Educating Eos 2

A couple of 'Favourites' so maybe this is being accepted in the spirit it was written – a bit of fun (a lot for me writing it )

Hope you enjoy this one

John was sitting cross legged on the floor surrounded by metal poles.

"This isn't going quite to plan." He muttered.

"There's a plan?" queried Eos.

"Of course there's a plan. It's somewhere over there." John gestured to his right.

"Why is it over there and not where you can read it? You have read it, haven't you?"

"Now why would I do that? Takes all the fun out of it. I like a challenge." He grinned.

"Not the most efficient use of your time. I'll never understand humans!"

"Why should you, we don't even understand ourselves" John grinned.

"Let me scan it, I can help you then."

"I think I'd like that Eos – hang on"

He slid across the floor, grabbed the instruction sheet and held it up for her to scan.

"Well John, I think I can say with absolute confidence that you would take many, many hours to construct this thing without reading the instructions – maybe years. So, first you need to sort all the poles into size order – as they were when you unpacked them!"

"OK, OK"

"John…"

He could tell that tone of voice. She wanted to ask something but wasn't sure of how it would be received…so sensitive, definitely sensitive.

"Come on Eos, spit it out."

"I can't 'spit'."

"Just say it, Eos."

"Your mother – you said she'd had an influence on all of you."

"I remember."

"How?"

"We're all different. She treated us differently. Scott was her first so he had a special place but he wasn't favourite – don't think we ever figured out if she had a favourite, she managed to keep everything pretty even – but she talked to him a lot. With me it was my love of all things stellar.'

He returned to his cross legged position as he recalled siting on her lap, leaning back into her as she pointed out the constellations; telling him of the legend as well as the facts.

"With Virgil it was music. She'd sit at the piano for hours with him on her lap playing 'Chopsticks' – I think dad wanted to take an axe to that piano at times!" John smiled as he recalled dad standing at the top of the stairs pleading for some quiet while he tackled some problem. He hadn't thought about it in so long.

"Gordon was her water baby – he was in the pool before he could walk. We didn't have a full sized one to begin with and one day he somehow managed to crawl over to it and fall in. Grandad saw him but by the time he'd run over to it, there was Gordon making his way across doggy paddle."

"Alan was so young when she died, and I was so busy doing my own thing I can't remember her doing anything special with him except just love him. I haven't asked him how much he remembers and he doesn't talk much about her. I suppose no-one wants to upset anyone else."
"Do you think about her much?"

"Most days EOS – it doesn't hurt as much now. I've learned to live with the huge hole she left in my life and manage to keep busy most of the time. It's one of the reasons I love it up here – it helps me to keep everything in neat little compartments; closing the door on them when it gets too much."

"When dad was around, I used to think that I was 'Out of sight, out of mind'. I'd monitor all the calls, then report to dad. He'd make the decision whether a situation merited our specialised assistance; then I'd go back to monitoring my brothers making sure they were OK and wait for the next call. "

"You know, I once went out on a rescue and when it was over, I was trying to contribute to the discussion and dad said something like 'You've been out on one rescue, Scott's been on all of them' – shut me down completely. Know how that made me feel? Worthless, absolutely worthless – so I spent pretty much all my time up here. Stopped going back home on a regular rotation. "

"I don't want to go back to that – I can't go back to it. I've changed; we've all changed. Dad will have changed, whatever has been happening to him will have made sure of that. We'll all be really glad to see him back but what then? We'll be strangers to each other – strangers who happen to know each other extremely well."
"I think Scott will be the only one of us who'll feel he's failed – he hasn't but none of us knows how to convince him or give him any kind of reassurance."

He dropped the metal bar and put his head in his hands.

"Is this distressing for you John?" There was concern in Eos' voice

"I've often thought about it, but it's easy to push those thoughts out by concentrating on something else. Now I'm talking about it…now I'm putting it into words; makes it more sort of…real."

An alert sounded, John eased himself up off the floor.

"Saved by the bell EOS – time to get to work."