Beach Baby
A companion to Painted Dreams
Disclaimer: Needless to say, I'm not Emily Rodda.
Lief was looking with blurred eyes at the seemingly endless sheafs of parchment that obscured the dark wood of his ornately carved desk. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He looked at the door, a few mere feet away, and then he looked at the papers, back at the door, back at the papers. The door won. Lief sorted out the papers into slightly more organised piles and weighed them down with his ever growing collection of paperweights (they seemed to be commuting in his workroom) and almost skipped to the door.
xxx
Half an hour later, he was sitting on the beach watching the waves role gracefully into the harbour; the docks for trade ships and the Royal navy were being steadily built and expanded. His people were swimming in the almost clear waters and he could hear the ball games of the children behind him.
He smiled; slowly but surely, Deltora was becoming a country of opportunity, safety and freedom. Then his gaze fell on the sight that pleased him the most.
His three-year-old baby girl was splashing around in one of the rock pools, while her mother kept her stunningly green eagle eyes on her. Anna was pointing and laughing, dipping her hands into the water and saturating herself and her Mama. Lief stood up and walked over to his little family.
"What is that Annie?" Lief asked, kneeling next to them and pointing at some brightly coloured thing at the bottom of the pool.
"It's a starfish!"
"Really? How do you know?"
"Cause Mama tol' me,"
"Oh, well then it must be a starfish then, huh?" Lief said, looking over Anna's wisely nodding head, a question in his eyes as he looked at Jasmine. She nodded.
Jasmine lifted Anna up and sat her on her lap. Anna looked at her, annoyed that Mama had ruined the great fun she had been having, and tried, unsuccessfully, to wriggle out of her grasp. She eventually gave up and turned her face up to glare at Jasmine. Jasmine just smiled back and planted a cheek on top of her black, curly head. Lief bent down slightly until he was on eye-level with her. This was a very important conversation.
"Annie…Mama and I have something we would like to tell you, dear heart."
"I wanna play!" More wriggling towards the rock pool, Lief took her from Jasmine, who was starting to struggle, and threw her a little way up into the air. She giggled and settled down almost immediately into his lap.
"You just have to know how to deal with her," he told his glaring wife. Anna was looking at her mother expectantly now; she knew there was no way she was going to get away from Daddy.
"Well, Annie," Jasmine hesitated, "Mama and Daddy are having a brand new baby. You're going to be a big sister."
Anna did not look at all phased by this.
"What is a baby?" She asked.
"A smaller, less chatty version of you," her father told her.
"Oh…will it have a different name? Cause I like my name, I don't want to share."
"Yes," Jasmine said, "the baby will have a different name. We could not call a little boy Anna, could we?"
"That would be funny!" Anna chortled.
Lief and Jasmine laughed at their little girl. They were looking very forward to having a smaller, less chatty, version of her. A baby boy would be nice…
Long time, no write.
Hope you enjoyed it.
Love, Obsidian Crystal