A/N: You get a two-for-one deal this update because initially these two were just one really long chapter. Not much of a deal, really. I have to apologize to those of you who want fluff; I'm not a fluffy writer, I don't think.
Of course I faced immediate interrogation by the girls, which I parried rather well, I thought. I had to distribute the gifts – toys, candy, books, and fabric for clothes. I'd also brought some fashion magazines, to Katarin's delight, and cookbooks, which no one seemed much charmed with except myself.
And there was the baby to coo over. She was tiny, red, and wrinkled, and probably the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen.
"We want to name her Terra," Katarin told me.
I gurgled something incoherent in reply, because the baby had just latched onto my finger. Then the meaning of the words penetrated, and without raising my head or changing my honeyed tone, I responded, "Oh no you won't, because I'll kill you soon as you're strong enough to stand."
"We have to pay tribute to you somehow!" she protested.
"No, Kat, you really don't. You two and the kids have done more for me than I've ever done for you. Really." I was trying to sound as serious as I could, but she still didn't seem to quite buy it. And I couldn't manage to find the words to tell her about what my father had said, the fact that I very possibly owed my life to them and the rest of my friends. I wasn't fully sure how that worked, but I was just thankful to be there. "You can build me a statue after I'm dead," I suggested cheerfully.
"You're not much older than me, so that doesn't do me any good. And the baby still doesn't have a name," she huffed. I just went back to beaming at the baby. Eventually, she was named Harriet Rose, after both Duane's and Kat's mothers, so I didn't have to worry about confusion or my effect on a little namesake. They did squabble a bit over whose mother should come first, but I ruled that Rose, Kat's mom's name, was a better middle name.
That night, I had to tell them all about my travels. Despite my resolution to render it in the most unflattering light possible, it still came out sounding like a dime-novel adventure. The kids all seemed fairly delighted with it (except Cassie, who fell asleep on my lap) which was exactly what worried me. I didn't want them to get any ideas about adventure and start risking their necks.
Duane understood. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said, once we got them all tucked in. "They're still too scared. They just like hearing about how you did it. Lets them feel safe, they get the... what's the word? They get to enjoy it through you, without being in danger themselves."
"Vicarious," I answered absently. "You're probably right. I hope so."
"Already started worrying..." he said, gently. "You really are a mother."
"I guess so. It's good to be back, though. Worry and laundry and all."
"Hope you still think so tomorrow," he said with a grin.
I did still think so, despite all the work. We had to move the laundry works outdoors, though there was hope on the horizon there. Edgar had promised me some sort of laundry-related invention. After that was done, Duane and I had to replenish the supply of firewood, and we brought Byram and Theo along to pick up loose sticks and carry some of what we'd cut back home. They would have chopped down trees with reckless abandon if we'd allowed them, but I wouldn't let them so much as touch an ax.
I needed to do some work on the garden, the fences, and the stable, all of which had fallen into disrepair over the winter. But they had taken good care of our work chocobo, Chicken (so named by Charles, who called all birds chickens) and they'd kept the cave and the basement as clean as possible. It took a while to get things back into shape – all of them, even Duane and Kat, had been skittish about going outdoors without me while Kefka was alive. Kat had been the least afraid, but also the least able to do outdoor chores over the last few months.
By the end of a couple of weeks of hard work, with everyone pitching in, we'd managed all the repairs. That left only the usual chores, and I'd slipped easily back into the daily routine. Setzer's visit, not long afterwards, remedied an impending food shortage. He brought massive quantities of supplies, courtesy of Edgar, and news of wagons possibly headed our way. On a second trip, a few days later, he brought lumber, workmen, and all the fittings for the house Edgar had planned for us.
He also brought a note from Locke, and best wishes from Celes and the Figaro brothers, all too busy with preparations to write. The Figaro parliament had refused to confirm Celes for the generalship, so Sabin would have the command and Celes would take part in the Narshe operation as a consultant or something like that. Setzer said the terminology was a bit hazy, or had been at the time he left.
As soon as I could I ran off with my letter. It was written on Edgar's stationery, or so I assumed; it had a watermark of the Figaro royal crest, at any rate, and it was fairly small compared to the big sheets of letter paper I had. His signature took up a good portion of the page, though he might have done that deliberately to mask the length of the note. It read:
Dear Terra,
Celes and I did our best to entertain ourselves but we agreed that the celebrations were not the same without you. The public fairs are still going on but Edgar has stopped forcing us into parades. Instead I get to prepare for the dig. The scholars insist on calling it that although they know there is no real digging to be done. It's all very exciting for me, though it seems boring whenever I write about it and everyone tells me it's boring when I talk about it. I hope to hear soon that everything is well with you.
I grinned at the closing sentence – he sounded like he'd checked a book to find that one. I scrawled a quick reply. Everyone is fine here, although there is a lot of work to be done. Kat's doing well. The baby is healthy and adorable but she doesn't sleep at all. Isabella says that's normal but I wish it wasn't. Don't worry about boring me – I promise not to tell you no matter how boring it is. I hoped he'd take that as the joke I'd meant it to be. I could think of nothing else to add, so I wrote, much more neatly, a brief note wishing Celes and Sabin luck, and another thanking Edgar profusely for the house, folded and sealed all three and dashed upstairs.
Once I reached Setzer, I realized I hadn't needed to hurry so much. We stood and talked for a time, but the airship had evidently convinced Cassie of the worst, and she sat on my foot, wrapped her arms around my leg, and stared up at me, her face threatening tears. "I'm not leaving, honey," I assured her, but she didn't let go until the airship was safely out of sight.
I didn't leave, but I did disturb her peace with one more visit from Setzer. The settlers he'd spotted had arrived some two weeks on, low on supplies and lacking all but the lightest of belongings. They told me they'd farmed south of Mobliz before the Fall, which Duane quietly confirmed when I looked to him, and that they'd fled as refugees to Tzen. A month before, when we went into Kefka's citadel, they'd sold most of their remaining belongings in order to buy wagons, packed the rest, and turned back toward Mobliz, fleeing the expected battle. I plotted out their land claims on the map, and sold them some food, as much as I could spare, and promised to get more soon.
With that last supply run, Setzer brought me the makings of a general store; not just food, but also tools and farm implements, cloth, seed, feed for the chocobos, and small luxuries like sugar, ribbons and spices. I kept my prices low as long as my customers were in need, but I was still making some money, and I had a source of real income.
Life was busy all that spring and summer. We had to cook epic meals for the entire building crew, though that task was over after about a month, after which we had a lovely, clean new house with actual wooden floors and the miraculous running hot water. It involved a complicated system of pumps, and a heater stored in the basement that I would probably appreciate all the more in winter. I was glad most of the settlers lived well outside of town; if I'd been in their position I'd have wanted to know why only one house got such fancy plumbing for free. And being in my own position, I didn't look forward to explaining.
The kids were less in shock and more rambunctious than they'd been before. I had to regularly break up squabbles between Annie, Margie and Henry, and while I typically let Byram and Theo work out their disagreements amongst themselves, I sometimes had to intervene when they tangled with Isabella. There was baby Harriet, or Rosie, as Kat and I began calling her to Duane's irritation, and her impact on everyone's sleep. I'd tried to help Duane and Kat, but I don't think I did them much good. We just had three sleep-deprived adults instead of two. And there were the settlers, who began arriving two or three families at a time, and the governmental duties I had to take on with regard to them – mainly mapping their claims.
And, of course, I handled the post, the chore that offered the most personal rewards for me. I ran both that and the store out of the building that had been the post office before. As more settlers began to arrive this became a much more involved task. Often I had to ride out to deliver the mail, because I knew all the families now living near us, and I knew they were almost all too busy to come into town for their letters. We got our first shipment on the stage from Nikeah, because we didn't yet have any pigeons trained to fly to Mobliz. It had consisted of one letter for the Muellers, who'd been among our first batch of settlers, and all the rest had been for me.
The letter from Sabin was badly blotted, and somehow both stiffly formal and poorly punctuated. He wasn't much of a letter-writer, it seemed. Celes's letter started out equally stiff, describing the troops in Narshe as though she were filing a report, but towards the end she turned sarcastic on the subject of the victory gala in Figaro and I began to feel that I could write her back. Cyan had written, too, inquiring very nicely after the kids and offering his advice in planning the government of Mobliz, which led me to believe that he'd heard from Setzer about the miniature population boom. Locke, apparently not realizing the state of the post here, had written three, dated over the course of a month and full of excitement over the beginning of the dig. Though I immediately wrote back to let him know, he kept this pace of writing up for a month or two. After that, he settled down to one a month, as did Celes and Cyan. By summer, at least, we had a flock of messenger pigeons, trained to fly to Nikeah. The mail still had to be taken by boat to South Figaro, and parcels still had to be sent by stage, but it speeded up the mail noticeably.
I could hear of Sabin through Celes, which was just as well. I wrote to Edgar with updates as often as I could, but never expected replies. When I did receive them, they were always scrawled and informal, no doubt hurried. I knew he was busy. Figaro was the world's only real power, the only government still commanding anything like the resources it had had before Kefka. The aristocrats of Jidoor were still wealthy, but there was no concentrated center of power there. Any country or small village that needed aid or defense against monsters turned to Figaro.
Doma was rebuilding, and Cyan was thoroughly involved in that, but somehow he always found time to write. While his childrearing advice was as Doman and austere as I'd expected, he was wonderfully reassuring about Cassie, reminding me again and again that only time could help her, and he always welcomed news of the kids, which endeared him greatly to me. Celes continued to be somewhat dry in her reports from Narshe, but she grew more casual when we discussed my sketchy memory. We'd known each other most of our lives, it seemed, and we'd been friends since childhood. It was strange getting to know her again while realizing I'd known her all along. It must have been stranger still for her.
And Locke wrote faithfully, his letters an odd mix of his own voice and phrases he must have picked up from novels or advice books. I thought I could see, through the bravado, that he was actually an apprentice on the excavation, learning the trade and helping out those who really knew what they were doing, but he didn't say so outright. It didn't really matter, anyway; his life was so exciting compared to mine, full of giant scorpions and ancient inscriptions. I had my own experience of giant scorpions, so I didn't envy him that, but the work did sound interesting. Despite the far more eventful nature of his life, he always managed to seem genuinely pleased for me when I wrote him with good news about the general store's finances, Charles cutting a new tooth, or two settlers coming to me when they had a dispute over land.
By the end of summer, we even had some other buildings in town. The Josselins set up a dressmaker's and tailor's shop, and the Eiserts opened an inn to minister to the occasional travelling merchant. They got most of their business through their role as bar, restaurant and meeting place, instead. We had a bakery, and another tavern. A chapel was set up across the street from it, almost accusingly. I didn't attend, except for Duane and Kat's wedding; he insisted on making it official. I thought it was sweet, and Kat agreed but also pointed out that it was a bit irrelevant after nearly two years' living together and a child.
We were nearing the end of the year, effectively, or so it felt. All my customers began speaking about the harvest as they lounged on the store's porch, and eventually they began lounging less and working more. I grew restless, and wrote to Locke wistfully about traveling, perhaps visiting him. I meant to imply a "someday," but from his hopeful and mildly panicky response I realized he thought I meant immediately. When I wrote back, I felt almost as though I were disappointing him, but he recovered with almost insulting promptness, or at least pretended to. From letters, it was impossible to tell.
I recovered, too. The harvest ended and autumn gave way to dreary cold that didn't quite deserve the name of winter. I settled back into contentment with my routine, with my life centered around the kids, the daily business of the store, and the post. Letters were always a highlight, more than I liked to admit to myself. The town's rapid growth, that had seemed so exciting, slowed to a trickle; everyone was settling in for the winter.