Signs of Life
“O’si! Look at me!”
Mairwen’s mother looked up from her gardening work with an indulgent smile, only to find her daughter nowhere in sight.
“Up here!”
The rustling of leaves was hint enough. In the new-budded branches, it was easy to pick out a flash of red braids, along with a yellow linen dress that would surely need a washing, now.
“Mairwen! How did you get all the way up there?”
There was no sternness in her voice, though perhaps she thought there was. Mairwen laughed from her perch.
“I think I found a robin’s nest!” she cried excitedly. “Come see!”
“I’m a bit too old to be climbing trees,” her mother fibbed. For a human, of course, 120 years old was unbelievable, but as an elf, Cla’aera was only just entering her prime. “I hope you haven’t torn your dress, Rusco’la!”
“I’m being careful!”
“Of course you aren’t! You are having fun.” There was no anger in her words; she simply said them because they were true. It only took a moment for her to make up her mind. “Budge over, little squirrel. Here comes your old mother.”
Cla’aera pulled herself into the tree with an ease that betrayed decades of practice with such activities. Her daughter gasped in delight, shifting down the branch to make room. Her mother’s weight hardly seemed to disturb the limb at all; she knew exactly where to pull and where to brace. It took no time whatsoever for her to scale it.
“Show me this nest of yours,” she demanded when she had seated herself astride the limb. Mairwen grinned.
“It’s here! Look!” She wobbled to her feet on the branch, reaching for the ones above her head, where she had heard chirps coming from the mass of twigs and straw nestled among them. But in her excitement, she had forgotten to be careful. Of course she had. The moment she stood up, the end of the branch shifted underfoot. She tried to compensate. It moved the other way. She grabbed for the upper branch, jerking it downward, but her bare toes could not find purchase.
She and her mother cried out in unison as she tumbled down. She felt a hand grab her sleeve, but it gave way with an awful rip, and the next moment, she was a tangle of limbs on the ground. Her head smacked a root, and the breath was knocked forcefully from her lungs.
Her mother was there in an instant. Mairwen tried to be brave, but it hurt. She couldn’t get any air to stay in her chest. She let out a tiny sob as her mother’s quick hands flitted over her body, probing first her head and then her shoulders and back.
“Where does it hurt, Mairi?”
A high-pitched whine escaped her lips, and she had the presence of mind to be embarrassed about it. She was too big for such things, she knew. But it was hard to be big when her mother was there, brushing away her tears and making soft, soothing sounds above her.
“Te curo,” she whispered, when her hands had found the tender spot on her head, beneath the snarls of her hair. The pain there vanished, only a warm buzzing left behind, like a hive of lazy honeybees. “Te curo,” her mother said again. Her back stopped hurting, too, and her elbow, which she hadn’t even noticed, ceased its stinging.
“You are all right,” Cla’aera crooned. “Just breathe. You are all right.”
No longer winded, she tried to obey, pulling in a slow breath. But as she turned her head, grass tickling her cheek, her eyes fell on something that started her crying even harder.
The bird’s nest, that greatest of treasures, lay on the ground beside them.
“Mama,” she sobbed, forgetting for a moment that she was definitely too big to be using a baby word like ‘mama.’“Mama, the nest!”
Cla’aera turned to look with a frown, hating as much as Mairwen did to see nature harmed, and Mairwen began to sob in earnest.
“I-I’m s-so-sorry,” she wailed. “I di-didn’t m-mean to!”
“Oh, hush, hush. I know, Mairi. It’s all right.” But the words did not console her. The mother robin would be so heartbroken! Mairwen could never forgive herself for hurting the poor babies, especially when her own mother’s eyes began to fill with tears.
Suddenly, they both heard a noise that silenced them. They waited, almost afraid to breathe. And then:
“Chee-eep! Cheep-cheep!”
Cla’aera crawled over to the nest, and her tears turned to laughter.
“Look, Rusco’la! Come, look!”
Mairwen scrambled close to her mother, afraid to see an injury that she had caused, but when she looked inside the nest, she found three perfect little chicks, their mouths open impossibly wide. Her mother hovered a hand over them and muttered a healing spell, just in case, but they seemed unharmed. In the warmth of the spell’s magic, Mairwen could feel all the call of the forest, the wind through the trees, and all the love and care of a mother for her young.
“Oh, my dear,” her mother said as she buried her head into her side. “Shh. I know you were frightened. It’s all right, now.”
It truly was. But Mairwen held tight to her mother for a while longer, breathing in her woodsy scent and feeling the warmth of her arms around her.
Later, she would show her how to carefully replace the nest in its nook. They would eat their supper outside, watching and waiting until they saw the mother robin come fluttering back with worms.
“A mama bird always comes back for her chicks,” her mother would say softly. And Mairwen would believe her.
“Mummy!”
When Alwyn appeared at her side, his cheeks were pink with exertion and his eyes bright. His trousers were a dirty mess.
“Mummy, I s—there’s—I saw—!”
“Breathe,” she whispered, cupping his face in her hands.
“I think—I think spring is really here!”
“I think so, too,” she laughed. The Waterdeep winter had quite overstayed its welcome this year, but now, finally, the cold seemed to have left for good. Grass was growing green again, and the early crocuses had come and gone. “Why do you say so? Did you see a sign?”
“Yes!” He beamed. “Pink-bugs!”
“Say that again, Love?”
“Pinkbuds!”
“Pink buds?”
“Come and see!” He grabbed her hand and pulled her off the bench. They had stopped at a small park, and he had been darting about ever since, digging in the dirt, pulling up grass, and generally behaving like a five-year-old boy. Mairwen had let him, glad that the weather was finally warm enough for him to frolic.
He led her around a small bend, then suddenly halted with a grand gesture toward a little tree covered in tiny flowers.
“Pinkbuds!”
“Oh! Redbuds!” she said, finally understanding. “Those are called ‘redbuds,’ remember?”
“But these ones are pink!”
“They’re all pink, actually.” She laughed when he stuck his lip out in a pout. “I know, it’s a bit of a misnomer—that means something that has a wrong name—but you did a wonderful job finding this, Alwyn! You’re getting so good at plant identification!”
His pout vanished instantly in the face of this praise, and his chest puffed out as he smiled.
“…And you’re quite right; redbuds are a sign of spring! I think perhaps it is here to stay.”
“Hip-Hooray!” he cried. Then his eyes went wide again. “Daddy!”
He sprinted back toward the bench before Mairwen had even spotted Gale, approaching from the direction of Market Street with a parcel under one arm and their daughter held securely in the other. She followed Alwyn at a slightly more sedate pace, listening to his babbling as she reached her little family, Gale nodding along with a broad smile.
“I…don’t actually know why they’re called that,” Gale was saying, “but I’m certain we’ve a botanical text at home that would have the answer. Hello, my dear.”
“How was it?” She pressed a kiss to his cheek, and he chased her lips for another.
“…Busy, as we suspected. But I did find something for a certain someone’s first nameday.”
“Did Daddy buy you a present, Darling?” She scooped the baby away from her husband, earning a happy squeal in return, followed by a series of babbles. “Did you have fun with Dada?”
“Deh-Deh!”
“Good girl!” It was the only word she could say, as of yet, but it still made her parents’ hearts soar with pride every time she did. Gale beamed as though she had just declared her intent to study at Blackstaff. Mairwen turned her so that mother and daughter were eye-to-eye. “Can you say ‘Mama’? Mah-Mah.”
“Mumma,” Alwyn encouraged, standing on tiptoe to pat his sister’s back. “You can say it!”
“Deh-Deh,” the baby said stubbornly. Gale smirked, taking her back again.
“Clever girl,” he praised, smothering the baby’s face in kisses to her great delight. Mairwen swatted his arm.
“That’s hardly sportsmanlike, Gale.”
“One can’t always be a gentleman…”
“Our next baby is going to like me best,” she fired back without thinking.
“Well, of course we don’t know if—” Gale’s jaw suddenly went slack in the middle of his sentence. He blinked rapidly. “...Unless…?”
“Erm.” She pressed her lips together, swallowing nervously. His gaze bored into her.
“Mairwen.”
“It’s hard to know for certain…if or when that might be,” she said quickly, biting her lip and glancing at Alwyn, who was staring between them confusedly. “Not without checking with a cleric of some kind…”
“But you have a feeling about it.”
“I…might. Have a feeling.”
“About what?” Alwyn demanded, clearly aware that things were being left unsaid.
“Nothing, Darling. Just… You love being a big brother, don’t you?”
“Yes.” His brow furrowed.
“Well, what would you think about another baby brother or sister someday?”
“Don’t we already have a baby?” He glanced at his sister as if expecting her to have suddenly grown.
“Well…yes. But, if there were to be another baby, it would not be for a while yet.”
“Oh.”
“Not before your sister is walking and talking, at least. Probably running, too, and causing all manner of mischief...”
Gale was still staring at her with his mouth slightly agape. She pressed another kiss to his slack jaw, lifting their daughter from his arms just as she was about to start smacking his face to get his attention. Alwyn had given up trying to guess why the adults were acting strange and was instead watching a flock of geese pass overhead.
“Are you all right?” she whispered. Gale blinked.
“I—Yes! Of course. More than.” He stepped closer. “I just didn’t expect…”
“Neither did I,” she huffed, looking away. “And perhaps I still don’t. I could be wrong…”
“My Love, I would trust your intuition over almost anything.”
“I didn’t want to get our hopes up.”
“It’s a bit late for that, Dearest.”
“True.” She smiled. A pudgy hand grabbed hold of her hair and pulled hard, making her grimace instead. She had been growing it out for some time, and it now reached past her shoulders, but now that the baby was in her grabby-hands phase, she was sorely tempted to crop it short again.
“Be kind to Mama,” Gale said softly, loosing the strands from her fist.
“Muh.”
They both froze.
“Mama,” Gale said.
“Muh.”
“That’s right.” She bounced her up and down. “That’s right. Mama.”
“Muh-Muh.”
“Yes!” She nearly jumped for joy. “Yes, Clara! Mama!”
“Well done, you clever girl!” Gale cried. “Well done! I told you she was a prodigy, Mairwen.”
“So very clever, Baby!”
Clara shrieked happily, pleased by the attention they were lavishing on her. She patted Gale’s beard as he swooped in to smooch her cheeks again.
“Mummy, look!” Alwyn’s voice briefly drew their attention away. He was pointing up towards a nearby tree branch. “Another sign!”
“A sign?” Gale repeated.
“Of spring! Look, it’s a robin!”
A little orange-breasted bird swooped from the branches and landed in the grass, its beak tugging at something on the ground.
“That’s right, Darling.” Mairwen’s eyes suddenly felt very wet. Gale stepped closer, wrapping his arm behind her back. They watched the bird flit around, gathering twigs for her nest.
“Mah,” said Clara.
“That’s right.” Mairwen kissed her daughter’s soft, brown hair. “Mama.”