sees, not like her mother can, but she doesn't mind. She can find her family the way she is, can find all of her aunts and uncles, can find uncle Christopher's children and uncle Benito's mother, but most importantly she can find her grandfather.
She and Jast are the only ones who can. Jast and Acacio are like a pair of birds, always guided back to together again. Delilah is not certain exactly what Jast is, knows he is no dreamchaser, no witch, but she knows her grandfather loves him and that young-looking Jast loves him in return.
It's very romantic, she thinks, romantic like her mother and father are: that no matter the distance set between them they will always come back together again.
The situations are not quite the same, but then Delilah has no real understanding of Jast's power, of how devoted he is to his duty, or how important he is as the seer of his order. She doesn't understand how those responsibilities keep him from staying at her grandfather's side, or how Acacio's own sense of duty as a dreamchaser keeps him drifting anyway, just like Fela.
But duty and responsibility are not words that hold much meaning to Gauvain Crowe or his daughter. That Delilah was unintended is a fact never spoken of, but made no less true for the omission. He had never intended a family with the dreamchaser woman, had intended to have his fun and be forgotten. Her son was a problem, at times, but Fela's brother would watch over him and Gauvain could still whisk her away when it pleased him to.
But then she'd been pregnant, which was not entirely unappealing and he certainly laid no claim to fatherhood until the brother tracked him down. There was no mistaking Delilah as anything but his own then and though he could have declined any contact with her, he did not.
A fact Fela often lost track of, more frustrated by his carefree attitude and bent for cowardice: always using his powers to run, to teleport away from any problem, never taking a stand on anything. Though he always came back to her, and Delilah at least, was convinced of their affection for one another. Even if her mother was angry with him too often, even if her father didn't always stay with them.
Benito tells her she's right. Andros just wishes someone would love his mother properly without leaving her alone.
0
Fela is a strong woman. She has a warm heart and a playful nature and good principles. She loves to dream, she loves to laugh, she loves her children and to help others. It is the right of a true Bohrre-na, to bring peace and to bring hope. Even in their war torn world, with she and her children hunted as abominations for the magic in their blood, she keeps her head up. Even though the sonando steals her memories, she keeps her children fed and safe.
Very strong, but even she knows her weaknesses.
It is Andros who breaks her most often, when he tells her he is afraid she will not want him, when she sees the guilt and shame in his face and cannot understand why it is there. It breaks her heart that he doubts her love. It torments her that she cannot always remember if that doubt is deserved or not.
And these feelings... she has no one to tell them to. Forgets them before anyone could come to hear them, and would not burden her children or her few meetings with Benito with such uncertainties. She hardly considers Gauvain's thin shoulders a place of support.
She sheds her tears alone and the feeling passes quickly enough.
0
There is nowhere below the border that they can stay safely. Like her father before her, Fela drifts from town to town, only she brings two children in her wake. Andros, her quiet sixteen-year-old, and Delilah who is only just thirteen a few weeks now.
They never consider leaving their mother, though Gauvain's powers or their mother's family could easily see them past the border. Their uncle Christopher's wealth would have them a house of their own, clothes and food and toys.
Instead they have checkpoints, in and out of every town they travel to. Checkpoints where they must stand apart from their mother, knowing much too well the soldiers' propensity for sending them ahead without her, or even denying them entrance to the city while forcing Fela beyond the gate. It's upsetting when they choose to hit their mother. Andros can care for Delilah, but without them, their mother loses everything, forgets where she's come from, or worse that she should find them.
Delilah could go to be with her outside the gate, but that would mean leaving Andros alone instead and that is just as unacceptable. Fela would be furious if they separated, but they worry for her desperately when she's gone, Delilah in tears until she's gone to get her father and beg him to help.
Gauvain refuses his daughter nothing, and certainly not this. One day, they won't need him anymore, Delilah will be able to pull a person through the dreaming along with her. Gauvain wonders if he dreads that day. Doesn't dwell on it long before he's sent Delilah back to her brother, before he's taken hold of his love for Fela and pushed and there she is, wandering uncertainly around the city, determined to get in before she loses the need to.
She's already forgotten him, startles when he appears, but he looks so very much like Delilah she never fears him for long anymroe.
"Come, Fela," he invites, tries to take more time reminding her of himself usually but, "Delilah is crying, we need to go to them."
She takes his hand when he offers it, trusts his words and his face, and is with her children again as soon as he wraps his arms around her.
0
It's Gauvain who gets their apartment this time. A dry, furnished place with paint on the walls and clean floors. The children hardly notice. They eat the food they're given and fall asleep curled around one another.
Gauvain remembers when there were no children, when he could have moments alone with Fela, just like this. Drinks, dancing, maybe dinner, it depend on how good he was at navigating her temper. She didn't like to be treated like meat, would gladly strike anyone who tried to demean her. Gauvain is fairly certain her temper is how she had earned herself Andros. A fine prize, in Gauvain's opinion, he's a good boy, looks after his mother and his sister faithfully, even if Gauvain's relationship to him is... nonexistant, really. He's not put in the work to be more than the man who had fathered Delilah. He's afraid to give more, afraid to be rejected by mother and son alike, still afraid of the ties he has to this family.
He loves them, Delilah and Fela and so Andros too, but Delilah accepts him implicitly. As for Fela... their daughter is thirteen and he still does not know Fela's feelings, they have not been offered and he has not been brave enough to ask. When Delilah is old enough to be on her own, will Fela still suffer his presence?
"So, my crow does come when he's called," Fela murmurs. There's a cigarette in her hands, smoke heavy and fragrant with the sonando drifting around her. He stares at her silently for a moment, because she is the most beautiful woman he has ever met. He gets up from his chair, comes to kneel in front of her.
"Not always." He would come for her, always. He fears the day Delilah comes to tell him the Prents have taken her, but he will come, even then.
Her expression changes imperceptibly, a pinch in her brow, lips parting slightly, but her gaze goes to the window, cigarette at her full mouth again. He waits, always watching, always waiting: he isn't a patient man, one of many flaws. She's told him before that he's just an arrogant coward, he wonders if she remembers, he wonders if she still agrees with it every time she sees that memory inside of him.
She looks back at him when he gathers up one of her brown calves and kisses her knee. He does nothing else, will do nothing else with the children a room away. Her expression is not particularly warm, he doesn't think: pursed lips, brow pinched again. But then it softens and she hands the rest of her cigarette down to him, beckons him up to sit in the window. He doesn't refuse her anything and she settles back against him. He can feel her pressing in against his thoughts... He hides his uncertainty before he lets her in, but he loves this dreamchaser woman's touch, no a matter what form it takes.
0
He leaves in the morning without saying a word, because he doesn't know how to say goodbye, how he could possibly make himself leave her.
Fela is not surprised. He used to say goodbye, when it was assured he would never have to see her again until it was convenient to him. The coward. She's still cold when she wakes up, cold and angry. She's still simmering when Delilah asks her if Gauvain will be back later, she murmurs bitterly that they shouldn't expect him.
Andros sees his mother's pain, distracts Delilah by quietly offering her breakfast.
"We'll go look for a new lotion," he cajoles. It doesn't take much to redirect his sister, she beams at him before relating their scheme to their mother.
Fela smiles at them, goes to get the beaded purse she carries, intent on giving them whatever coin she has, telling Andros to save his own. She frowns when she finds her coin pouch very full and heavy. She hesitates, contemplating tossing the entire thing out the window in a fit of pique, but... she gives it to the children instead.
"Mother..." Andros starts to say, but she closes his fingers around the pouch for him.
"Go, have fun."
"You're not coming?" Delilah asks, oblivious to her mother's feelings.
"Not today, darling," Fela tells her, holds her smile very well, all the way until she's seen them out the door and past the windows. She retreats back to bed then.
She sheds her tears alone, the feeling will pass quickly enough.