The Memorial Grave

Talarn knew he was in trouble. Parents aren't exactly understanding with a child sneaking off in the middle of the night to explore strange jungles on an even stranger planet. They expected him to sleep, but what young boy at the age of 14 would be able to sleep with a bona fide secret to explore, right outside his tent? The night wind was sweet and promised untold wonders to see. The woods around the landing site twinkled in the bright starry night like a gigantic green jewel, rustling with its myriad leaves like a beautiful woman modestly adjusting her dress as an admirer looks at her. And somewhere out there, deep in these strange woods, a mystery beckoned.

His Sentinel VI, a gift from his parents on his fourth birthday, when his talent for unlicensed exploration had surfaced, was not amused about yet another expedition into the unknown. "Parental Guidelines suggest you should turn back.", it shrieked as loud as it could with the limited volume granted to it. "This area is dangerous. An estimate of 52 exemplars of species capable of harming you have been detected in the immediate vicinity".

"I'll be careful, then. Now shut up, or you'll draw them here!", Talarn snapped under his breath. Defeated by logic, the VI shut down for the moment. Talarn looked around. There were a lot of interesting things here. Purple flowers that released sparkling pollen when the night wind shook them. Colonies of trees, or almost trees, that grew in clusters and seemed to fuse their crowns, forming latticed domes in whose center more often than not a pale and gigantic flower bloomed. Sentinel mentioned unobtrusively that the flower was poison, and Talarn was none too happy about the carrion smell they emanated, so he left them alone. They did nothing against his excitement building up, though. This was an amazing place!

Talarn continued on until he stepped out of the woods onto a perfectly round clearing. Its ground was covered with grass and similar plants in all colors of the rainbow. The plants were fascinating enough, but as Talarn lifted his gaze, his jaw hit the floor as much as it was able.

In the middle of the clearing sat a starship.

She gleamed white with the light of the firmament. She was a dream formed of sleek, ever so slightly curving lines, the black and blue highlights on her hull sparkling with reflected flares. Even here, sitting on the ground, she seemed to yearn for speed, for freedom, for the infinite reaches of space. Her size made her a frigate, but Talarn had never seen her like, nor had he expected to find something as exotic and interesting as her on a garden world that all species in Citadel space had apparently decided was unworthy of colonization. Where did the ship come from? According to the markings it was Alliance military. Why was it not in service?

Here was a mystery worthy of any explorer, which is why Talarn was quite vexed when Sentinel's Parental Proximity alert went off.

Hacking Sentinel so that it would alert him to the presence of his parents had not been easy, but it was quite useful. According to the VI, his father came up out of the forest behind him in a swift stride. He was not running, which was good. Apparently his absence at the camp had not yet been discovered. Talarn retreated a bit into the underbrush and resolved to wait and see what his father would do. Could it be that he was here for the ship?

Collin Marsten, father of Talarn, husband of Melina, strode out of the jungle with a bottle of Red Janey vodka in his hand. Talarn had only seen that bottle on a few rare occasions: His father almost never drank. As the medical officer of the Xian, he had often explained to his slightly more sanguinely minded wife and captain, it was his responsibility to present a healthy example to the crew. But here he stood, spun the cap, lifted the bottle towards the frigate and drank deep.

"To what can never be repaid!" he rumbled, sat down, reclined against a tree on the border of the woods and observed the clearing.

Talarn was fascinated. Apparently his father knew the ship and its significance! Too bad that no amount of stealth would allow him to continue now: His father had sharp eyes. But giving up was unthinkable: He had to know more about the ship. They had three more days on this planet. He would make sure that they did not go to waste.

So Talarn went back to the camp site, not seeing that his father, after drinking the rest of his bottle, took a few tentative steps toward the ship, shook his head sadly and went to the camp as well, lines of sorrow on his face.

The next day was stressful. Apparently they had come to harvest the fruit and leaves of the dome trees. It was not easy work, because the fruit grew on the highest branches, the noxious fumes from the carrion flower in the middle of most of the domes were nauseating and the fruit was heavy. But Talarn didn't mind the work, because his mind was elsewhere, endlessly speculating about the nature and history of the ship in the jungle. His parents noticed his absentmindedness and threw each other significant looks, but none of them said anything. The rest of the crew was happy to leave Talarn alone as long as he did his share.

The blue sun stood high in the sky when Captain Melina called a halt. Lunch on board of the Xian started out a quiet affair, everyone bent over his dish of protein stew, but after a while Dryden, a hand of the engine crew, started to get loud while conversing with his friends.

"Why shouldn't we take a souvenir or two? It's right there, for Christ's sakes! Nobody has touched it in over two hundred years! Do you know the kind of scratch we could make off of this? No more slaving away on freighters for us, man!"

His friend, Gavin something-or-other, raised his voice in answer: "OK, maybe we could. Maybe we could find a souvenir nondescript enough to make it through the next customs control. And maybe we could find a buyer with enough of a mercenary attitude to buy from us. But have you even thought about the kind of shit we'd be in? You'd be the first organic life form to be hunted by every single species in existence..."

Talarn was only mildly interested, until his mother rose from her seat. Captain Melina Marsten almost never interfered in the social affairs of the crew unless there was danger of someone getting hurt. But now she got right in the face of Dryden, and spoke with a low, tightly controlled voice:

"Dryden, you better not know what you're talking about, because if you were, I would space you the minute we'd break atmosphere. Lucky for you, ignorance can be cured. So, you've got the afternoon free. Go. Take a hike. Visit. And don't dare to come back until you've thoroughly understood the full monstrosity of your plan."

Grudgingly, Dryden rose, saluted his captain, grabbed a canteen and walked into the jungle. Talarn watched him go and doubted that he would learn anything: The crew of his parents was mostly ok, but it consisted of mercenaries, always looking for the next source of income and little more. His mother seemed unconcerned, though. She sat back down on her table, shared a moment with her husband, ruffled Talarn's hair and continued eating. But Talarn was not yet ready to dismiss this.

"Mother, where did you send Dryden?"

"To school. This planet has a very important lesson to teach, and Dryden must have skipped it in Elem Ed."

"Can I go and learn, too?"

A complicated expression crossed Melinas face. "No. Not yet, anyway. When you're older, maybe, but understand, sometimes it's better not to know for a while."

"Dryden didn't know, and you made him go!", Talarn pointed out with an indignant tone in his voice.

"I didn't do him any favors.", his mother answered and would say no more.

Despite the fact that it hadn't been mentioned, Talarn was sure that Dryden had gone to the starship in the jungle. Apparently it wasn't dangerous, or Dryden wouldn't have gone alone. The reckless part of him was a bit disappointed at this, but his curiosity was really stoked now. He would not be able to sleep much until he found out what was there to know.

Dryden returned after three hours. Without saying a word he took his place in the working crews and did his share. A few of his colleagues tried to engage him in conversation, but the man was terse and withdrawn. What he had seen obviously had made a great impact on him.

An hour after midnight, Talarn stood at the edge of the clearing. The ship seemed frosted with starlight, the blue and black stripes on its hull pulling him, drawing him in, while the white promised something wonderful or terrible. Talarn knew it was his own imagination that fed on his expectations, but the magic of the moment was undeniable. He rode the high of an explorer taking the first step towards something wholly unknown to him.

He strode towards the ship, through the many-colored meadow around it. Soon he arrived to see that the freight hatch was open. He felt a slight shiver and Sentinel informed him, that he had passed a low intensity kinetic barrier as he stepped towards the hatch. Finally he set his foot upon the ramp leading up into the ship.

Suddenly, a flash of an image shot through Talarns minds, a bright and terrible scene of destruction. The ship was flying, rapidly escaping from a city in flames. Beyond the open freight hatch, a giant robotic walker machine was shooting sizzling laser blasts left and right, destroying everything it saw. It looked, no, felt evil. No wonder a collection of military and civilian people were fleeing from it.

Talarn saw with an unnatural clarity a young boy entering a shuttle. The shuttle lifted off and seemed to have gotten away, when the machine took aim and shot it out of the sky. As the shuttle exploded Talarn felt a heart wrenching stab of loss and despair that made him actually fall to the ground. The scene in his mind vanished, but the sense of loss stayed with him.

"Sentinel, what was that?"

"Induced memory simulation. You were shown a memory of someone. I cannot determine the source."

"Is it dangerous?", Talarn asked, Panic rising in him.

"Preliminary medical scans reveal no physical changes. However, your stress levels indicate that the experience was not a pleasant one. I suggest not repeating it."

Talarn was relieved and rejected the idea of leaving instantly. Sentinel was good at its job and if it said that the hallucination left no permanent traces, he could believe it. And yes, the image and the forthcoming emotions had been terrible, but they had also piqued his ever growing curiosity. Something had happened with this ship, something grand and tragic, and somehow it was telling its tale. Talarn wanted more than anything to listen, to experience, to learn. Dismissing the impact of the scene on his emotional state, he pressed on. But still, his steps into the dark cargo bay were careful.

As he left the loading ramp, the lights inside the ship engaged and flooded the great room with cold, white light. Grey walls and a low hanging ceiling gave the impression of a cavern. Talarn could see fine strands of a black metal that seemed to have been attached to the wall in some kind of loose grid. They seemed to shimmer with green fluorescence near his position. Suddenly he knew that this grid was responsible for the hallucination he experienced when entering the ship. He knew that the grid would not inflict any physical damage. Its only purpose was to show the past, but going further was nevertheless dangerous.

Talarn understood that this sudden knowledge was how the grid communicated directly. Whoever installed it had not intended it to be a trap or harmful to anyone, therefore it came with a kind of warning: Go ahead at your own risk. Talarn only hesitated for a moment, and then continued onward.

As he crossed the shuttle bay, he saw phantoms out of the corners of his eye. A big, well muscled marine exercising. A pilot maintaining a shuttle. Other military personal flitting in and out of view, walking with purpose. All the faces Talarn saw were grim or sad. The whole crew, for what else could they be, looked sorrowful or afraid, but all of them walked with purpose. The memory grid sent him snatches of the confidence keeping these people going, a confidence they had in their commander. Talarn did not get a clear sense of who she was, but she must have really been something.

At the end of the shuttle bay was an elevator. The grid did not extend into the lift, and it gave Talarn to understand that the lift was a zone of rest, where visitors could recuperate from the sensorial, mental and emotional strain of the projections. Talarn entered it and found himself breathing a sigh of relief. Constantly having to discover new knowledge projected into his consciousness, having to deal with feelings stemming not from himself and having to separate the projections from reality was quite a bit of effort.

He examined the destination buttons of the elevator with interest. There were five of them: Captain's Cabin, CiC, Crew Deck, Engineering and his current location, the shuttle bay. Not sure how to proceed, he chose Engineering first, since it was the next deck. The elevator hummed a bit and then the door slid open to reveal a blue-tinged corridor stretching to both sides of the elevator. A huge window in front of Talarn looked into the shuttle bay he had just left. On a whim he chose to walk to the right end of the corridor and open the door there. The room behind it was dark and barren, lit with just enough light to show a basin with water in one corner and not much else. The memory grid glowed softly as he entered.

Suddenly Talarns head was full of rage. He saw a young Krogan in white armor pacing the room, occasionally punching the walls, clearly in the grip of the terrible rages that accompany that species' coming of age. Talarn felt his blood boil, his muscles burn with the desire to crush, to tear, to prove strong, worthy, superior. The only thing that was holding him back was the knowledge that the commander would not approve, that her respect for him would be diminished if he lost it. Dimly, Talarn could sense the future of the Krogan: Great victories, a momentous struggle to better himself and his people, a life full of hard-won victories, small and great. But the emotional specter of Krogan teenage fury was almost too much for the human boy.

Then the atmosphere in the room changed, became darker. The fury of the Krogan had almost felt like a physical thing. The emotion that replaced it came from a cold, dark place. Talarn saw a tall warrior of a species he had never seen before pace through the room. His armor looked like old blood. His trapezoid head was armored in scales, his face was dominated by his four large yellow eyes. But while his physical presence was impressive, the storm of emotions coming from him was overwhelming: Rage, Depression, thirst for vengeance and a terrible death wish held in check only by the stubborn resolve to act, to be heard, not to fall into oblivion.

Talarn saw pictures, memories of the alien and learned that it was a Prothean, the last of its kind. He saw an ancient civilization, a galaxy-wide empire, proud and powerful. Then he saw it dying in a galaxy-wide genocide, cities crumbling and whole worlds burning in the pitiless void. 'Look at the unjustly slaughtered!' a voice screamed across the stars and Talarn felt like his head was exploding. 'Look at our fate! How can there be justice or mercy in this world or any other if THIS was allowed to happen!' Talarn's own dismay and terror at the unfathomable crime mixed with the anguish and fury of the last Prothean, until he felt his sanity stretching under the emotional onslaught like a rope beginning to fray. He cried out without hearing himself over the torrent of voices in his head, and fled.

When his blind flight found the elevator, Talarn slumped against its far wall. His head filled with blissful silence. Slowly his emotions purged themselves of the outside influences, the rage subsided. His breathing slowed down. Finally, a steady beeping from his wrist attracted Talarns attention. Sentinel, alarmed by his sudden panic attack and surging adrenaline levels, was asking if it should inform his emergency contact of his situation. The timer had almost run down when Talarn shut it off. Another physical scan proved what he already knew: There was no harm done to him physically. But it had been scary, unbelievably scary. When had this happened? When had an empire that had spanned the entire been ground into nothing?

He knew though. Or at least he suspected. Every child learns about the Extinction Wars in Elem Ed, about the Reapers and their cyclic mission of genocide, until the Shepard, the greatest military mind humanity and the galaxy had ever seen, had beaten them the last time they tried to kill of all spacefaring civilizations in the galaxy. But school had taught him numbers, facts, dates, never what that war must have actually felt like.

That you can learn only here, in this ship. That is its function. And although he was vaguely afraid of not being strong enough to withstand this lesson, Talarn was also very intrigued.

He pressed the button for the crew deck. The elevator hummed and rose. The door opened again into a corridor just like the one in engineering. Right on the other side of the corridor was a memorial wall. White Names edged in black stone, flanking the starkly white symbol of the old Alliance. Talarn knew this symbol out of his history lessons. It told him that this ship was very old, at least four hundred years. After all, the Alliance had changed its banners right after the Extinction War. But here the old symbol was. Oddly enough, the memory grid did not extend to this place. Talarns thoughts and emotions were entirely his own. He stepped to the wall and read a few names at random. Mordin Solus. Raymond Tanaka. Legion. Thane Krios. Emily Shepard. Hector Emerson. Kaidan Alenko.

Talarns eyes flicked back. Emily Shepard. The Shepard! This must have been her ship! That would make it the fabled Normandy! He stood on the very floor the savior of all spacefaring life in the galaxy had trodden on! If people but knew, this place would be swamped with tourists!

His fervor renewed a thousand fold, Talarn went back to exploring. He took the right path, passed the doors marked with "Life Support" and "Starboard Observation", but decided on a whim to enter the door marked "office", and stared into the eye of the Galaxy.

It was an array of wall-mounted monitors showing the Milky Way in astonishing detail. A young Asari stood in front of the screens, studying them intensely. She looked immensely beautiful, but Talarn, practiced rogue that he was also saw that she would be a very bad person to mess with. There was an edge to ho she watched the monitor, and the way her fragile jaw set told him that if you tried to pull the wool over her eyes, her gaze would burn through it.

The swirl of emotions Talarn felt from her was mesmerizing. He saw the image of a burning world, red embers against brilliant green, tall spires of astonishing grace tumbling to the ground, fire devouring emerald jungles and cyan temples alike. He saw the Asari spilling quiet tears in the night, saw her stride into battle on a dozen worlds, grimly determined to hold on to what was left with every ounce of strength, and finally he heard her whisper a sentence to herself: Shepard will make them pay.

And suddenly the thought of that dying, beautiful world was gone. Not forgotten, but fading into the background of consciousness, replacing by a tangle of overwhelmingly strong emotions and memories, coalescing into the image of a human woman. Darkly red hair falling in rebellious strands. Green eyes burning with an inner fire and yet seemingly haunted. Strong, sensuous lips. A voice like dark honey poured over shining steel. Pale Skin that seems to sing under caresses. A body as tough as nails but capable of melting in all the right ways under the right circumstances. Talarn blushed as memories of shared intimacy, tender moments and passionate hours, brushed his consciousness and hurriedly dismissed them, feeling like an intruder into something very private.

But oh! The emotions that came with these glimpses into a relationship: Admiration for a truly exceptional commander. Complete trust in her integrity. Unshakable confidence that she could deal with anything out there. Quite a bit of lust. Exasperation about how she always had to carry the whole universe on her shoulders and how hard it was for her to share some of the load with others. Sorrow for the beloved, for she bore a burden that, over time, would crack even her, whose strength almost defied belief. Fatalism, because someone had to carry that weight, and nobody in the universe would bear it as well as she did.

And love. Love like a strong, gushing river, secure in the knowledge of being returned, larger now for having been diminished once by a cruel universe, love unending.

Another image of bodies entwining and melting for each other chased Talarn out of the room. Although his father had explained the facts of live to him, sex was something secret and slightly forbidden, and human fourteen-year-olds are not quite as comfortable with the reality of sex as the Asari are. Nor are they as lyrical. The disconnect between the way he usually thought about things and the way the Asari thought about the Shepard were simply too different for comfort.

Back on the corridor, he was displeased to discover that time was running out. He didn't have much more than half an hour left if he wanted to slip back into his bed undetected. But there was so much more to see! He knew of course that he might be able to come back, but for his curiosity, there was only the Now, and waiting was torture. Torn between too many options and too little time, he chose to return to the elevator and check out the rest of the ship.

Two undiscovered decks were left: CiC and Captain's Lounge. Both intriguing choices. Talarn knew that the CiC was where the action was on a military starship like this one. On the other hand, the captain's lounge must be the Shepard's lounge! He had to see her room, get to know her memories. So what to do? Talarn decided to have a quick peek into the CiC and then spend his remaining time with Captain Shepard.

The elevator did its thing and the doors opened to the galaxy. The star spiral loomed huge behind an array of command consoles, the holographic image lined out in brilliant clarity. As Talarn stepped towards the command console, the memory grid provided the knowledge of how to operate the galaxy map and what it would show: The history of the Extinction War, every battle fought, every planet lost, right down to every soldier whose death left a record.

Talarn had to take a step back. This was it. All the things the teachers in Elem Ed, Inter Ed and Adv Ed had been silent on and would never talk about to him. The map before him would tell him the answer to things he never even thought to ask about the Extinction War. He only needed to step forward and dive in.

No force in the universe would have been able to stop him.

Where to begin? Talarn decided to check out Tuchanka, the place his parent's freighter had docked last. Directed by his thoughts, the galaxy map swerved and zoomed, until the planet shone in his native dusty red. The planet surface was covered with blinking icons. Talarn picked one at random and zoomed in.

Suddenly he stood in the dusty ruins of a city of some sort. The air smelled bad and the wind coming from a desert in the background burned with heat and cut into every bit of exposed skin it could find. He was surrounded by heavily armed Krogan running around and shooting at only dimly visible shapes approaching through the dust storm. Talarn felt anger and focus: This is my planet. No-one will take Tuchanka from the Krogan, not if the Krogan have anything to say about it.

Without warning an unearthly scream crashed over the battlefield. It seemed to scratch along the inner walls of Talarns skull. In a corona of blue flame a gaunt, devastated horror appeared. It had the elongated, emaciated body of an Asari ruined with metallic implants. The skull was a mess of horns and scars, dead eyes over a missing nose and a perpetual grin with far too many teeth. Talarn had never seen such a creature, but the memory grid supplied its name and emotional context readily enough. It was a Banshee, one of the deadliest creations of the Reapers.

It was close, too close. Talarn's host tried to roll away, but the banshee snatched him up with a clawed hand and raised him up. The fingers tightened slowly around the ribcage of the Krogan, cracking armor, breaking ribs, rending flesh. Talarn experienced a disturbing emotional discrepancy: As his host became more and more injured while pumping round after round of gunfire into the abomination before him, his fury mounted and mounted, but Talarns mind felt his own rising fear and panic as well. The pain was muted, but Talarn knew what was happening: This nightmare made defiled flesh would kill him.

When the mix of borrowed rage and genuine terror rose enough to be almost unbearable, Talarn heard a short, wet cracking sound and the vision faded quickly, leaving Talarn in a shivering pile on the floor. His resolve had finally broken, he just wanted out of here. A blind dash brought him back to the elevator. He smashed against the control panel and slid down into a fetal position. He did not notice that he had activated a lift button. He only looked up when the lift door slipped open and showed him the Captain's Cabin and the Captain herself.

Talarn saw a tall, muscular woman with long, red hair sitting on her work desk, intently studying a report. Then she vanished and reappeared in front of the big aquarium on the left side of the apartment. The water painted blue swirls on high cheekbones, glinted in her brilliantly green eyes, turned the deep red of her lips black. Again she vanished and reappeared lying down, watching the star scape through the skylight above her bed. Talarn could not help admiring her athletic figure but strangely enough it was her face he found himself studying again and again. With her even more than with the Asari he felt that it would be a terrible idea to cross her. When she seemed to look in his direction, Talarn felt as if she could see him across all the centuries she already spent in her grave, and that she could see him with even more clarity than his own parents.

And then the memory grid changed gears and Talarn saw her, really saw her as he had never seen another being. Saw a childhood full of light drown in a flood of darkness. He felt something harden in her in those days and dimly knew that when most children would have faded out of live, she, against all odds hardened herself so much against the possibility of letting go that she became incapable of giving up. He felt the savage triumph of escape, then the growing sense of duty and personal strength when she joined the Alliance military. Then a surge of grim determination leading to a costly victory, undermined by doubt and guilt felt in quiet moments, until the very thing she was praised for in some circles tasted like ash to her.

An ash out of which a new idealism sparked, a new personal mission, to live a life for diversity and tolerance, so that decisions like the one she made should never be made again. An opportunity arose, out of which she forged a triumph that made the galaxy sit up and take notice, and placed humankind on the galactic map in the best light possible.

Then, at a moment of bright illumination, darkness, and a new, never suspected awakening into a time of blurring lines and unclear judgment, out of which grew a bittersweet triumph and the knowledge about an unavoidable fight that was impossible to win. Sleepless nights followed, spent wrestling with the question of how to go on, how to make certain defeat mean something. Blindly she groped for a reason to go on beyond her sheer inability to give in. Finally her acquiescence that there was no reason but that what cannot be borne must be fought, no matter the chances.

An unexpected ray of hope arrived. Her days were suddenly filled with grim, incandescent purpose, while at night she agonized over what it all meant. Simple survival was not enough anymore. There had to be an answer to the problem that brought about the Extinction War, a meaning. Something that made all the dead worthwhile and would free the survivors from the eternally looming shadow.

Talarn sank far into this maelstrom of determination against despair. Fascinated, his higher cognitive functions engaged deeper and deeper with the mental essence the memory grid was showing him. The frantic warning beeps of his Sentinel program went unheard, as were his whimpers while his subconscious frantically tried to block the sensory overload. Talarns body went into convulsions. He never noticed.

This was how his parents found him half an hour later. They had disengaged the memory grid. Their crew was sweeping the whole ship, but an intuition had led the Marstens to the Captain's cabin. A hastily executed scan told the frantic parents that their son was in deep slumber. His overtaxed brain had finally given out and he had lost consciousness, but according to the medical program, there had been no lasting physical damage and he would make a full recovery. Slightly reassured but still anxious to leave the ship, Collin lifted his son and carried him out of the room, Melina following closely. They both heard their son murmur something. "Species" and "Right to Exist" were understandable, but the Marstens paid little heed to the actual meaning of the words: They were just glad that their son was able to talk at all.

Leaving the lift, they crossed the shuttle bay quickly and almost ran into the daylight basking the many-colored meadow outside, but before they left the Normandy, both father and mother saw the inscription above the doors.

Every species able to ask for its right to exist

has earned it.

Emily Shepard

Message from Captain Melina Marsten, Starship Xian, to Garret MacLir, Presidium Commons, Citadel:

Brother!

It's been a while, but you know how it is during a long haul, there is always too much to do to observe the obligations of family. We're all alive and well, and the journey is going smoothly. We stand to make quite a bit of profit out of this tour.

Talarn is... fine, I guess. There's nothing wrong with him, but I can't deny that he's changed since his adventure on Shepard's Rest. It's hard to describe. For example: He used to go out on his own all the time, exploring, just for the joy of it. That's gone now. He still explores, but now it's like an exercise, as if he trains himself to do it as well as possible. That's how he treats his whole life now: Like a preparation for a mission. He's talking about joining the Alliance these days, about serving with the First Contact teams on the Rachni Worlds. It's not like he's become unrecognizable, he is our son, we love him and are damn proud of him, but I can't help but feel that he's lost a piece of his innocence that day on board of the Normandy, and I wish… I wish he could have kept it a bit longer.

Wow. Turns out that was the main thing I wanted to talk to you about. Don't worry, sometimes parents are simply slow to adjust to their children growing up, and then they have to bother their relatives with their worries.

I hope we'll see you soon! Best regards to Arja and the kids!

Melina