(2022-04-09) Sororitea

Details

Author:	Jessa
Summary:	Mizzy sees out advice from her sister in the Light, her mother-in-law, and her aunt-in-law, all of whom are Niris. There is tea. There is always tea.
Rating:	T for Teen

Chain: Bizzy

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Brief mention of miscarriage

Ismene Hazan walks through the industry and clamor of Ironforge as though the energy for both were taken out of her own personal stores. Each step can be taken only by watching her feet, each footfall lands in time to the slam of hammer on anvil. She keeps moving, though. It is, after all, what she and Ben both do. They kept moving.

She wants to sit. She wanted to sleep. Getting out of bed had seemed more trouble than it was worth. Ben, her Ben, had been willing to let her. He was still sweetly, deeply worried about her, that was obvious. Only for him, only to see the anxiety clear from his warm eyes, had she made herself get up, get dressed. Hand in hand, they’d walked to the portal. He had even offered to come with her but she knew he had things to attend to.

So here she is, scuffing her way through Ironforge toward a place where she tells herself there will be rest and refuge. Just keep moving.

She stands outside the Ference home and waits for something to happen. Nothing does. Oh. Yes. She remembers, finally, to lift her hand and knock.

“Coming!” singsongs a familiar voice from within. It is a few moments, however, before the door actually opens. Niris Ference stands within, wearing a simple, loose-fitting gown of smoke-grey wool. She is heavily pregnant and stands a little awkwardly, spine arched back against the weight, a hand on her belly. This is, perhaps, the source of the delay in answering. “Did you bring the ones with — oh. Oh! Ismene!” She blinks and then beams, reaches out a hand. “Come in, dear heart, come in. Is Ben with you? Come and sit, I am terribly cross with you about eloping” — her tone makes clear she is not at all — “and we have a great deal to catch up on, sit, sit. Coffee? No, tea, of course, I’ll make tea.”

There’s a moment of helpless emotions when it sinks in — ‘it’ being maybe that there’s tea in her future? or that Niris is so happy and chatty? or possibly that she really is somewhere safe? — and then Ismene starts crying. She sits, “I’m sorry,” she says, pulling out a handkerchief from her sleeve. “I’m sorry, of course yes please tea. I should’ve come visit sooner I know and now…”

She trails off wiping at her eyes.

Niris pauses, already partway to the kitchen, and turns back, blinking again. After a moment, she abandons the quest for tea and moves — we will not say waddles, Niris would give us Eyebrows, we will simply suggest that she moves in some kind of way — back toward the chairs. She settles heavily in the one closest to Ismene and reaches over for a hand. “Bless, child. You know I’m — not really cross? Don’t you?” Niris peers at her weeping daughter-in-law anxiously. “I’m not, you know. I thought Ben would have told you. Is Ben —” She freezes a moment, and loses a shade of color. “Ismene, is Ben all right?”

“Yes! No. No, he’s fine, Ben’s fine.” Ismene draws her handkerchief through her hands over and over. “I just… I’ve done something terrible and I’m not sure… I don’t know… I thought…” She looks up, her eyes red and puffy. “Have you ever killed anyone? On purpose, I mean? Not… not someone attacking you.” She thinks. “Well, no, I suppose they were attacking… But innocent. Have you ever killed an innocent person, deliberately?”

Niris sits back slowly in her seat, her expression cautious. She folds her hands on her lap (no mean feat, considering the general lack of lap at present) and contemplates Ismene. “I think,” she says, “that I am going to need further information to answer your question appropriately. I have … a very hard time imagining you committing a cold-blooded murder, if that is what you’re confessing to, Ismene.”

Perhaps in recognition of the fact that interrogation may not be the most comforting thing for Ismene right now, Niris heaves herself to her feet and shuffles toward the kitchen once more. “I am listening,” she says crisply over her shoulder. “But I am also making you tea.”

Ismene submits to having tea and sits opposite the chair Niris had been using. “I suppose I should’ve brought my journal,” she says. There’s a place to begin, and it’s likely at the beginning, but even as she’s thinking on her story, Mizzy looks down and shakes her head. “I used the Light, a holy power, to kill someone. I’m not sure there are any other pertinent details. Now I just can’t…”

Finish a sentence. She can’t finish a sentence. She just sits there, shaking her head a little, mangling her handkerchief.

“Well,” says Niris briskly, arranging a tea tray on the counter. “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the Light’s been used to kill, child. The salient question, I expect, is why you did it. Judgement — a just judgement — requires context.” She spoons tea leaves into the pot and checks on the water.

“A slave. I killed a naga slave. Some of them ran but some of them attacked. I… I tried to make them run, but that just frightened them and they came back. This one…” She sighs. “I really should have brought my journal. He just kept hitting Ben. Ben didn’t hit back, because I said we shouldn’t kill these poor creatures. And Ben watched me. I watched the slave.”

Ismene closes her eyes. “There was a moment, I swear it, when I felt like I was inside his head. Like I could see his life and how he’d suffered and what had been stripped from him. What he was before he was a slave, and how many pieces of him had been knocked away until this was all that was left. And I killed him. With fire and Light and by my own will.”

Pity that handkerchief. It’s not going to survive. “I should have saved him, but I killed him.”

Niris is quiet for a time, her brows knit. Surely brewing tea does not require this much focus.

At last she sighs. She picks up the tea tray, the pot now fragrantly steaming, and waddles with it back toward where Ismene sits. She sets the tray down and then lowers herself with relief into her own seat. “That’s hideous, Ismene. A hideous thing. To be clear, it is not what you did that was the hideous thing. But I can imagine how horrifying it was for you to touch it, and to be given that kind of choice.” She leans forward, planting her feet awkwardly, and picks up the teapot to pour two cups.

Will Ismene ever be so far gone as to forget manners? Not today, it seems. She rises and reaches out for the pot. “Oh, no, please, do sit. Let me pour for both of us. Have… have you ever had to do something like that? I told Ben I would speak to you. I thought you’d… that you’d understand maybe better than he does.”

She risks a Niris-peek. Criticizing Ben doesn’t always go over well in this house.

Niris subsides in her chair with a sigh of relief, and puts a hand on her belly again. She watches Mizzy pour, and contemplates. “Ben is … young,” she says judiciously, as though Ismene were not younger still. “There are any number of things he doesn’t understand as well as he thinks. And frankly I ought to take him by the ear for — he stood and watched you, you said? While you had to make the decision? Honestly, that boy. I should have thought him more responsible than that.” She makes a sour face.

After a moment she says, more gently, “And yes. I have — yes. Had to do … something like it, I suppose. During the war, you understand. Well, and between wars. What the north considers between wars. I have done … I have been called on to make rather a number of shattering decisions over the years, Ismene. They felt shattering, at the time, I left each one shattered. And yet, here I am still. Sad, sadder for some, but whole. I hope each one of those choices, though, each one of those breakings, helped me to be a better priestess in its aftermath. Let none of them be wasted, let each of them count in what I do now, or next.”

She makes a wry face; her golden gaze is too somber, too shadowed for the expression to be called a smile. “It’s the Light’s way of pruning our souls, perhaps. A person might see a young tree growing wild and think nothing of it, let it grow unfettered. A gardener sees the same tree and knows if it isn’t cut back in the fall, it won’t bloom or set fruit properly in the spring, or it will take mold among the leaves, or any of a dozen other things. To make the strongest and most fruitful trees, you must prune them. We all have to feel a cut now and again, to grow into our best selves.” She tips her head to one side and watches Ismene.

Mizzy prepares the tea the way she’s seen Niris prepare tea for herself… which might be plain, who can say. Except Niris. For herself, Mizzy takes extra sugar and a nice dollop of milk. “I don’t blame Ben,” she says, “for watching. I wouldn’t have thanked him for taking the decision away from me. I asked them not to kill the poor things, so he didn’t. But…” She stirs her tea gently with only the slightest chime of spoon on cup. “He knew. It was a kindness, in a way. He was sorry for the fact that I would have to learn it, but it was my lesson to learn. All he did was wait for me to … to figure it all out.”

Another head shake from her niece-in-law. Or something. “I wonder if I’d have felt better if I had done it by any other means. I can’t hear the naaru now, you know. There’s just nothing.”

"Oh, Ismene." Niris studies her sorrowfully. "You don't think — surely you don't think, dear heart, that the Light has shut you out? That it … disapproves of you, or something? The Light is any number of things, but disapproving isn't one of them."

Mizzy looks up at Niris with big doe eyes. Not puppy eyes, that’s Ben. “But I killed an innocent creature…”

“You did,” says Niris. She sips her tea, her gaze level on Mizzy. “You did that. But … you say innocent, and he was innocent in the sense he had no hand in what was done to him, or the ways in which he was broken. He was a victim of those things. But he was — you said he was hitting Ben. When Ben was not hitting back, because you told him not to. Is Ben … do you think Ben does good in the world? Do you think he will go on to do good, more good? If you had let the poor creature kill Ben, instead, or if Ben had let it kill him, because you asked him not to fight — and let’s just imagine that as an academic exercise for the moment, because I trust he wouldn’t do anything so foolish — how would you be feeling now, about that choice?” She arches a brow. “I am not asking you this, mind you, as Ben’s aunt or his mother. I am asking as a priestess, and I am asking you as a priestess rather than as Ben’s wife.”

There’s a mental stutter that precedes a verbal one. “B-but he coul– That is, Ben wa– It did– I’d never let…” And there’s some rising anger that bullies through her depression, straightening her spine and bringing her shoulders back. “It couldn’t possibly have hurt Ben, it didn’t even have a weapon. I couldn’t just let something kill– “

She tries to throttle back her (obviously quite explosive) temper. “As a priestess… if anything killed Ben I’d…”

INCINERATE IT IN A FIERY HELLSTORM THAT WOULD TURN WORLDS TO CINDERS

“…bring him back.” Frowning at this conversational turn, Mizzy takes a sip of tea.

Niris smiles wryly and inclines her head in concession. “Yes, I suppose you would. Very well. But surely you were acting in the first place to protect him, and not simply because you felt like killing the poor thing?”

“Well. Yes. They wouldn’t run.” Frowning still, she’s not quite able to sink back into her former haze. “But there could have been some other way, I’m sure. I just wasn’t able to think of one. Honestly, we even tried to run but they chased us so far and still, they attacked.”

Niris’s gaze is soft with sympathy, but her tone is firm. “The world will not often afford us the luxury of puzzling out the best way — assuming there is such a thing, in many cases. We can only do the best we can, with the time and circumstances we’re given. It is hard, and it will be hard. But in a way, this is what the Light seeks from us, too. The Light doesn’t expect perfection of any of us, Ismene. It can’t, because even the most devoted person is still only a person, and the Light loves us regardless.” She sips her tea, then leans forward awkwardly to set the cup down. “Tell me: do you and Ben disagree on anything? Have you ever had to compromise on anything, or sit down and talk a thing out?”

It’s an odd question, or so Mizzy seems to think. That, too, keeps her from going back into her own head over the slave slaughter. “Um… Not really?” she says, still thinking. “Well, he did want to marry me straight off and we had to talk about that. Oh, and recently I had to tell him that he would have to dress up from time to time as Lord Hazan; he wasn’t in favor of that.” A little smile touches her lips. Mizzy does not repeat what he said about King Anduin.

Niris presses her own lips against a smile. “Mm. I’m sure.” She studies Mizzy. “You are going to disagree with him, Ismene. You are going to have fights with him. You may be bitterly angry with one another. You may feel crushed. Will you stop loving him, do you think? When it happens?” She hesitates. “To be fair, this is another not-quite-just question. The answer, depending on the substance and magnitude of the disagreement, may very well be yes, and well within your rights. But think on it now, the way you feel now, and tell me what you think.”

One shocking question after another. Stop slapping the poor little priestess around, Niris. Not love Ben? “No!” She’s borderline scandalized. “We did have a little fight once over–”

She blinks. “Well, that was more of a timing thing but… not love Ben?” Ben, with his warm brown eyes, his crooked smile, the little chipped tooth. Ben, holding her close and warm, his strength surrounding her and keeping her safe. Her Ben, always seeing what everyone around him needs and the quiet way he just sets about seeing that they’re taken care of.

The direction of Mizzy’s thoughts is probably not that well-hidden, given the distance of her gaze, the softness of her smile. “I will always love him.”

“Hm,” says Niris, in a way Ben would probably not appreciate, but she’s trying not to smile again. “Well. Do you not think the Light loves you at least as much? Even in your mistakes and your failures and flaws?”

It might not have been a rhetorical question, but Ismene seems to be taking it as one. She sits back a little and sips her tea every now and then. Eventually, she says, “Yes, I do see. Ben tried to tell me much of the same– But of course I didn’t lis– Well I wasn’t really in a mind to–” She looks up at Niris, again with the big doe eyes. If she and Ben have kids, they’re going to have absolutely enormous eyes. Freakishly so.

“So you think if… if I pray for a healing, it’ll answer me? It… I’m afraid it won’t, you see. Or that what will answer may not be entirely… pure.”

Niris sits forward to reach for her teacup again. This takes a minute. There is a lot of Niris in the way. She reaches it, and subsides with a sigh. “Do you know — I can’t recall whether I ever mentioned it — that I was a shadow priestess for a time? When I was … oh, not much older than you are now. A … terrible thing happened, and I turned my back on the Light.” She sips tea tranquilly.

Bless her, Mizzy actually puts a hand to her chest. She has no pearls and does not clutch anything, but the hand goes up anyway. “You?”

Niris nods and cradles the teacup in both hands. Her gaze is faraway. “I was … as I said, I was about your age. A little older. I was betrothed, to a man I loved very much. And I was carrying our child.” She puts one hand on her belly again now. Shhh, don’t listen, Baby Dane. “The Dark Portal opened, and the orcs invaded. They … killed my fiancé. And I lost the child. I was … in terrible pain, and rage, and I wanted to hurt the orcs in turn. To obliterate them.” Her voice twists viciously on this last, and she pauses to collect herself, clears her throat. “So I turned to shadow. For … oh, I couldn’t say how long.” She meditates over her teacup for a moment, then takes another sip.

“The first time I needed to heal again rather than harm, though — the first time I reached for the Light? It came back. It was always there, waiting. Even when we do foolhardy things — which, to be clear, your choice was not — but even when we do, the Light does not abandon us.”

Ismene listens to the story and watches Niris as she tells it. When the obviously abbreviated telling is done, she says softly, “Your choice wasn’t either, of course. If Ben were killed and I–” She doesn’t finish the phrase. “I don’t know that I’d ever come back from it. You’re a strong woman. I’m glad we’re related now.” A little smile is offered up at the end.

“Well, so am I,” says Niris briskly — let’s not have a fuss — and she smiles over her teacup. Then the smile vanishes behind severity again. “I think you might be surprised, Ismene, at what you can survive. I certainly was. I expect you’re a strong woman as well, or will learn to be. Certainly you’re a principled one. Which is a kind of strength, itself, but in the end I think the real test the world will offer you is how closely you can hew to your principles while also doing what is sometimes necessary, if painful. You will have to, whether as a priestess or … well, just in living. And you will grow, in those painful choices. You will learn not just about the world but about yourself, your capacity, your conscience, perhaps how to do differently or better next time. You do your best, Ismene. The world can’t ask more of any of us.”

She nods, absorbing it the way she absorbs the sweetness in her tea. “Well,” she says after a minute, “of course my standards are higher than the world’s, naturally.” Another smile, more pronounced, and a sigh that seems to leave a measure of peace behind it.

“Naturally,” says Niris, and nods once. “That’s why I like you.” She smiles again.

Ismene snuggles back in her chair, folding her legs up. “So, has anyone been by with the latest gossip? The new Aspenwood husbands, for example…”