(2025-01-12) The Most Impressive Baby Girl in the Universe

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Author:	inkie
Summary:	Two days after Aszera's arrival at Fallon House, Siamus takes her on the second promised beach walk, this time in the company of Lady Ery.
Rating:	T for Teen

Bright and early in the morning — for her — the day after her walk with Siamus along the shore, Aszera Sunstrike waits in a cushioned armchair in the foyer between the two staircases. She sits back with her legs crossed, her blindfolded face tilted up towards the ceiling and her hair falling back behind the chair.

She's still dressed in blue — this time a long-sleeved navy gown in thick fabric, covered with vaguely floral-patterned black embroidery. This is one of her hiding dresses, effectively covering all of her arcane markings, though she hasn't brought down her cloak or other tools to obscure the blindfold. Given that, as well as the chill in recent days, she's likely chosen the garment for purposes of warmth rather than misdirection. Her cloak might have also helped with the weather, but it was likely deemed too much of a cost for comfort — no matter how cold it is, she's not leaving Fallon House wearing something lined in red.

She waits there, with something at least similar to patience, for her host and the most impressive baby girl in the universe (no offense to other baby girls).

The approaching murmur of Siamus's voice becomes audible from the hallway upstairs. It is a continuous thread of sound; he is speaking at some solemn length. When he pauses, though, the reply is a toddler's strident "DABABABABADA."

"Aye," says Siamus, now in clear earshot. "I thought as much."

At the bottom of the stairs, they turn to approach Aze. "They" means, naturally, Siamus himself, plus the most impressive baby girl in the universe.

Siamus is dressed for a walk in casual wool trousers, boots, and a dark blue wool coat with its collar turned up. Ery, perched on her father's arm against his chest, her pudgy hands patting an abstract rhythm on his shoulder, is dressed in dark blue woolen tights and a pair of sturdy buckle-strap shoes; whatever else she wears is obscured by her coat, which is of the same wool and same hue as her father's, with a row of neat toggle closures and a hood rather than a collar. Her platinum hair is a thicket of wild curls.

They stop before Aze and Siamus asks with a smile in his voice. "Miss Sunstrike. Ye ready, then?"

Ery twists in her father's arms to look over her shoulder at this interloper. She takes Aze in with a stern, black-eyed gaze, and then declares, "POH DOH," and tilts her head sideways to put it on her father's shoulder.

Aze drops her foot to the ground with a soft tap, and she turns to face father and daughter with a wide smile. "Ready, Admiral, and… Lady Ery?" She rises to her feet, considering the stern baby. "I would not want to be over-familiar, Lady Ery, but you may call me Aze when you're able. I expect Sunstrike is a little challenging for an infant."

"PAH." Ery scowls at Aze from where she rests against Siamus's shoulder, but it is a soft scowl. If scowls can be said to have degrees, this is one of her warmer scowls.

"We're going for a walk, starfish," her father turns his head to tell her. "Cheer yourself up and be a good hostess, aye?"

Ery pats his chest.

Siamus turns back to smile at Aze, and offers her the arm with which he is not toting a baby. "Will ye be warm enough?" he asks her. "I can fetch a coat, if you'd like."

Aze moves in to take his arm and starts to shake her head, but then she pauses and says, "Actually, if you've got a spare, I'd appreciate it. I might not have planned that part exactly right. My Northrend clothes aren't dresses, and I sort of thought it'd be warm here? It's so much farther south, after all."

"South," Siamus agrees. "But seasons. And the wind off the sea can be fierce this time of year. Vane?"

Vane materializes spookily. "Admiral, sir?"

"Miss Sunstrike needs a coat for a walk to the shore. Will ye get one? Lady Sintha's probably got something."

"Of course, sir," says Vane, and vanishes on silent butler feet down the hall toward a coat closet that does not exist in the Sims house but totally exists.

Aze steps in closer to Siamus's side and tilts her head at Ery. "Yes, you do take after your father in some ways, Lady Ery. I took after my father a little bit too, in looks at least."

Siamus looks down at her. Ordinarily he might make a sly remark about the presumed attractiveness of Aze's father, but we are all mercifully spared from that by the more serious issue at hand. "D'ye mean…?" he asks Aze quietly. "About the… silver?"

Aze nods, but aloud all she says is, "Just like her father."

Siamus turns his head to kiss the side of Ery's. She makes a little bleat of indignation and swats at him, and he laughs. She doesn't lift her head from his shoulder, and after a moment she brings her chubby fist to her mouth to suck her thumb.

Vane reappears with a lady's long, dark blue woolen overcoat with a fur-trimmed hood draped over his arm. Aze can now approximately match both Siamus and Ery.

"Miss Sunstrike." Vane bows his head courteously, and lifts the coat open to help her into it.

Aze smiles gratefully at Vane, and then allows him to help her into coat, securing it closed against the anticipation of a cold morning. She may not know she matches Siamus and Ery, but at least she knows she's warm now.

"I hope Lady Sintha won't mind my borrowing her coat," Aze says, moving back to take Siamus's arm again. "I'm looking forward to meeting her — that is, if she'll be around sometime while I'm here."

"She won't mind," Siamus tells her. "And I expect she'll be here sometimes, aye. Her Grace is going to invite her to the dancing party, if nothing else, but Ta is in and out all the time."

Vane opens the door for the trio, and Siamus escorts and/or carries both ladies out of the house into the morning.

The sky is a clear aquamarine blue, the air full of pale sunlight, but January still has a bitter grip on the day. The surf sighs in the distance, and Ery lifts her head at once and declares, "ABO!" She stretches her drool-damp hand toward the sea.

"Aye," Siamus tells her. "Ye know the way, starfish."

"Fond of the sea," Aze says, smiling. "Which makes sense, all things considered. Has she been sailing already? I mean, not actively doing the ropes and stuff herself, but been out on the water."

"Not yet," says Siamus. "Soon, I hope. But I'll have to be wary of whatever mischief she might try to do without understanding it properly yet. Can't have the child capsizing a boat because she wanted to call a wave."

"APAPADO," agrees Ery.

"If I were — " Siamus hesitates. "Well. You know. If I still had my own gift, it would be nothing to worry over. But right now, I couldn't stop her."

"Maybe once she's old enough, it won't be an issue anymore," Aze says, walking with him in the direction of the shore. "Do they have schools for it, in Kul Tiras? For children, I mean, so they don't accidentally do damage before they understand the consequences."

"It's not so common as all that, and it's mostly in the blood; if a child has it, there's likely someone in their family can keep an eye on them. But aye, there are… in Stormsong there's the Shrine of the Storm, where sages are trained, and in Boralus there's Stormsong Monastery, for the same." Siamus adjusts his hold on Ery and attempts to lift her coat's hood against a gust of sea-wind; Ery gives a bloodcurdling shriek and practically flails out of his arms with rage.

"Aye, all right, all right," Siamus tells her, laughing. "Ye might tell the wind to settle, then, if ye mean to keep your ears, little fish."

Aze laughs fondly at the indignant child, and pulls her own coat's hood up. Maybe Ery will decide to spare them all the wind, soon enough, but until then… cold.

"I take it those places are not for children, then, but after they've already been sort of trained up by their relatives," Aze says, thoughtful. "I guess I was thinking about how, you know, you've got to teach children a bit about the arcane, to keep them from getting themselves into trouble. But why are there two places? Are they in competition?"

"No," says Siamus, and then pauses to consider the question more seriously. He frowns. "Aye, maybe. The monastery in Boralus is more open, more modern. The Shrine's isolated, more traditional. Ye could say the monastery's more aimed at… training up sages for the fleet, where the Shrine is more religion and ritual." Another pause. "Not in competition, maybe. But serving different ambitions."

"Hm, okay," Aze says, considering. "I can understand that. I guess I don't have much to compare it to — I've never had much experience with religion and ritual. Well, I guess I did spend a lot of time with paladins for a while, but…." She shrugs. "That was for practical reasons, in Northrend, and obviously it's not the same. Did you train at the monastery, then?"

Siamus gazes straight ahead for a moment as they begin the path descent to the beach. "At neither, in fact," he says eventually. "It was the Shrine I would have gone to, most likely — the sage line of my family is all in Stormsong, and very traditional. My uncles wanted me to go there, I know.

"My family situation was… complicated, though. It's possible my father would have put me in the monastery, but he didn't like to defy his brothers, and so together with everything else, I didn't go. Anywhere." He shrugs. "Except to Proudmoore Academy, to become an officer, eventually."

Aze frowns, focusing for a few moments on the rocky path, and then asks, "Would you have wanted to learn at one or the other? Will you send Lady Ery, if you can?"

"BAPABA OPPO," instructs Ery in response to her name, and leans across her father to reach a hand out for Aze. Siamus releases Aze so that he can gently arrange the child back in place. She flaps her outstretched arm indignantly and squeals at her father, who rubs her back absently.

"I don't suppose I ever did. My uncles would have sent me, the Admiral wouldn't, and he was… I tended toward his view in most things." He shrugs. "I would probably have been better at it — had finer control — if I'd gone either place. I suppose I'd have preferred Boralus? I always knew I was for the fleet rather than the holy rites.

"The question of sending Lady Ery is a moot one, as we'd not be able to get her to Kul Tiras at all as things stand. If that changes, the decision is one I'll discuss with her mother."

"Either way, she'll have you," Aze says with a smile, raising a hand in reflection of Ery's reach. "And yeah, it's hard to imagine you choosing religion and ritual over the fleet. Then again, maybe it's just hard for me to imagine religion and ritual. Even in the Argent Crusade, I kept clear of most of it — not really my thing, and anyway people would probably be uncomfortable with me around. What is it like, for tidesages? Or that is… if there's… stuff… that isn't secret."

Siamus glances sidelong at her, his brows knit. "It's hard for ye to imagine religion and ritual? Are ye not — do ye not follow the Light-church, then? I'd assumed, because of the Argents…."

"Well… I was following people who follow the Light-church," Aze says, tucking her hands back at her sides for warmth. "That's not exactly the same. A lot of the people I've met who follow it seem to have a good sense of… rightness. Like Ben, Mordecai, Colson… and then in the Argent Crusade there was also Black, Satterly, Greennote, Byrne, du Lac, Clay… good people. Trustworthy. The Light itself is just kind of… irritating."

"Irritating," Siamus repeats, and waits to see whether she'll elaborate. Ery has begun bouncing vigorously in his arms as they finish their descent to the beach.

"There's nothing wrong with the Light, I have nothing against it, but it's not…. it's not warm or comforting or guiding or whatever, like you hear people say. That's probably just on me, you know I'm damaged," Aze says, smiling at the happy baby. "I don't think it matters, though. I'm loyal to the Argent Crusade — and the Sha'tar, lately — because I believe in them. The people, not the Light. I don't need warm and comforting, I just need to know my trust isn't misplaced."

Siamus nods seriously. "Interesting. That ye put it like that." He is studying her face. "What, if anything, might make ye feel your trust had been misplaced, then?"

Aze hesitates, standing with them on the beach. Her attention shifts to Ery and then back to Siamus.

"What would you — " Aze cuts off, drawing in a breath. "I trust their guidance. I trust their… sense of rightness, like I called it. So maybe if I was asked to do something I couldn't see as anything but wrong, and no one would explain why. Not just a thing I didn't want to do. But wrong."

Siamus shifts Ery in his arms, turning the child outward to face the water and lowering her so that her feet in their sturdy little buckle-strap shoes are on the sand. She isn't capable of standing under her own power quite yet but she bounces happily up and down and makes grasping hands at the water.

"So," says Siamus, still watching his daughter rather than Aze. "Ye believe in the course they set for ye, but it's because ye have your own compass. Ye know what merits trust and what doesn't, and ye don't need the Light's say-so or anyone else's in the end."

Aze crouches smoothly next to Ery, her elbows on her knees, turning her face to the sea.

"I — yeah, I have my own compass," Aze says, a little reluctantly. "And what I choose to trust, it's not — it's not really about feeling any particular way about the Light. It's not about religion and ritual. It's about paying attention to what people say and then what they do. That's how I hope people judge me."

Siamus nods. "It's good to have a compass. Of your own, like ye do, I mean. And not rely on… the 'Light' or whatever else to tell ye what's the right thing, the right way, who to trust and who not. I think it's best to look at the world itself, clear-eyed, rather than let someone or something else tell ye about the world and what to do in it."

He pauses. The metaphor was maybe unfortunate. "I beg your pardon," he says. "Ye — I hope ye took my meaning, though."

Ery shrieks and throws her hands in the air, and a rogue wave races higher than the rest and breaks with a roar in front of them, close enough that the salt spray spatters them. Siamus laughs and lifts Ery a few inches from the sand as she chortles and claps and paddles with her feet in the air.

"She's happier down here — was that…?" Aze asks with a laughs as the water hits them, and then rises to her feet. She waves off the apology. "As for eyes, I'm likely to make that sort of comment myself. I've only had three years eyeless? And all the rest of my life before. But…"

Aze brushes saltwater droplets off her face with face with her fingertips, and then pauses briefly with her hand held in front of her, and draws in a breath, "… you do the whole religion thing, right? Or your family does, but I got the impression you… I mean, is the tidesage religion different, then? Doesn't try to tell you what to do?"

"The sea doesn't judge virtue," says Siamus. He crouches down and sets Ery on the sand again in front of him. "The sea challenges ye to act. She's beautiful and she's monstrous and there's as much terror in her as there is comfort." He shrugs. "That's the world. Ye stand fast against the storm or ye take shelter, but whether ye survive or don't isn't a judgment on your heart or your intent. It's a measure of your courage or your cunning or your will, and every man's gives out eventually. She's the first and the final power."

Ery strains forward again, and as the next wave breaks a tongue of water washes farther up the sand than the rest, straight for the child's feet. Still held up by her father's support, she lifts her feet in the air and then kicks them down twice, splashing in her personal piece of ocean. "BAPOPOBAAAH!" Her voice rises on another joyful shriek.

"Ah, don't ye soak your shoes through, starfish," counsels her father.

Aze kneels down by Ery again, reaching one hand out to touch the water. "That fits with my experience of the world. I've seen plenty of people with good hearts get cut down out of their time. And then, no matter your intent…" Aze shakes her head. "I don't think intent mattered much, for what I went through. Some people felt a lot more deeply than I did, and they didn't make it through. It's more down to will than anything — being able to hold on to who you are inside, and recognize who you are not."

Then she smiles over at Ery, "Little cold for swimming today, I'm afraid."

Ery claps her hands again clumsily and gives Aze a three-toothed grin. She hops her feet up and down once more, onto the wet sand.

"If I set ye down, starfish," Siamus tells the child seriously, "ye mustn't crawl into the sea. Aye?"

"OYOYOYOH!" agrees Ery, perhaps with her metaphorical fingers crossed behind her back.

Siamus moves back up the beach away from the wet sand and the water's reach and sets Ery down on her bottom in the sand. She immediately picks up a fistful of it and throws it… probably not at him, but in his general direction.

This seems like accustomed behavior, though, because Siamus has already sidestepped and is behind her again. To Aze, he says, "I don't believe anyone here will ask ye to trust by faith alone, but by our actions. And it will run the same in reverse. That may be… the difference ye find, between a house like Fallon and one like Aspenwood. The tides and the Light will measure ye differently."

Aze moves back with Siamus to the dry sand, and then laughs at Ery's sand-tossing. She says cheerfully, as if Ery understands her words. "I see you have a tactical mind already, Lady Ery. A good move to take an opponent off-guard. Less effective, I'd imagine, if they don't have eyes."

She kneels and takes a handful of sand herself, letting it drain slowly through her fingers, and continues to Siamus, "Different, yes, but I'm no stranger to having to earn my place. I guess I kind of skipped over it when we first met, but I got in the Argent Crusade because du Lac asked them to give me a chance. So there was the faith. But they were still wary, it wasn't an easy fit. And they wanted repentant Aszera, not the demon, which is hard because we're all tangled up, and…." Aze shakes her head. "It takes time. I know it takes time. But maybe the tides will like me better."

"I don't think," says Siamus, "that it's a question of which power or people will like you better. It's a matter for your compass, where ye believe ye ought to be. Which people and power ye respect, and are will to take for your own."

Aze rocks back on her heels and tilts her head up toward Siamus. "Between the Light and the tides? Or are we talking about… I think I am where I ought to be right now, by my compass."

Siamus tilts his head and studies her for a moment with that dark-eyed, sardonic gaze. The winter wind whips at both of them; Ery, seated in the sand at her father's feet, seems tranquilly untouched. She scrabbles with both hands in the sand, face turned intently toward the water.

Siamus shifts his weight toward Aze and seems about to say something.

There is a peculiar sort of tightening in the air, the usually-slow build of a gathering storm gathered abruptly and at once as if a small, chubby fist has closed around it. The wind gutters and whines, and the water roils restlessly. A wave crashes higher on the beach, and the next one, swiftly, higher still.

Siamus turns back and sweeps his daughter up from the sand. "Ery Blanche," he says sternly.

Ery shrieks and kicks her legs, opening her fists to dribble sand down her father's coat and into the wind, which has slackened again. The pressure in the air has dropped as abruptly as it collected, a sensation like relief.

Aze also rises sharply, a sudden tension in her frame as if at a sudden danger, though not directed at any particular enemy. As the wind falls, she takes a breath and forces herself to relax, her attention shifting from Siamus to the baby.

"She likes storms, does she?" Aze says, smiling again at the child. "And if she can do that much already — she's going to be a handful, isn't she, as she grows? The best people are."

Siamus begins jogging the angry child gently in place against his shoulder. "Aye, she's going to be a little storm herself."

He turns his head to kiss the side of his daughter's and she swats at him, still angrily, but her howls are fading into hiccuping sobs. "Shhhh, shhh shh," Siamus soothes, and around the trio the wind loses its wintry edge and drops away.

He looks ruefully to Aze. "We should go back to the house before she fetches a hurricane."

"Sure, yeah, doubt the weather-watchers would appreciate the surprise," Aze says agreeably, moving in to walk next to father and child. She considers the crying child and adds, "I could carry her, a little, on the way back. If she calms. If neither of you mind it."

Siamus glances over at her, faintly surprised. "Aye," he agrees. "If she settles. I can't promise how she'll behave, but ye guessed that."

Ery turns her head against her father's shoulder to gaze across at Aze. Her black eyes are red-rimmed and still brimming with furious tears, but her sobs have smoothed further into a continual moan, a kind of low-decibel howl. Siamus rubs her back absently.

"Do you think something in the sea upset her?" Aze asks, stepping a little closer to their side. "I mean, if I understand this correctly, it's both ways. The sea listens to her, and she listens to the sea. Or is it just… I know children do just cry sometimes. A lot of the kids at the orphanage…" she pauses, and considers that might not be the right comparison. "…well, some of them have a lot to cry about. But the littlest ones, sometimes it just seems like it's the time of day for it."

Siamus frowns and tilts his head to peer down at Ery. "I think she tried to summon a storm and she's cross I stopped her." But he's silent for a time, and continues to study the child.

She lifts her head to give him a teary-eyed look.

"Did ye hear something else?" Siamus asks her with rhetorical concern. "In the wind?"

Ery does a wobble-lipped pout at him.

"Or are ye being a crosspatch?" he asks.

She has no answer to this, either. Siamus looks back toward the sea, receding below them now as they climb the cliff path. His expression is briefly bleak. Then he focuses on Ery again and asks with deliberate lightness, "D'ye want to go with Miss Sunstrike for a bit?"

Aze turns hopefully to Ery, holding out open hands palm up. An accepted gesture to indicate a person is unarmed. Or, you know, an invitation to a baby.

Siamus turns toward Aze, lifting Ery from his shoulder. She has already tearfully contemplated Aze's outstretched hands, and as her father shifts her over, she leans willingly into Aze's grasp.

Aze accepts Ery gently, settling the baby against her side with one hand supporting her back. There's something a little softer than usual in her expression as she smiles down at the most amazing baby girl tidesage in the world.

"I always thought it would be fun to have a little sister," Aze says softly, to Siamus or maybe to Ery. "Or a niece. But neither one really worked out in the end."

"Abba bapo," says Ery plaintively, and gives a little open-mouthed sniffle-hiccup before leaning her head to rest it against Aze.

"No," says Siamus after a silence. "A shame." For more than one reason, perhaps.

Aze gently rubs Ery's back, encouraging her to calmness, as they continue climbing the cliff path. It doesn't seem like Ery's added weight is causing Aze any trouble, though she moves a little more slowly than she did on the way down. Rather than tiring, it appears that she's choosing her steps carefully for balance, very aware that she's holding someone precious.

"I suppose it's a little different in human families," Aze says with a low laugh. "Siblings seem to be so close in age. Lady Ery isn't going to be carrying her little brothers like this."

Siamus smiles wryly and puts his hands in his coat pockets. "Aye, well, they're not usually so close as Lady Ery and her brothers, either. That was… something of a happy accident. Perhaps someday she'll have a sibling she can carry. Although I don't expect the age difference will be anything like an elf's. Ten years, perhaps."

"A happy accident?" Aze echoes, raising her eyebrows briefly. These humans and their fertility. "Maybe one day, then, when she's a little older — she already has more siblings than either of us, so she definitely won't be lonely."

Siamus glances sidelong at her, a brow quirked. "Were ye a lonely child, Aszera? I suppose wi'the ages so far apart…?"

Aze gives Ery a little pat, letting the silence stretch briefly before she answers. "I guess you could say that. Yara was always there for me, but she was basically already an adult. She had her own path. And then, I didn't really fit with…" she takes in a breath. "I learned to fit myself in by the time I was grown. It's harder here, but probably just because I don't really get how everything works yet."

Siamus nods mildly, still watching her. He, too, is silent for a time, and then he looks away from her and says lightly, "I expect ye'll fit yourself fine, if ye choose. You're a flexible lady."

Aze laughs, accepting the shift away from potentially emotional topics. "I do pride myself on that, so I'm glad you noticed."

He smiles crookedly, still gazing ahead. "Aye, well, I did consider all the talents ye might bring to the Alliance."

"BAMPO," Ery declares.

"Bampo," Aze says with another laugh, agreeing with… whatever Ery thinks her skills may be. "And maybe you're right, the Alliance could use a skilled dancer sometimes, and not only a talented killer."

Because that's what you meant, right Siamus?

Aze turns her head to smile at his profile in clear amusement. "Or at least, I expect there are some who will enjoy my style of dancing. I hope you will."

Now Siamus turns too to look at her, a gleam of humor in his dark gaze. "Oh," he says. "I'm quite sure I will."