That Cute Child
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
The first year
Too old to be a daughter. Too young to be a rival. That was just the beginning of the conundrum presented to Caeda in the form of the manakete child that her husband had brought home... to raise?
"Like a sister," Marth described the relationship, but though Tiki called out for "Big Brother" when she was excited or scared, Caeda felt that wasn't quite the term to describe it. Siblings, at least as far as Caeda knew, shared a level of familiarity above all else, and the bond between Marth and Tiki was tinged with strangeness, with fascination. After all, they were not of one blood, of one household. What linked them had nothing whatsoever to do with the connection between Marth and his own elder sister, or any brother and sister that Caeda had ever seen.
The longer Caeda thought about Tiki, the more mad it all seemed. Princess of a dead tribe, ten years of human memory housed in a body that had slept for ten centuries and more. A divine being, dependent on humans for protection, care... and love.
But a promise was a promise, and Marth had promised Tiki that she might live among humans. As Caeda had promised in turn that her own life and Marth's would be as one, and that life included Tiki, and it was Caeda's own choice as to whether she'd accept the the child as blessing or another of the hardships that fate threw their way.
And she was a blessing. Of course Tiki was a blessing; Caeda knew that in the instant she first saw the pair of them running down the stairs of the eastern tower, hand in hand. In that moment, in the glittering ice mansions of the ancient temple, something about the entire mad quest forced upon them made sense in a way that it hadn't before. Tiki was the thing they'd been seeking, not holy weapons or enchanted jewels.
And so, she responded, following one step behind Marth when the cries came in the night- I don't want to sleep, I'm afraid, Big Brother, please...
She could have remained in their bed, knowing that Tiki wasn't calling for her, but wasn't it better to let the girl know that many people loved her? She followed Marth down the corridor to Tiki's room, every time, not returning to their own bed until the little girl slept. In the daylight, in public, Caeda ignored the glances of those who could not understand how she could tolerate the unselfconscious need of this little creature who thought nothing of flinging her arms around Caeda's husband and demanding attention.
Big Brother. Little Sister. And Caeda, just Caeda, forming a third point to the triangle whenever they were all in one room together. Not another sister, and not a mother to the child... not yet.
"Don't worry," she whispered to him at the close of that year. "You'll be a wonderful father. I know. I've seen you with Tiki."
The tenth year
For a brief time, it seemed that Tiki might age as any child- she was first the size of a seven-year-old, then a ten-year-old, then hovered at that precipice that children reached around the age of twelve, when they were not quite children anymore... yet were not truly women or men. But there she stayed, never crossing the boundary, and the very human children around her made Tiki's unchanged state all the more vivid.
Caeda sang to them, sang the old lullaby of Talys she'd learned from her own mother. They were hers, enchanting creatures that called out ma-ma as they reached out with tiny hands. They asked for her when the nightmares came, ran to her with bruised knees and cut fingers. Father might be the one keeping the entire world safe from the dragons and the pirates and the barbarians, but Mama ruled over the nursery. Except for Tiki's room, the little nest of rose-colored frills; Caeda's dominion didn't extend there, not completely. Tiki only came running to Caeda if Big Brother were not available.
Tiki was delighted at first that she would now be a Big Sister, as that was how the newcomers defined themselves,Tiki-wise. Caeda wondered, at times, if "brother" and "sister" didn't have some other meaning to Tiki's own people. She wondered, and she felt, with increasing conviction, that Tiki did not see their world as a human girl or a woman or any other human might. She felt that most keenly in the moments she saw her own children through Tiki's eyes- these strange little things who came into the world so helpless and yet transformed so quickly, outgrowing clothes and boots and gloves from season to season.
They grew, and Tiki remained ever the same, never quite reaching the stage at which a child has the revelation that a small glass nearly full and a large one nearly empty contained the same measure of water.
She would soon be the Little Sister to all of them, and did not seem to know it.
The twentieth year
Caeda's son and daughter grew, and sought out the sword and the lance, and the echoing halls of Millennium Court seemed empty when they were off with their teachers.
Empty, that is, if not for Tiki, who still played hide-and-seek under the tapestries and ran laughing down the corridor, who still tried to slide down the banister of the great staircase, who still left her toys in a jumble upon the floor.
Marth never told her she was too old for such behavior. Likewise, he'd never yet had to tell her, "Tiki, you're too large for me to carry." They still walked through the gardens at sunset, the three of them, with Tiki riding on Marth's shoulders as she'd done every year since they'd come to live in Pales.
"None of us expected to be here, to never go home," Marth said one night as they made one more circuit of the reflecting pool at Tiki's request, "but it's worked out, hasn't it?"
Even in the twilight, she saw clearly that he was asking a question with his eyes, the same imploring question as ever- Please tell me I did the right thing.
"I don't feel we're not at home anymore," she said. "We've made this our home; it's not just some haunted old place we inherited that's nothing to do with us. It's ours."
They'd made it their own a piece at a time, as they replaced the broken windows and painted over old murals, laid new carpets over the stains in the floor, put up new tapestries and statues in place of the ones that were torn and burned and toppled. Millennium Court told a different tale now than it had in the days of the old kings, and it told the true tale, the one that went back to the beginnings of time and the miracles of the Guardian God... Tiki's actual father.
The being Tiki never knew and for whom she had no love. She would look upon the stained-glass windows that made Him, and her, the center of their universe, and point out some irrelevant detail, a hidden bird or flower, or the face of some long-departed friend that stayed in her memory.
This no longer concerned Caeda; what concerned her was the day on which Tiki would want to know about the Heavenly Father. The day on which she... wanted more...
Above them, Tiki yawned, just like any sleepy little girl.
"I think someone needs to go to bed now," Marth said, in quite a different tone, for he didn't indulge Tiki in every possible way.
They put Tiki to bed, as they'd done every night since the children had left. As Marth lingered at Tiki's side for a moment, running his fingers through her tumbled curls, Caeda could read in him the selfish wish of every parent who had cradled a sleeping child: I wish you could stay this way, stay with me, forever.
In a century, or five, or ten, Tiki might accept her lot as the Guardian Goddess. In that moment, she was Marth's little girl, his first and last, his youngest and eldest, and and the King of All Kings had no will to resist her.
The thirtieth year
Caeda had just reached the edge of sleep when she heard the patter of slippered feet upon the tile, a common sound now in Millennium Court. She knew each grandchild by the sound of their steps in the dark. Marina couldn't sleep because she thought the statues would come alive at midnight, and Cedric claimed he'd seen a ghost in the throne room, sitting on the steps leading up to the throne. Caeda worried about that one, just a little, as that was the place where the bloodstains never did come out of the marble and they'd put a new carpet down in the end.
But this wasn't Marina, or Cedric, or Ariane. These feet belonged to a child who was, or should have been, too old to come running for reassurance in the night. Then, too, Caeda heard a distinct whispering sound in between the footsteps.
Only one of their children had feathered wings sprouting from her shoulders.
"Big Brother!"
And she leapt onto the bed, explaining to them both in rushed syllables about Cedric's ghost and Marina's living statues and the dead Earth Dragon buried out in the gardens.
"Tiki, there are no Earth Dragons. There never will be as long as I'm with you, I promise. We sealed them away together, remember?"
Caeda noticed that Marth had stopped promising that there would never be Earth Dragons again, ever. In the last few years, he'd chosen his words with her a little more carefully, not making Tiki the broad promises he'd once used to comfort her.
Caeda played with a stray feather as Marth talked Tiki through their great victory over all Earth Dragons, repeating old Gotoh's promise that the victory was complete this time. But Tiki didn't trust Gotoh, and never had- Tiki feared him, the way she feared the Earth Dragons, her own power, and the power of the Heavenly Father. She wanted to hear Big Brother tell her the that Earth Dragons were gone and dead and sleeping for good, and he wouldn't say that anymore.
"You're safe with me, Tiki. Safe with us. You always have been."
There were no words, Caeda thought, for human parents to adequately explain to a child that someday a great shadow would fall again across the land and it was that child's duty to face that alone, absolutely alone, and to protect every other life on upon Earth in the bargain. Marth should have been able to reassure the divine princess that she would be able to meet her duty when that day came, but he couldn't because there were no words in either of their languages to bridge the gap of comprehension.
Instead, he did what any parent did, falling back on a technical truth that was really a lie.
Long after Tiki had fallen asleep, wedged between them, Marth took hold of one of those white wings, stretching it out for Caeda to see.
"Someday, these wings will be large enough to shelter all of humanity. They'll have to be. But, Caeda..."
"Shhh."
There were no words for any of it, really. Cedric and Marina and Ariane all would grow to learn their ghosts and living statues couldn't harm them, but the things that Tiki saw in the darkness lasted forever.
The fortieth year
The King of all Kings had a problem, and needed her assistance. Again. Caeda went because it was her duty. Again.
"I don't know how to quiet her when she wakes in the night calling for Father."
To this, a common complaint from her son, Caeda had no answer.
"You must learn," she said in the end. Learn to deal with the child-goddess, as you've learned to hold a sword when your talent should've been for magic. This is the fate that chose you.
In return, her son made a silent appeal with his eyes: I'll be measured against him in every other way, every day as long as I'll live; don't ask this of me also.
Her resolve broke as it always did, splintered upon the shoals of this unexpected resentment which her only son held against his absent father. And so, the next time a familiar high wail echoed in the palace, Caeda was the one to walk down the dim corridor to the little room done up in frills of rose and violet. She stepped with care around the thrown-down toys upon the carpet, and sat down on the child's bed to reassure the girl that, even if the world didn't seem as bright as it once did, Tiki was loved and cherished and secure... and would be always.
And the little hands clung to her- to her alone- and the sobs died away to sniffles as Caeda cradled her daughter. Her eldest and youngest, her first and her last little one.
"I won't leave you alone, Tiki. Wherever we go, we'll be together. I promise."
And that night, as Tiki's little arms reached around Caeda's neck, she didn't say "Caeda," nor did she say "Big Sister." With her face buried into Caeda's shoulder, Tiki spoke the word she'd never used in all the years of her long, strange life.
"Mama."
"Shh, baby. I've got you."
The white wings beneath her fingers might need to shelter the world, but Caeda needed to shelter her daughter for just a little while longer. Just a little while, a few seconds in the stream of eternity. A few moments to soothe the fears in the heart of the child, to warm that heart and fill it with love, so that on some dark day beyond their ken, the Guardian Goddess would turn her loving heart into a shield for all of her people.
"Shh, Tiki. We'll be all right."
This, too, was fate, the choices they'd made and those thrust upon them blended together into one nebulous now and an even more murky tomorrow. Caeda held her daughter and began to sing.
The End
Author's Note: I thought Caeda's perspective on bringing up a dragon child would be interesting; the various endings of FE3 seem to acknowledge the, ah, potential complications of a "Tiki makes three" relationship, complications that Caeda would try to address as gracefully as she takes all the other curveballs life tosses at her. I do find it telling that none of the later FE Lords ever tried to take a dragon loli home, though. Fa stays in Nabata, and Myrrh only integrates into society if Saleh is her A-support- not Ephraim. Ephraim can have his princess or his dragon loli, but not both.