Note: I realized about two minutes ago that nowhere in this thing do I have a disclaimer. On the theory of better late than never...
Disclaimer haiku:
Darwinists, Clankers
Not mine - but I wish they were
(Thus we have this fic)
.
.
.
"Mama," her middle child says one morning, "how do you know if you love someone?"
Deryn looks at Max. Red-brown hair, fine-boned, pale and serious – an eight-year-old miniature of his father. She's forever trying to get him outside to play in the sunlight, but he's a born dreamer: it's books and ideas he wants to explore, not the wide and dangerous world. This sort of question is just like him.
"Well," she says, "I suppose it's different for everyone. Is there someone you like, then?"
"No," he says, too quickly, ears turning pink. "That is – I don't know. No."
"Ah," she says, carefully not laughing or even smiling. "Well, I'll tell you - the first time I thought I was in love, I must have been about your age. Ian MacTavish. He lived on my street and had the bonniest green eyes… Even gave me a flower once. But they moved away after his granny died."
Max is listening intently. "Do girls like to get flowers?"
She wonders who it is that's caught his eye. Hopefully not one of Sophie's friends. A girl that age isn't going to be kind when a little brother comes pestering. "Most do. But if she might like something different, you should try to find out, aye?"
He thinks over that; she can practically see him taking notes in his mind. Then he catches himself.
"I didn't mean – I don't need to know," he says. His ears get redder. "It was just a general sort of question."
"Oh, I see," she says. Her mouth twitches, and she fights it down.
He clears his throat. "But you weren't really in love with – with Ian."
"No," she agrees. "I liked him well enough, but it was just playing at anything more. Now, when I was – oh, twelve or thirteen, I had my mind made up I was going to marry one of your uncle's friends. Jamie Duncan, that was his name. He was brilliant at rugby – he was brilliant at everything, I thought. Or I did until he told me girls were only good for cooking and minding house."
"That's just silly," Max says, full of scorn.
"Aye, that's what I told him." Along with a solid kick to the shins that'd left the bastard limping for nearly two weeks and wary of her forever after, much to Jaspert's amusement. "That's not love, either, if you have to change who you are, or if the other person wants you to."
"Papa didn't want you to change," he says, as if this is the solemn moral of the story.
She almost laughs; she almost says, If you only knew. Instead she says, "No, your da and I get on fine just the way we are."
He looks pleased by the answer, at least until he remembers his original question: "But how did you know you loved him?"
She casts an eye at the clock, then ruffles his hair and presses a kiss to his forehead. "That, Maximilian Ferdinand, is a very long story, and you're going to be late for your fencing lesson as is. Another time."
He sighs, disgruntled, finger-combing his hair straight again. "Fencing is so tiresome."
"Aye, well, it's important to your father, so off you go." She pretends to give her son a playful swat, making him giggle and dart away – a little boy at last, and not a tiny adult.
Once he's safely gone, she puts her head down and laughs until her ribs ache.
Fondly, she thinks that it's too bad Max didn't ask how she knew she loved him. That one is dead easy.
