Hideaway Strath Tell me your story, I'll remember it always

 

Ceallach was lounging in the sunshine after playing tag with Eirlys, sprawled with one darker paw resting over her pale limbs. He'd dozed for awhile, vaguely aware of his siblings coming and going, but he'd been pleased with the warmth of his sister to carry him through his nap. Once he'd woken he'd affectionately chewed on her ear, grinning at her protesting pushes with her feet. "Mama!"  He cried out when he spotted @Lotte approaching, little tag wagging furiously. "Can have story?" The bearcub asked hopefully - his mama told the best, after all.

Lotte beamed at her youngest son. He was so very different from Roarke and Mallaidh, the lion and the spitfire; and although Lotte saw more of herself in her boisterous, rough-and-tumble progeny, Ceallach was dear to her because of his obvious differences. He was often a mediator, a peacemaker, fiercely protective of his siblings. He was a little thinker, and perhaps he’d be a schemer and a diplomat like his father one day. Only time would tell. On top of all of that, he could hold his own in contests of physical prowess. Lotte looked at her sons and firstborn daughter and saw nothing lacking in them. Eirlys, on the other hand, was an unknown quantity. She had yet to speak aloud, and she maintained her silence now.

Lotte didn’t try anymore to make her speak.

“Come here, wee bears,” she said, flopping unceremoniously down on the ground like a mother bear herself. If they wished it, she would draw them into an embrace — but if it was too hot in the summer heat, she would merely nestle close to them. “What kind of story does my little Ceallach want?” she cooed, hooking a paw around Eirlys’ shoulders to fussily bathe at the girl’s fur. Lotte could see the subtle changes in her coloring, and she kept quiet about them — it would be more fun to watch Arturo’s astonished reaction when the color really started coming in. “Sweet rabbit,” she crooned to Eirlys. “Do you want to listen, too?” She didn’t expect an answer, and it didn’t disappoint her when she didn’t receive one.

 

When Lotte pulled Eirlys closer Ceallach giggled, mostly because he had escaped the bath his sister was succumbing to. He didn't notice any difference, even in her quiet nature, and found that she was one of his favorite playmates just because it was easier to let his imagination run wild while he wove stories for them both. "How's 'bout stories when you were smalls?" Ceallach never grew tired of those stories, hearing of his mother's youth and the tales of her siblings too made him happy. 

It made him think of his own siblings, and he was glad to have them, not like Sirius who didn't have siblings. Well. He kind of did but they weren't there so they didn't get to count. 

“I will tell you a secret, pikku karhu,” Lotte teased her youngest son. “Your mama was never small. She was always fat and round.” This couldn’t have been further from the truth — Lotte was the smallest of her siblings — but the way she imagined herself was a zaftig, rounded creature. When she wished it, she could slink like a hunting cat, but her soul, she was fairly certain, was this guy Santa Claus a fat, jolly singing thing. She grinned at him playfully. “I will tell you about your best uncle — my twin, Dagfinn. In the tundra, we say setä for uncle. Can you say that?” Lotte didn’t bother to ask Eirlys, knowing by now that the little girl would have nothing to give back to her. Still, she beamed down at her daughter.

It was enough that she lived.

Ceallach giggled, one paw sprawling so he could touch Eirlys while they all relaxed and listened to Lotte as she began her story. He was intrigued by the woman's words, focused as ever on the things that she said. "Uncle Dagfinn - would it bes Setä Dagfinn?" He asked, wondering if it was said with the title, too, or just in place of. "Is that right, äiti?" He asked, hoping to earn her praise with the proper word for mother too. He desperately wanted to know her culture, he, the child who looked least like Lotte but craved to properly honor both his parents and his own unique heritage.

“Very good, Ceallach!” Lotte praised effusively, grinning proudly at her son. “Yes, yes. This is a story about your setä — my kaksonen — Dagfinn. You can call him setä Setä Dagfinn or Uncle Dagfinn or Dagfinn.” She thought to herself for a moment, brow beetling as she considered. “Anything would be okay as long as you and he are happy with it.” She smiled warmly at the boy, and then asked coyly — for she knew full well the children had never heard this particular tale before, “Have I told you about the time your uncle saved the Teekons — the big wide world you were born into? It is a little scary, but the ending is happy.” She wasn’t sure how Ceallach or Eirlys felt about a scary story.