The game has the team run straight off to Dorter at this point, but I wanted a reason for Ramza and Delita to interact with their sisters for a bit...
Vignette 3 - An Evening's Picnic
Beoulve Mansion, Eagrose, early evening
"Gods rot him, I don't know if I can tolerate him all the way to Dorter and back!" Ramza said as he opened Delita's door.
That afternoon, after Zalbaag had 'not' given them their assignment, the boys had dashed off. However, the rest of the team had already been given the afternoon off and had headed into Eagrose to explore. It had taken too long to round them up. By the time all seven of them were ready to go, it was already evening. All they could do was double-check that everything was prepared for an immediate departure at first light.
Again Ramza had found himself confronted by Argath demanding that they risk themselves, travelling by night. This time, Ramza had simply told him he wasn't prepared to discuss it. He'd headed to Delita's room, wanting to vent his frustrations. Tietra and Alma were there before him and his clouded face suddenly became sunny.
"So, you two, is it a banquet tonight?" His brother Dycedarg frequently entertained his political allies and 'friendly' rivals.
"No, Dycedarg's up at the main castle with the Duke, and Zalbaag left straight after we saw him, so the four of us are having a picnic." Alma said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Picnic? It started raining a short while ago and besides, it'll be full dark very soon." Ramza said.
"Which is why it's all laid out in the nursery." Tietra said with a sweet smile. "Please, it'll be fun."
"I haven't been up to the nursery since you two moved out a couple of years ago. I suppose it might be fun, at that." Ramza said, returning Tietra's smile.
"And don't worry, I've arranged to have a good dinner served to your friends." Alma said.
"My, my, just fifteen and already the consummate Lady of the House." Ramza said, with a grin, earning himself a glare.
"Well at least I actually bother to think about the practicalities of life." Alma replied, waspishly. Ramza totally ignored her, as only a brother could.
"Since it's the nursery, shall we make it a race then?" He said, grinning at Delita.
Both boys ran out of the room as if the hounds of hell were on their heels, Delita grabbing at Ramza and shoving himself in front as they reached the door.
The two girls watched in bemusement; before they'd hit their teens, racing to get wherever they were going had been a usual pastime for the two boys, but it had been some time since they'd done it and it was a little strange to see what were, to all intents and purposes, two fully-grown men jostling in the doorway like a pair of naughty children.
"Well at least we know they'll never really change." Alma said to Tietra, rolling her eyes. The girls picked up their skirts and followed at a more sedate pace.
"So... tell me all about school." Delita said in a deceptively casual tone to his sister. He was lounging on the floor and popped the last piece of a venison pasty into his mouth, as he finished speaking. The other three all suddenly realised that what Tietra had said about it, earlier in the day, hadn't fooled her brother.
"What about it? I go, I try to be good at my lessons, I come home, I do my homework." Even to her own ears, Tietra sounded defensive.
Alma glanced, slightly apprehensively, at Ramza from where she sat, perched side-saddle, on the old rocking-chocobo. She and Tietra had planned to have a nice evening with the brothers they saw so seldom - this wasn't part of that plan. Ramza, she knew, would be as keen as she to smooth things over between the other two, if he got that chance.
"And you'd tell me if you weren't happy, of course, wouldn't you?" Even if there was sarcasm in Delita's tone, there was no doubt about the protective brother predominating.
"If there was anything to tell, I would." Tietra said, almost primly.
Delita grunted at that.
"Rubbish! You always did keep your own counsel too much when you were unhappy."
"I'm not unhappy... I'm not! I haven't seen you in months, so why are you being so grumpy? I said it's fine, it is!" Tietra said.
Delita glanced at Alma, then subsided when he saw that her glare was even fiercer than Tietra's.
"When did the old instruments get moved up here?" Ramza asked, trying to break the tension between the other pair of siblings. He went over, opened the lid of the clavichord and played a few arpeggios.
"Lord Dycedarg got us a new harpsichord to replace this as well as a full-sized harp." Tietra said, coming over with a grateful smile, placing her hand on the clavichord's case. She was very glad to have a reason to escape her brother's glower.
"So these got relegated to the nursery? Well, I suppose if Dycedarg ever marries again and has children, this time, it would make sense." Dycedarg was so much older than his two half-siblings that he'd been married around the time that Ramza had been born. Unfortunately, he'd been widowed shortly after Alma's birth, eleven months later.
"Even if Dycedarg doesn't, Zalbaag might get married. We could be bridesmaids, Tietra, wouldn't that be lovely?" Alma said, enthusiastically picking up on what Ramza had thought of as a throwaway comment. The boys looked at the girls uncomprehendingly.
"Are either of them even courting a particular woman?" Ramza asked, still perplexed.
"Not that I know of." Alma said. "Why are you looking like that? You brought up our brother marrying, and truth to tell, it's past time that he did; Papa's been dead these three years past. Dycedarg has to have an heir, you know."
"Zalbaag's his heir." Ramza supposed he was also an heir... of sorts. Even after a royal decree, his and Alma's legitimacy was shaky, so it was probably best neither ever thought of themselves as potential heirs. Their distant cousins who, without Ramza, would be second and third in line to the title, would probably fight his ever inheriting.
"Well one of them has to start producing legitimate children soon, for the sake of the succession." Alma said with finality.
"Suppose so." Ramza said, deeply uninterested.
"Try not to sound so fascinated, Brother dear." Alma replied sarcastically.
"Just grin and bear it, Ramza, the girls can't help it, they seem to just be naturally enthralled by the whole idea of love, marriage and babies these days." Delita said, rolling his eyes. "Strictly speaking, though, they have a point. A strong noble house is a one with a secure line of succession. Three unmarried brothers isn't the way of stability for House Beoulve."
"Well I'll arrange my wedding for this summer, shall I? Of course, I don't have a prospective wife, unless Tietra wants to. You did promise to marry me one day, when you were... seven, after all." He grinned at her.
Ramza had been rather taken with the tiny, dark little girl when she and Delita had first come to live with them. Gradually, the novelty had worn off and she's just become like a second sister, more or less. Tietra smiled at him, though she blushed slightly too.
"If it's all right with you, Ramza, I think that may be a promise I'll have to break."
"Since we're reliving our childhood in the nursery tonight, let's go out on the roof and look for shooting stars." Alma said, suddenly, though she glanced between her brother and Tietra.
"It's raining. Difficult to see the stars through clouds." Ramza said.
"Not any more." Alma said.
"The roof will still be wet." Delita put in.
"What happened to you two?" Alma asked, pursing her lips. "You actually sound like adults, and Tietra and I thought neither of you would ever grow up." Ramza ignored that but, throwing up the sash of the nearest window, he stuck his head out.
"Still fairly cloudy, overhead." He said. Alma looked genuinely disappointed. "We'll check again in half an hour." He added because he hated to see her upset, even over the silliest things.
Having let cool air into the room, they poked the fire and settled down to play a few parlour games, forgetting about searching for shooting stars or the earlier bickering.
After what felt like only a few minutes of telling all about what had happened in their lives since they had last seen each other a couple of months before, the boys suddenly realised it was approaching midnight and they were supposed to be leaving at first light. Each hugged his own sister, then the other's, and they went down to their rooms to get what sleep they could.
Still in the nursery, the two girls seemed almost reluctant to leave the trappings of childhood behind again.
"You shouldn't have lied to him, you know." Alma said quietly.
"You know how Delita is..." Tietra said with a heavy sigh.
"I didn't mean to Delita. I meant that you'd love to keep that promise you made when you were seven." Tietra blushed at that.
"That's rubbish, Alma, and you know it! Besides, even if that were true, I'm only fifteen and Ramza doesn't even think of me like that, and I couldn't marry into your family, even if I wanted to... which I don't, and your brothers would throw fits and, well, it's not like I even want to!" Alma grinned at Tietra's babbling.
"Who are you trying to convince? Me or yourself?"
"Oh shut up, Alma! I'm just tired... I'm going to bed!"
As Alma watched her friend leave the room, her grin turned into a thoughtful expression.
Author's Note:
What portrayal of the relationships between these four there is, in the game, is a bit too idealised for my taste. They're a group of four teenagers who've been brought up as siblings, so for me, they're close, but they also need to bicker and wind each other up. In short, act like brothers and sisters.
For information, Dycedarg's brief arranged marriage was very unhappy. There was fault on both sides – it was a good match, socially and politically (she was a second cousin to the King), so Dycedarg went ahead with it, but he didn't really want to be married so young and wasn't particularly attracted to her. She found him cold and felt he made no effort to make the marriage work, hence after a few months of unsuccessfully trying to gain some sign of affection from him she sought consolation with another man. She died, after a brief illness, just a few weeks after their first anniversary, about a month after Dycedarg discovered that she had been unfaithful and that the child she was carrying probably wasn't his. Suspicious fungi appeared on her grave some weeks later...
That's my take on a small piece of Dycedarg's past, anyway. I couldn't bring any of that into the actual vignette, though, because none of these four know anything about that.
My very last comment (I promise) - I know that the game calls their home in Eagrose the "Beoulve Manse", but since a "Manse" is the house provided for a Presbyterian Minister by the Church of Scotland, calling it that that bugs me. I lived in Scotland for a number of years, so I'm very aware of what a Manse actually is and it chimed as an odd, dissonant note for me, from the first time I saw it in the game. Hence I decided to call it the "Beoulve Mansion" instead.
