Chapter Text
1 - Summer
Common wisdom held that second pregnancies were easier than first ones, but hell if my girl didn't turn that right on its head. That's DG though, the biggest rule breaker of us all. She came on the hottest day of the year after keeping her mother near-bedridden for months, and if we didn't already know for sure she was mine then the godawful shriek she let out would have been a dead giveaway. Flung into a world she wasn't prepared for, oh how I could relate.
Don't get me wrong, I love Azkadellia, heart and soul unconditionally, but holding DG - I can't explain, it was like I finally had...I don't know. It was different.
She looked worried, somehow, and I wanted nothing more than to make that stop.
"You'll get used to it, baby girl," I told her and smoothed down her wispy hair. "It's a weird world but you'll be fine, we've got your back."
2 - Leaves
Despite being the youngest Ambrose elected himself to be the grown-up, and somewhere along the line decided that the game was over. Della wasn't happy, and none of her tricks or tantrums worked because he'd helped her invent them.
So it was up to me to patch things up. I knew I was in way over my head, but got an idea from watching him teach Az how to conceptualize large numbers.
"Now, there are hundreds of leaves in this pile but on a single tree, there are thousands there, yes? Now imagine a forest, all the trees in a forest. Surely there are millions of them. All those trees all those leaves, billions of them, it must be."
Azkadellia's eyes just about bugged out of her head, and she grinned. "And all of the leaves in all of the forests would be trillions!"
"Exactly!" her father said with a nod. "That, little shadow, is why balanced budgets are important. Words on a page are one thing but they represent so much more, you need to respect that."
I ended up handing him a note that said we missed him. It was enough to get the message through.
3 - Felicitous
I got Della, it was Queen Lavendel Celestina Gail the Brilliant that eluded me. Brilliant for her light, her wit, the spark of her eyes. The ribbon-cutter, the administrator, she could approve a headcasing for a judge and then sit down for tea. Ambrose called her a felicitous dragon, I just called her scary.
Della played the harp, and liked wearing men's clothing or no clothes at all. Once, before DG, she went four days without getting dressed, just because she could.She loves reading and riding horseback and her girls and us.
I came to realize there were two of me too, the Prince Consort of totally manufactured prophecy, and Jake from Nebraska. The difference wasn't as noticeable but I still made the mental switch as needed.
Thank Christ there was only the one Ambrose.
4 - City
Drug laws in the Zone pretty much consisted of "do what you like, don't be a dick." Mostly it was a luxury for the upper classes, and since you didn't really get more upper class than us we'd sometimes leave the girls with a governess, hole up in Ambrose's penthouse in Central, and get out of our skulls.
"I still can't believe you have a sin district."
"Doesn't every city?"
"Yeah, but we don't call it that. Or give it a square."
Della gave me a look that said I was being parochial. His Sagacity giggled about "feeling like a Fuddle" and cuddled happily with a foot stool.
Right. "Which one did he have?" I asked and frowned at the candy dish of pills.
"Peppermint," Della replied and fished around the bowl for a pinkish one. She popped it in her mouth and smiled in delight. "Oh, raspberry!"
"And what's that one do?"
"I'm not sure," she replied and pressed another pill between my lips. White chocolate. "Who's regulating this now?"
"Vy'Soriat," Ambrose announced He'd given up on the stool and was now flopped on the floor beside us. "No, no, I'm all in pieces, loves, come and put me together."
Della never needed to be told twice and fell upon him. I followed along with a laugh.
5 - Truant
Azkadellia knew without being told, which shouldn't have surprised me. Still, I'm the one she called "Daddy," to keep up appearances I guess.
She was old enough to sit in on briefings wit her mother, but I'd taken her out to play hooky with her sister. We sat at the mosaic table under the rain tree and watched DG strut along after Guinevere.
"It doesn't matter, though, does it?" Az asked. Her eyes were dark and curious but not at all ashamed. That's our girl.
"Not to us," I told her. "And if anyone puts up a stink, well, there's no denying who your mom is."
Her smile was proud, and I tugged at one of the loose curls of her hair.
Right on cue the moment was ruined by a splash, a squawk, and the wail of a very offended princess. Az and I sighed and hurried to fish DG out of the reflecting pool. Again.
Someday she'd figure out that lily pads wouldn't hold her weight.
6 - Family
Lavendel's mother died when she was ten, and by the time I arrived her father was a senile husk.
Ambrose's parents had given him to the temple, who gave him to the crown, who gave him to six-year-old Lavendel.
I ran away from that bitch the first chance I got.
So none of us really knew what we were doing, but between the born leader, the genius, and...me, we figured it out.
Della and I were curled up on a couch while Ambrose loomed by the fireplace, the girls rapt at his feet while he told some ghoulish fairy tale from Ev. Something about Phanfasms. We all laughed and cringed, and Az hugged her sister.
The next day Ambrose sequestered himself in his lab and told us to go on the Finaqua without him. Looking back, I realized it was the last night the five of us were together.
7 - Dusk
There was a glow through the little shack's window.
It was just after sunsset, and I was heading down to grab my sketchbook before dinner. The shack by the lake was a small sanctuary, a bolthole I had just for me. They'd offered me an entire wing of the palace but the potter's shed with the view of the water was fine. Just enough space to write and draw, it was all I wanted.
I couldn't stop grinning at the little figurines, and their glow. I knew they would keep me company and light my way no matter what, so from then on I kept them close by.
8 - Bear
Lavendel had vanished in a fury some hours before, and I'd scolded the girls for wandering before taking them to the kitchens for sweets. Now the queen was back, and there was blood on her hands, arms, face, matted into her hair, soaked into her blouse and the trousers she'd borrowed from Ambrose's wardrobe.
"I'm in need of a tanner."
Holy shit, I wanted to say. "I think you need a bath, first."
She looked down and nodded graciously. "Oh. Yes, I suppose so."
Briefly, the bearskin rug in her office served as a warning to any who threatened her daughters. Daughter. Family. Kingdom.
9 - Shell
I'd catch Azkadellia staring into a mirror. She'd raise her eyebrows, try lots of different smiles, tilt her head this way and that. Practicing, I assumed, all the expressions of a queen.
But she kept going back to this one sly, self-satisfied smirk which I wasn't sure was appropriate. Yeah, she was growing up (faster every day, it seemed) but it was still weird.
"Butterflies rehearse when they're in the cocoon," Zane told me. He was thumbing through an actual book of prophecy, one his aunt had written, and frowned at a certain passage. "...in the stillness between, hm."
I shook my head and again wished Ambrose was there, he'd get it, but he was still obsessed with that crazy sun-moon machine thing.
"I'll let you get back to your work, Toto."
Zane raised his eyebrows. "I'm trying to get your daughter to stop calling me that, you know."
"Sorry."
10 - Dream
Della woke up screaming for Ambrose. Thankfully we'd gone back to the Northern Island so all he had to do was climb over me to get to her.
"What is it, Del?"
She just clung to him and wept. The look he gave me was baffled, and all I could do was shrug so he pulled me in too. Della's fingers twisted in my hair and she begged us not to leave her.
"It was just a nightmare," I suggested hopefully, but she shook her head.
"No. Worse."
Ambrose, always eager to know the future, asked "What did you dream?"
"I cannot say. Just...please, please promise-"
We did the best we could, but fate's an ugly bitch.