"Shay'Telnira!"
"Yes, Mother?" Shay'Telnira walked into the main hall and was immediately pounced on by a small body who wrapped its arms about her neck.
"Shay!"
Shay'Telnira pulled her head back to look at the bundle, recognizing the voice.
"Hello, Melchiah." She looked up to see the rest of the boys walking toward her. Beyond them, Kain stood next to the Empress.
"I suppose I'm baby-sitting again?"
"All night and day," her mother responded. "They are staying for the day, what your younger friends might effectively call and over-night. Or, over-day, in this case, but I digress. Lord Kain and I have reached a point in the discussions of the Treaty where neither of us can afford to be distracted by children. So keep them busy and out of our hair."
"Yes, Mother." Shay'Telnira suppressed a sigh, but led the brothers away toward her room. She glanced out one of the windows on the way through the hall and saw the sun beginning to rise. She yawned widely, and heard it echoed by Melchiah who was still in her arms.
"Sleepy?" she asked him.
"Yeah."
"You look tired yourself," Rahab pointed out as she yawned again. She nodded while yawning.
"I usually go to sleep about an hour before sunrise and don't wake up or get up until late evening. For some reason or another, I have a very strong nocturnal habit. Drove my mother crazy, but she learned to deal. That was why I was still in bed asleep when you boys came that first day, and why I was so grouchy. I don't like being woken."
"I noticed," Zephon muttered from the back. She glanced back at him, but decided she didn't want to pursue it. It just wasn't worth the time or effort.
When they finally entered Shay'Telnira's quarters, she looked around and sighed.
"I'm going to have to go bed-scrounging, aren't I?"
"You only need five," Turel breathed to her softly, moving up behind her. "I can sleep with you."
Shay'Telnira rolled her eyes and threw over her shoulder, "You wish. And, besides, you're the kind of man who needs a bed of straw, and I'm just not happy with that."
She headed out the room and dug around the castle for a good two hours, bringing in the extra cots she could find. She ended up with four cots, and one baby crib, which Melchiah, being the smallest and youngest, ended up being dumped into. Turel laughed and walked up next to Shay'Telnira, who stood next to the crib, having just set Melchiah in.
"Ah, the baby gets the little crib all to himself," Turel teased, before putting an arm around Shay'Telnira. "Since there are only four other cots, I suppose I'll just have to sleep with you, right, Shay?"
Shay'Telnira turned to him slowly, blinking at him a moment. Then she calmly picked up Melchiah, grabbed the back of Turel's metal design, and tossed him into the crib. Before he could react, she grabbed the top of the crib and shut it, so it was almost like a little cage. She shuffled Melchiah slightly so he was sitting on her hip and she looked down at him.
"Come on, Melchiah, you're going to sleep with me tonight."
"Yay!"
Turel groaned in rage as the other brothers laughed at his plight. Shay'Telnira went into her room, slid into bed, and let Melchiah snuggle up against her. She stayed on her back for a while, staring up at the ceiling. What strange creatures they were. She wondered why her mother was insisting on her watching over them. There were more tolerant people of her race who would be glad to watch over them, but it ended up being her. What was her mother planning, and how did it involve her? And what was this about the Treaty? The Treaty had been forged when Shay'Telnira had been young, the equivalent of a newborn. Why were they going over it and changing it now?
She suddenly became aware of the little body next to her shifting and moving with great frequency. She sat up and looked down at Melchiah.
"Can't sleep, little love?"
"No." He sat up and hugged her waist. "Raz usually tells me a story before I go to sleep, and I can't sleep without it."
"You want me to tell you a story, then, little love?"
She chuckled as his face brightened. She moved back so she could rest against the headboard of her bed, moved Melchiah into her lap, and pulled a blanket around both of them to keep them warm.
"Very well, I'll tell you a story. This story starts on a planet very similar to this one, very, very long ago. The world was green and bright, the nights clear and crisp. Animals of all sorts lived there peacefully for years, even humans. Above it all, flew the creatures you have seen." She grabbed one of the winged lizard toys Melchiah had brought with him and flapped its wings a few times, making him smile.
"These creatures were beautiful, and their numbers ranged in the thousands. Humans sought them out for advice and the land was whole."
As she spoke, she calmly reached up and caught a water balloon, then threw it back up, where it smashed into Zephon's face, he fell, cursing, and wiped it away quickly. Shay'Telnira continued the story like nothing had happened, and Zephon was swiftly caught up and whisked away by the story.
"Then, one day, a race of creatures came, beings that didn't know how the world worked. They were wonderful in their own way, and were not bound to the ground like everything else. They were blue-skinned, and had huge bird-like wings. They fought this primordial race, fearing its hold on the world, and the influence it held over the elements."
Abruptly, Shay'Telnira felt a pair of clawed hands sneak around her waist and she easily elbowed Turel in the face, never breaking the story. She pointed to the end of the bed as he whimpered and he sat where she indicated.
"What neither the primordial race or the blue-skinned race knew was that there was another race in the background, manipulating the two. They were dark and twisted, but also thought they were doing what needed to be done."
The door slammed open and Rahab raced in, followed by a very angry Dumah. Shay'Telnira shifted, picked up Rahab with her tail, and set him down on the bed. Rahab stuck his tongue out at Dumah and Dumah glared back, but both quickly stopped and listened to the story.
"Finally, the winged race and the primordial race realized the deception and banded together to fight against them. Many lives were lost, but in the end, the two races managed to banish the third to a darker world where they would stay."
There was a polite knock at the door and Raziel stuck his head in, silently asking permission to enter. Shay'Telnira nodded and patted the place on the bed next to her. Raziel sat down where she indicated while Turel glared moodily at him.
"The two races crafted the Pillars, and the winged one made a key for it, a key that the primordial race did not help in making. And so lock and key were set into place. The two races made a pact with each other. The primordials would pull back, limit their influence, and the winged ones would take control of the planet and care for it. The primordial race was happy to oblige; humans had changed and had begun to fear and kill them. They would move away from the world willingly. But the winged ones made a hard bargain. They didn't want the first ones to become too powerful, so part of the agreement between them was that the race would only take one mate at a time. If the mate died, they could take another, but not before. At the time, it was fine, but slowly it became inbred that if one of the first race should take a mate, it would be for their lifetime. And if their mate died, the other would sacrifice herself because she couldn't live without him. So when a tragedy befell the winged ones and the first went out to help them, they lost many of their breeding numbers, and their race dwindled. There was nothing they could do for the winged ones, but the winged ones found a new way to reproduce. The primordial race drew away again, and was obliterated to all time, and was not found again until several hundreds of thousands of years later when an enterprising young descendent of these winged ones found the first ones again. And so, an agreement was reached, and descendents of both sides would work together to restore the world to its former health."
"That's rather sad," Rahab observed quietly. Shay'Telnira nodded.
"Yes, but it is not without hope."
"What was the story about?" Melchiah asked.
"Oh, nothing!" Shay'Telnira waved a hand at him cheerfully. "It's just an old story about how the Pillars came to be and our travels through history. It's just a tale. Don't worry about it. Now, on to a more light-hearted topic."
She told them another story, this one full of fights and impudent humans who got what was coming to them. She made a wise choice; the vampires loved it. When everyone was finally asleep, except for Raziel, who stubbornly stayed awake, Shay'Telnira leaned back and let darkness enclose her mind, knowing that when she work, she'd have six little vamplings to stay with her for a while longer.
'You're getting far too attached to them,' a part of her voice whispered to her.
'I don't care,' was all the front part of her brain retorted with.