MHA #6, Saturday Morning

[firstofitskind]

So last night had not exactly gone the way either Verity or Liam had been expecting it to go, to be honest. Which was not to say it was bad, exactly. A little awkward, possibly. Maybe a bit frustrating. But not bad.

But while Verity had been - well, 'startled' would be putting it gently - regarding what had happened instead of actual sex, she'd still asked Liam to stay over. They'd fallen asleep together, content with the idea that they'd talk about things tomorrow. As well as do some things that weren't talking.

Liam being Liam, he'd woken up after a couple hours and slipped out to the living room to do a bit of reading without disturbing Verity's sleep. The mice, naturally, had taken his appearance to mean that the Invocation of the Sacred Law of Food For Privacy had drawn to a close, until he pointed out that he didn't really have the authority to make such decisions.

... Have you ever seen a disappointed mouse face? Because that's what Liam had to deal with, several times over. He'd ended up placating them by ordering a delivery of a couple Mooby Burgers (the only place open at that absurd hour).

Eventually, he headed back to bed, because waking up with Verity was something he'd come to enjoy on the handful of occassions they'd managed it so far. What he wasn't expecting was to be woken up by small, insistent voices.

"Hey," he muttered. "Thought we had a deal, guys."

Yeah, this wasn't the mice, Liam.

[ooc: for the girlfriend, some small children, and the talking mice.]

Comments

[arboreal_priestess]

"Oh god," Verity said, dashing through the door.

Only to discover the not-creepy-really tableau of their children sitting on the floor, surrounded by almost every mouse in the colony, who were hanging on their every word.

[nextoftheirkind]

"--I was borned first," Hayley was explaining.

"Born first," Tyrus corrected.

"Born first," Hayley corrected with over-exaggerated care. "You're such a know-it-all, Tyrant!"

[firstofitskind]

Liam shot Verity a startled look. What was that supposed to mean?

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity had no idea and, at this point, wasn't even sure she wanted to know. But that wasn't what motherhood was about, was it? So instead, she put on a game-for-anything smile and walked into the kitchen like nothing was amiss.

"What's all this?" she asked. "If you're telling the story of how you and your brother came along, it's definitely one I'd like to hear!"

[arboreal_priestess]

One of the mice turned and bowed to Verity. "The Flamebright Priestess is telling us the story behind the Feast of Children Grow Up So Fast."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Oh, is she now?" Verity asked, smile going a little strained. "Well, that sounds like a fun story."

She was giving Liam looks again. Or was, at least until she saw how Tyrus's shoulders were hunched.

"Tyrus?" she asked. "Are you okay?"

[nextoftheirkind]

"I just don't want you to get mad," he mumbled. "You already asked about it and everything."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Aww, sweetheart, I'm sorry," Verity said, stretching her arms out and beckoning Tyrus into them. She was pretty new at this mom thing, but even she couldn't let an upset child just sit there. "I'm not going to be mad and neither is Li--your dad. We just want to know. But no matter what happened, you didn't do anything wrong."

[firstofitskind]

Liam nodded. "Your mom's right. Nobody's gonna be mad, okay?" He was starting to put the pieces together as to what might have happened, and... concerned, maybe. But not mad.

[nextoftheirkind]

Tyrus went to Verity and even though he might normally argue he was too old to sit in her lap, he let himself be pulled in this one time.

"Hayley was born first," he mumbled, just loud enough to be heard. "She was three when I was born. But then the Covenant found us."

The mice gasped audibly. In fairness, so did Verity.

"We had to go on the run. But it was hard, cause I was a baby."

[nextoftheirkind]

"All he did was cry an' cry an' cry," Hayley agreed. "Nobody could make him stop, not even Aunt Mary. We nearly got catched--"

"Caught."

"Whatever, Tyrant! Caught cause he kept cryin'." Hayley frowned. "I just remember havin' to run a lot an' bein' tired all the time."

[firstofitskind]

"That must've been hard," Liam noted.

To Tyrus, he added, "We- your Mom and Dad in the future- asked you for your help, didn't we?" Not in so many words of course, but in the same way that Ha'gel had made Liam understand that he needed to be an adult for his plans to succeed.

[nextoftheirkind]

Tyrus nodded hard enough to make his hair fly. "They were looking for a family with a toddler and a baby and it was hard to keep going with everything we needed. So they--"

"Put him in the microwave," Hayley interrupted.

"It wasn't a microwave!" Tyrus said, exasperated.

"That's how Mommy described it," Hayley said, hands on her hips. "You put the food in the microwave to heat it up faster and so we put Tyrus in the microwave to make him grow faster!"

[firstofitskind]

"That's definitely a metaphor," Liam explained to Verity. "In case you were wondering."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Thank you for not actually microwaving our future children," Verity said, wry. "We were potentially going to have words about that."

[nextoftheirkind]

"Anyway," Tyrus said with a long-suffering sigh. "They decided Dad would Share with me to explain what I was s'posed to do. Then I just... made my body grow real fast so I was bigger'n Hayley."

[arboreal_priestess]

"And did that Sharing teach you everything you needed to know about being...bigger?" Verity asked, trying to picture it. How did Liam know to stop at whatever a--how old was Tyrus supposed to be? Eight? Ten? It wasn't like he'd had a normal childhood himself to draw upon.

[nextoftheirkind]

"Sorta," Tyrus nodded. "Dad says me and Hayley know all the stuff he and Mom know, but we can't really remember it unless we really need to. And Dad was never a kid, so it's mostly because of Mom that I knew that stuff."

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity frowned, giving it some thought. She was the family jock, sure, but she wasn't a complete idiot. "So, you have all of our memories--" okay, that was low-key terrifying, just considering the things she wouldn't want her kids to have seen "--so when you were growing, there some basically a switch in my memories that toggled off, once you hit your age? So that you'd know what a kid your age should and not be solving quadratic equations while practicing cursive?"

She was going to have to pin Liam down sometime and figure this all out. Did they get all her memories, even the ones she'd forgotten over time? Could she just read a bunch of philosophy and string theory and advanced math and have her kids understand it, even if she didn't?

[nextoftheirkind]

"Aunt Timiny says she's real glad we're not creepy alien corn children," Hayley piped up.

"It's Children of the Corn," Tyrus corrected because the player is far too lazy to meta rn.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity had more been thinking of Village of the Damned, but no matter what movie you picked, she was glad her small children weren't like that.

"I'm glad that Aunt Timiny--" best and greatest name ever, thank you children "--approves. Do you spend a lot of time with her?"

[nextoftheirkind]

Haylay nodded. "She helps me control the fires."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Fires?" Verity repeated, looking at Liam. Was this another alien thing? Something his shaqarava could do?

[firstofitskind]

"Do you mean the shaqarava?" Liam asked carefully, as he'd noticed the marks on both their palms.

... Though fires wasn't something he'd normally associate with that. Explosions yes, fires no.

[nextoftheirkind]

"Don't be silly, Daddy," Hayley snorted. "The shaqarava isn't fire. It's energy. This is from Mommy's side, not yours."

Tyrus saw Verity's face and hastened to reassure them. "Don't worry!" he said. "Aunt Timiny and Aunt Mary and even Grandpa Thomas are teaching her!"