The Children Of Merlin
In my long life I have had four children, and there are many reasons why this is so, but this story is about them, not me. When I say four children, I mean that four of them lived beyond the day they were born. Their names are (for they live in memory still) Sara and Eleni, Christopher, and Alisha.
Sara and Eleni were sisters, born three years and eight months apart. Sara was the eldest, the bravest, with so strong personality and sense of self as any I have known. (Perhaps I exaggerate, but I believe I have that right.) She inherited her mother's fair hair and complexion, slenderness, though not the secret strength - that went to her sister. As outwardly strong as Sara was, she protected her soft interior. Eleni was quieter, less proud, but not so easily broken. Eleni's strength appeared when needed, vanished when not: it was she who held together when their mother died. Every long while, Eleni would go, and none were to know where she went, leaving blank eyes and an empty stare. She spoke little of it. Only once was I given a hint of her world: that it was in no way like this one; strange and pale was the landscape, and silent were its people. Sara worried for her sister, as she worried for everyone (though none would hear her admit it save late at night, when mother and sister were long asleep), for she said she sensed that her sister was scared sometimes, ere she left this world. Once, Eleni sensed her mother return, after her mother's death, in this world and not her own, but though she paled as she said it she said no more, and it has ever since left me to wonder what she saw. They were good girls, and kind, and I hope fate has been kind to them in all their lives.
Christopher is an anomaly to me, for reasons two: I only knew him the first seven years of his life, and then his mother would take him on her trips, which could last for months; he was as secretive as she. He was a dark-haired boy, and his eyes were mine. Sweet he was like his half-sisters before him, but tender boys are not as welcomed by society as their female counterparts. He hadn't quite the brains of his half-sisters, though he was hardly dull, but what he lacked in ingenuity he made up for in sincerity: as I knew him, he put his all into everything, including his words. A tactless liar, he was rarely in trouble, for he could not stand to do wrong, despite curiosity. However, his mother and I never married, and after eight or nine years of solid relationship, when our son was but seven, she left, and took him with her; I never knew what became of him.
Alisha I wish I could have known. Alisha was the unfortunate child, born of a doomed relationship and caught in the middle. She was no more than three when she died.
And so are the four children of Merlin.
May they have peace.