A/N: Part 4 -- there turned out to be a Part 4 that I hadn't originally planned on.

Previously disclaimed, I should hope. #25 bears a distinct resemblance to my almost-4-year-old. #31 is basically just me wishing I had magic at my disposal as a parenting tool ;).

25. Of Marmosets

Sarralyn, aged nearly four, is lying on her stomach on the floor, nose just inches away from a particular page of a particular book belonging to her mother.

"What's that you're looking at, love?" Daine inquires, from the sofa where she is nursing Rikash.

"It's a piggly marmoset," Sarra replies, without looking up. "Like your friend dat you used to have. Uncle Lindhall says dey can practic'ly disappear. I'm going to learn to be one, when I'm bigger."

"It's a pygmy marmoset, sweetling," Numair tells her. He fingers the bridge of his long nose; Daine hides a smile. "That means 'very small.' It's from the ancient word pugmaios, which means—"

"Dat's what I said," his daughter replies, a little too patiently. "Piggly."

26. Cookery for Mages

The only things either of them can reliably cook are campfire foods. Which hasn't mattered much, in the normal course of things, until they try to spend a whole season in the Tower, devoting themselves to family life, and every meal for the first week dissolves into complaints and recriminations.

After the last and worst experiment (which Daine swears is chicken pot pie, and everyone else – even Kitten – refuses to eat at all), Sarralyn and Rikash take matters into their own hands.

The cook at Pirate's Swoop is suspicious, but Rikash plays the pitiful, hungry, sweet little boy to perfection and Sarra says reasonably, "It's only for a little bit. They're clever people; they'll catch on quickly. And I'll stay and learn, too, and help keep an eye on them. I'm very reliable, ma'am."

This turns out not to be strictly true, in that while Sarralyn and Daine do produce much better results after a week's tutelage, Numair (even closely supervised) manages to wreak such havoc after only three days that the cook loses her temper and banishes him permanently.

His wife and daughter never let on that they suspect him of subterfuge, but he knows quite well why, suddenly, he seems to be always washing dishes. Really, though, it's better this way.

27. Darkness and Light

When Sarralyn thinks back on her childhood, it sometimes looks to her like sunlight on the forest floor: dappled and shifting, dark and light. The dark patches are her parents' frequent absences from home; the uncomprehending stares of strangers; the hollow feeling of watching her mother and father be all in all to each other; all the times when she felt freakish and misunderstood and alone. The splotches of dazzling light are the times of intense togetherness, the inside jokes, the hours spent learning with her mother what no one else could teach her, the thrill of exercising her unique magic, the joys of a childhood surrounded by loving friends and (whatever its other stresses) never strained by hunger or want.

And sometimes she sees all the darkness; and sometimes she sees only the light.

28. When You Fall in Love

Rikash wants to hear over and over all the stories of his parents' youthful adventures, and especially the ones involving esoteric magic. He is a sensitive child, though, and he cries when Numair tells about the tree, somewhere in the world, suddenly becoming a man—he imagines what a dreadful shock it must have been for the tree.

Sarra is more sceptical by nature, and she is bothered by another part of the story. "I don't understand, Da," she says. "Why did you have to turn Master Staghorn into a tree, when Ma was about to shoot him anyway? Didn't you trust her to get him? Everyone knows what a good shot Ma is."

Numair and Daine look at each other. "I think you'll understand better when you're older," Numair says.

"When you fall in love," Daine adds, still looking at her husband.

Sarra (who sees where this is going) rolls her eyes. Rikash (who doesn't) asks for another story, one with animals in.

29. Tangled

Daine's hair is as wild as her magic. She tries to trap it under headscarves, to bind it with ribbons or ties, to braid it or coil it or tame it with combs and pins, but to no avail. Sarralyn can never understand why she doesn't just cut it short and win the battle once for all.

Then, very late one night when she can't sleep, she sees firelight flickering in the sitting-room; creeping to the door, she hears murmuring voices and a low, throaty laugh. Daine sits cross-legged on the hearthrug, serene in repose; Numair sits behind her, brushing her hair. From her position in the doorway Sarra can see his face – open, relaxed, deeply content – and his big, powerful hands, working slowly, gently, with infinite patience, to untangle the snarls and smooth out the shining curls.

The next day she asks her father to brush her hair, and he does; but, though his hands are gentle against her skin, it isn't the same.

30. Warm

Long after they are old enough for their own beds, Sarra and Rikash almost always end up back in the big bed when one of their parents is away; they should be used to it, it happens so often, but somehow that never seems to matter.

When Da goes off somewhere, the big bed becomes a haven for furred animals of every sort, and the children snuggle happily amongst them in a sleepy, tumbled heap. When Da is home and Ma away, things are different; but still they creep in, in the small hours, to rest their heads on his broad chest and fall asleep to the steady rhythm of his heart.

31. Obedience?

Somewhere in the Lower City, two small children are running headlong into mortal peril (to wit, the iron-shod wheels of a cooper's dray on a cobbled street). Twenty feet behind them a tall, dark man raises a hand and bellows, "Stop!"

Though the little girl is just five and her brother only two, they stop instantly, apparently frozen to the spot as the cooper's dray rattles by with its head-high load of barrel staves.

An onlooker might admire their obedience to their father's authority – unless that onlooker happened to spot the faint sparkle of black fire holding them in place.

32. Deaf

Sarra can't remember how old she was when she first understood that most people (her father and brother included) cannot hear the voices of the People simply by listening with that inner ear. That most two-leggers (as she thinks of them) can understand and speak only with other two-leggers. That they are, in what seems to her a vital way, deaf.

But she does remember what she thought at that moment: I'd rather not have been born at all.