(2021-09-27) Tea and Trepidation

Details

Author:	inkie
Summary:	Ismene Callis and Lady Niris Ference take tea, and talk of herbalism, alchemy, and Certain Feminine Matters. The exchange proves harrowing for both.
Rating:	T for Teen

Chain: Bizzy

Niris is sitting very upright on a couch upstairs by the window, her legs folded beneath her, a botanical journal open in her lap and a pen in one hand. The pages of the journal have been visibly and emphatically annotated in a couple of places, and Niris is gazing toward the stairs with a look of tight-lipped, regally frosty outrage.

Mizzy bounds up the stairs, glowing with happiness until she runs into a Frost Wall. She stops, one foot upraised to step on the landing. Her brown eyes widen with fear, and you can see the blood draining away from her face. It’s probably pooling in her boots. “L-lady Niris,” she stammers. “Is this a b— I tho— E-elohad SIR! Sir Elohad said… I could… come up?”

She doesn’t dare look behind her to the quiet sound of Elohad and Ben’s voices, but her eyes dart that way as if making sure Ben can hear her if she screams for help.

“Can you believe,” Niris demands, “what –” She lifts the journal to squint at it. “What Magus Westley Hardinge” – this name pronounced in tones of Extreme Scorn – “wrote about the winter berry of the northern mountain goldthorn?” She gives the journal a paper-rattling shake in Mizzy’s direction. “As if one of those pompous old – old men knows the first damned thing about contra–” She catches herself, blinks at Mizzy, and lowers the journal decorously to her lap again. After a moment, she tucks her pen primly between the pages and sets it aside on the couch, then rises gracefully to smile a little wryly at Mizzy. “So sorry. I get – a little high-strung when I’m cooped up for long.”

She takes a deep breath and visibly resets, then comes toward Mizzy with a smile and a hand extended. “Come and sit. I have some tea, actually, your tea, that Elo brewed for me just a little while ago. Can I pour you a cup? There’s cake as well, Ben does this thing with, I don’t know, ginger and apricots? It’s sticky but very nice.”

Pressing a hand to her heart, possibly to help it move back into sinus rhythm, Mizzy sighs gustily. “Oh. I thought you were angry with me and I was about to drop dead on the spot. That was terrifying. You didn’t even use an eyebrow.” She moves to sit, perhaps a bit more heavily than propriety would allow.

“Yes, please,” she continues. “Tea would be lovely. And I’d imagine anything Ben makes must be very nice. You use winterberries for contraception?” Look how calmly she can talk about it! Then again, she probably used up all her stores of adrenaline.

“You absolutely do not,” Niris snaps, and then catches herself again. “Bless, I’m sorry. But no, you don’t, dear. It’s an excellent way to ruin your liver and get pregnant anyway in the process.” She crosses to a little writing desk against the far wall, where a tea tray has been set, and pours a cup of tea. She sets it on a saucer, then deftly props a slice of a dark and sticky, spice-fragrant tea cake on the saucer’s edge and carries this all over to Ismene. “Here you are.”

“Well I don’t know much about contraception, I just couldn’t think of another contra- word,” Mizzy admits, reaching up to take the refreshments and settle them in front of her. “But if you keep getting riled up over herbals, I’ll tell Estel and you’ll be relegated to reading knitting patterns for months on end.” She grins a little over the lip of her cup, then takes a sip of tea.

“Oh, how very dare you!” says Niris, but she’s also grinning as she resettles on the couch and smooths her skirt. “And no, you chose the right word, that’s just the trouble. The fool man claims you can use a tincture of winterberry and blindweed for contracept–” She takes a deep breath, folds her hands in her lap, and composes herself. “Bless, I’m just going to write a letter to the damned editor. Again.” She slumps back against the couch in a rather unladylike sulky fashion before making a rueful face at Ismene and sitting up again with dignity.

“In any event, I’m sure I wouldn’t be getting riled up over herbals if I had absolutely anything useful to do with myself. I cannot bear sitting idle, I’m going to start howling from the balcony any moment. That’s why I invited you.” She pauses. “Not for howling,” she clarifies drily. “I was hoping you might help me – you and Estel both – with a project. To prevent the howling, as it were.”

Interested, Mizzy cocks her head. “I’d love to! There’s quite enough howling going on in Ironforge at the moment, with Brewfest being just down the mountain. The good part is headache remedies are much in demand. I’m making quite a good bit on simple healing potions.”

“I knew you were a sensible girl.” Niris gives Mizzy a shrewd, assessing look. “Well. In order to keep myself from howling – there’s a little vacant place just around the corner from here, and I would like to … take the lease on it, or buy it, or whatever its status is, and set up a little stillroom in there. That way I can just walk around the corner to do my work, nothing too strenuous, and you and Estel will have a space here in the city to work as well. A little … ladies’ laboratory, I suppose.” She smiles faintly.

Mizzy lights up like a Chr— a Winter Veil tree. “That’s a wonderful idea! I’ll be happy to donate funds, of course. Oh, and we’ll make sure you lounge about in a nice chair telling us where to put everything. Little shelves and cubbies and hooks on the rafters for drying herbs…” Her imagination is off and running. “Have you spoken to Estel about it yet?”

“Not properly, no. I’ve raised the prospect before, but only in a general sort of way. And bless, dear heart, why in the world would you donate funds? Don’t even worry about that.” She waves a hand dismissively, and then rises to collect a cup of tea for herself. “Do you know Estel well?”

Mizzy shakes her head and tries a bit of the ginger apricot sticky thing that’s quite nice. “I know of her, of course, and I’ve read her file, but I don’t know her. She seems very nice. And very much the type to be a bully to a patient when she feels it’s needful.” She blinks innocently, because Light forbid she ever suggest that Niris would be a difficult patient.

Niris turns back with her cup of tea to return to her place on the couch. She gives Mizzy a pursed-lip, trying-not-to-smile smile. “Mm. We don’t say ‘bully,’ Miss Callis, we say ‘pragmatic.’ Estel is a pragmatic young lady.” She sips her tea. “She rather reminds me of a young me. Now, do you think you’d be willing – I know you’ve been helpful to other members of the Company in real estate matters – to look into the status of that property, and let me know how I might get hold of it? I’ll speak with Estel meanwhile, and then once I have the property, we’ll go about getting it set up. I can begin making lists.”

She has another sip of tea, and tips her head to listen to the sound of the men’s voices downstairs; she smiles to herself, and then smiles conspiratorially at Mizzy. “I’m very pleased,” she says softly.

"Of course, I'm happy to look into it for you. If only to repay you for how kind you've been to overlook my saucy behavior." Mizzy laughs, self-consciously. "I can only chalk it up to my utter relief at realizing you weren't furious with me when I came upstairs! If you hadn't offered me a seat, I'd have collapsed prostrate on the floor."

Taking another nibble of the cake, she asks, "Pleased about what, if I may ask?"

Niris arches a brow. "Well, about you and Ben, dear. He’s been sweet on you since — to be honest, I'm not even sure. I'm not sure he's sure. But I heard a great deal of 'Miz Callis this' and 'Miz Callis that' after each of your Friday outings." She has another sip of tea, her gaze bright. "And I think you've been an excellent domesticating influence on him, frankly. He was rather … feral, before."

She leans to set her teacup on a side table, and draws her legs up to fold them beneath her on the couch again. (She is barefoot; Niris would not condone Boots On The Furniture.) "We are going to have to discuss what qualifies as saucy behavior, I'm afraid, because I haven't heard anything approaching sauce from you, Miss Callis." She puts her elbow on the arm of the couch and props her tilted head on her fist, surveying Mizzy with amusement. "And I think a little sauce serves a young lady well. Some sharp among the sweet."

"Well, I sounded saucy to me," Mizzy says, "and I do it so rarely! I see I shall have to adjust my notion of it."

Then she smiles, quite helpless not to. "Ben is wonderful. So kind and earnest and… Well, I'm sure I don't have to list his good qualities to you. But how was he feral? He's been a perfect gentleman since we first met."

Even while she's saying it, she remembers something and blushes. "Well, save one or two moments."

Niris arches an eyebrow and looks even more deeply amused. But she says mildly, “Bless, I do hope he hasn’t offended. He’s a very good boy, you understand, and there’s no harm in some fun at your age, but you mustn’t let him run roughshod, either. I’m afraid that we ourselves weren’t so” – she considers Mizzy – “gently brought up,” she finishes diplomatically, if drily.

Then she lifts her head from her hand and arches a brow, sweeping Mizzy with another, slightly different look. “And I’m sorry, but did I hear you correctly at the start, that you don’t know much about contraception? I’ll have you know, Miss Callis, that I absolutely refuse to be a grandmother before I’m fifty – bless, honestly even that sounds appallingly young, but I suppose nature and young people – well. You might want to get a handle on that.” She pauses, and gets an abstract look. “Oh. Oh! That does give me an idea.”

She reaches into a pocket and produces her little notebook and pencil, and begins jotting. “I’ll have to speak to Estel, of course,” she mutters.

Deep brown eyes widening in fresh alarm, Mizzy stares at Niris. "Y-you're going to speak with Estel about grandchildren? I'm sure that won't be necessary I mean we've only kissed a few times and one doesn't get pregnant from that! I read a book and— Oh but of course you know all about… Since…"

Gesturing fitfully, Mizzy falls silent.

Niris blinks up from her notebook; it seems to take her a moment to recall the present conversation. “What? Oh! Oh, no, of course I’m not speaking to Estel about grandchildren, why would she –” She stares at Mizzy, and then closes the notebook carefully on her thumb. “You … read a book? To learn that kissing doesn’t – oh, dear.” This last is very faint. Niris stares at Mizzy a moment, glances toward the stairs – Elo exclaims something, and Ben laughs, and there’s a clink of glassware – and then looks back to Mizzy. She clears her throat. “Does – is Ben aware that you had to … look in a book for this information?” she asks carefully.

Mizzy's horrified "NO!" is loud enough to be heard downstairs. And next door at CC HQ. And probably at the Great Forge.

Apple-red, Mizzy lowers her voice to a hissing whisper. "We don't talk about such things! It's… It wouldn't b— We don't talk about such things!"

There is a silence from downstairs. After a moment, Ben calls up cautiously, “Everything okay up there?”

“Yes!” Niris calls back in an extra-breezy tone, with a gimlet eye on Mizzy. “Having a lovely talk!”

“Okay,” says Ben after a dubious delay. A moment later, he and Elo resume their conversation, in lower tones.

“Miss Callis,” says Niris very firmly – but quietly – “I’m afraid that you and that young man will be … having relations at some point, even if you can convin– even if it isn’t until after marriage, and so you had very well better be prepared to discuss such things with him. It will make a great many things a great deal easier for you and your relationship, and frankly I rather insist on it. I understand that some young ladies are raised with a … certain amount of discretion in these matters, but past a certain point I have very little use for that kind of thing. It is more likely to lead young ladies into trouble and misery than anything else.”

In the same whisper, and after a look around in case Someone Else is lurking around, Mizzy replies, "Well, after we're married, we won't need to talk about them." Nervously, she wipes her sweaty palms on her thighs, only then realizing she's still wearing her gloves.

"Honestly. And by the way, you could at least stop calling me 'Miss Callis'. Mizzy, if you please. Ismene, if you must."

Niris raises her eyebrows. “Ismene, then. What do you mean you won’t need to talk about them?” She is doing a very Explain Yourself, Young Lady expression, but after a moment she adds – more softly, if a little stiffly – “I am not trying to make you uncomfortable, dear heart. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am trying to save you a great deal of discomfort and misunderstanding.”

"Because after we're married, these things will just…" Another vague gesture, this time involving her arms. They'll just cast glitter upon the seas? Prepare to burst into a chorus of "Let It Go"? "…happen," Mizzy concludes in a rather anticlimactic (stet) whisper.

“Oh yes,” says Niris drily. “I’m quite sure they will.”

She leans to take up her teacup again, tucks her skirt around her folded legs, and sighs. She rubs her temple. “I’m sure you think I’m being a horrible old busybody or something, Ismene. I assure you simply that I have years of experience with … young ladies and their various … situations. I won’t press you any further about it, because I’d hate for you to expire of – completely needless, by the way – embarrassment, but I do advise you to … look into it somewhere, at least. So you’re prepared. Both partners in a marriage ought to go in feeling confident in themselves and in each another and what is to come. Hm?”

Abashed, Mizzy looks down at her tea. "I don't think you're any of those things. And I did read the book so I know how it happens." Her brow wrinkles. "Though it all sounds dreadful. I suppose if Ben needs an heir, I'll manage to put up with it, but now I know why my parents only had one child."

She looks up again. "Oh but I suppose I oughtn't say such things, to you of all people right now. I'm sorry for being thoughtless."

Niris lays her free hand on her belly but shakes her head in dismissal. “Not at all, Ismene. But listen to me, dear: it oughtn’t be dreadful at all, and if it is, it’s only out of an abundance of ignorance and people not knowing what they’re doing or how to ask for it to be done differently. Certainly you and Ben both deserve better than you – having to put up with something.” She hesitates. “May I ask … what the book told you?” She peers at Mizzy kindly.

“Aunt Nir?” Ben calls up the stairs. “You intendin’ on keepin’ Mizzy?”

"Goodness," Mizzy says, jumping to her feet. "I've kept you quite a bit longer than I intended to! Sir Elohad will be up those stairs in a moment to save you from my prattle." She looks around for her things, but she didn't bring any. "And don't worry about that book. It was all very clear with… with a great many diagrams that explained about th– the inserting and the seed pouches and such."

"Coming!" she calls down the stairs.

“The seed pou–” Niris sits bolt upright as Mizzy makes her escape, looking simultaneously bewildered and horrified. Bewildified. “What in the – bless.”