Enyi Credensin's Story

Enyi sat on their couch in the living room-- in a tall, willowy, smoky-haired human body, wearing typically Avengaean clothing but with her long hair in so many tiny braids that Aedelian couldn't even count them-- with the two bags full of her only possessions left in the various worlds sitting on the floor to either side of her feet. Audaxo and Dyva stood in the kitchen looking like they were trying not to stare, Vyly had her head stuck through the doorway to the stairs down to the floor of the dragon-level, and Aedelian, breaking his own rules, sat on the end of the coffee table, right in front of his granddaughter.

" ... so they sent me here," she finished with a shrug, her voice tired but remarkably calm and mature for everything she had just said. It was the end of a story Aedelian had never, ever, ever wanted to hear. Compared to this, the rest of the "bad day" had been nothing.

Aedelian asked the first thing that popped into his head, and he even managed to sound concerned instead of stunned. "Are you all right?"

Again Enyi strugged, and gave him a smile. "I've been better, but I'll be all right."

::Are you sure?:: Vyly contributed.

"I'm sure," Enyi answered. "I'm just tired... I haven't gotten much sleep since...."

"Yes, yes," Aedelian agreed quickly as her voice trailed off. "We don't have any guest rooms, or anything... just the children's room, and-- well, we can put you in my room, for now," he interrupted himself, shaking his head. "The human-sized one; it's the only extra room that's furnished. I never use it, anyway."

"Thank you."

Still reeling from multiple shocks, Aedelian blinked when his granddaughter fixed him with an all too intense stare for someone who had just been through everything she had gone through. "Are you all right, Grandpa?" she asked seriously.

Grandpa. And I was just thinking about how I was looking older.... "I think so," he answered truthfully, and turned her reassuring smile back on her, reaching over to pat her hand.

"Are you going to be staying here?" Dyva piped from the kitchen doorway, blinking cutely.

"If you'll all have me," Enyi replied. "I have a few cousins I could find, if not...."

Aedelian shook his head firmly. There was no way he would turn away his granddaughter! Not after everything that had happened! She was all he had left, now, of his home....

::'Del,:: Vyly began privately, faintly reluctant, guilty, and worried all in one. He understood before she even tried to continue: the apartment seemed full enough as it was; finances were tight, seeing as only Aedelian had a job, and it was not a particularly high-paying one; and, finally, Enyi was not the most charismatic or open of individuals. The family didn't know her well; they'd only taken two trips, thus far, to Avengaea, and only for a few days each. So, the obvious difficulties warred with the inevitable sympathy anyone would have for someone in her position, much less family in her position.

::We'll work it out,:: he promised his mate, just as privately, before she could try to explain. ::I can't turn her away, Vy... I just can't. If I have to take a second job, I will. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd be willing to work, herself. We'll work it out, I promise.::

She heaved a purely mental sigh, looking between him and Enyi briefly. ::All right. You're right, we can't turn her away, poor thing.::

"There isn't any question," Aedelian said, adding to his movement just a second before. Mental communication took far less time than verbal, if you wanted it to. "You'll be staying here as long as you need or want to."

That time her smile, though weary, was more genuine. "Thank you, Grandpa."

We're going to have to convince her to stop calling me that, he thought distractedly, and rose automatically when she did.

"I'll show you where," he said.

"That would be very nice." That was the most emotion he'd gotten out of her, yet: relief. She really was tired. Thinking to save her the extra work of carrying it, Aedelian picked up the nearer of his granddaughter's bags, and he was dismayed to find how light it was, but Enyi didn't pick up the second. Rather, she watched as Audaxo bounded out from the kitchen, Dyva right against his tail, both attempting to jostle the other one out of the way to get to her second bag. Dyva finally won by lifting it telekinetically, and got it halfway down the hall before Audaxo shot it down with a spell and caught it up magically, instead.

"No fair!" she exclaimed.

::Everything's fair, dear sister, in love and war,:: Audaxo quipped.

"And this isn't either one," Dyva shot back.

"Thank you both," Enyi told them with quiet amusement, defusing a bickering match even more deftly than Aedelian usually did. The two grinned at her, one charmingly and the other lazily. Vyly looked mildly impressed from the doorway before calling both children out of Enyi's new room-- and possibly temporary room, depending on whether she eventually chose to remain there or use the dragon-sized room Sehmei had vacated after the Fur and Feather's Frenzy.

Aedelian lingered a moment, catching his granddaughter's hand before she disappeared inside, and then catching her eyes when she turned to him. "Are you sure you're all right?" he asked her quietly, now that only he was there to hear her response.

"I will be with some sleep," she promised, and though he thought her emotions were far more complex than she was letting on, her gaze told him she was well aware of his snooping and would prefer he refrain. Not sure what else to do-- deprived of insider's knowledge, stranded with a grandchild who was all he had left of a previous life, and unwilling yet to confront his own grief-- he tried to draw her into his arms for a hug. She ducked away.

"I need to be alone right now," she said, and slipped out of his stunned grasp. "Later, all right?" Before he could answer her, she stepped back into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

Aedelian drifted back out of the human-side of the apartment and down the stairs to the dragon-side's much lower floor. Vyly found him, after getting Dyva and Audaxo settled at the holo-television for one of the educational videos, that were as much play as work, that parents could be provided with, for a price. Normally they were for humanoid children who were home-schooled, and not so much dragon-parents, but it worked well enough for theirs, who were not, after all, likely to grow up as the usual bonding-type dragons. He hadn't bothered to change shape; somehow, looking small, old, and a little ridiculous seemed to fit, for the moment. It at least made Vyly curling around him a much more physically overwhelming, and thus comforting, thing. He buried his face in the feather's of her wing. In the face of a mate's comfort, how could he not turn to what he'd been forced to hear?

::My daughter,:: he sent to her, barely a whisper of horrified, pained thought. ::My daughter, my sister, my nephews... my grandneice... all my friends, people I grew up with... gone.::

::I'm sorry, 'Del... I'm sorry. Is there anything I...?::

::Just this... just be here.::

::Of course, as if I'd go anywhere else!:: she scoffed, trying to make light, like she so often did. The moment didn't last, and she heaved a sigh-- vocally, this time-- and nuzzled into his hair.

::Admeredith... she tried to get help for our village,:: he remembered to her quietly, after a moment. ::She sent Enyi to bond at Sanctuary... hoping she'd bring home some militarily-minded human... help us against the demons. That was years ago. She couldn't find anyone to bring home, poor child... and now this had to happen.::

He could imagine, all too well, what the scene must have been like: demons, dragons, fire, magic, blood and bodies.... No wonder Enyi had done nothing. There would have been nothing she could have done, in the face of that, innocent and unknowing, her first sight of death....

::Don't think of it anymore,:: Vyly suggested, still nuzzling at his hair and shoulders gently.

He didn't think he could not think about it... but... ::I'll try.::

It was a very, very bad day, indeed. Definitely the worst, even worse than when his poor wife had left him at last. At least, though, there was one good point about this second half of this very, very bad day: Lha might not have been on speaking or knowledge terms with either of them, but at least she was alive and well.

And at least Enyi, too, was alive and well....