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Reoccurance
The four of them had been in the Tower for a week. Ira was often sleeping by the fire or reading a book. Oberon was scarecely seen, even at night. He stuck to the shadows when he needed much, and mostly kept worrying about some random plant that liked it colder/warmer than it was. Xylon spent some time trying to entertain the group of them, and then he took a page out of Tor's book, which said to ignore them unless they were in the same room, in the way, or actively sought him out. None of them did any of that.
Sometimes Kip and Löwen explored the Tower. It was on those days that Kip left Sharona, egg and all, with Ira while he read important documents from various countries and studied some philosophies. He noticed, every now and again, a little niggling, giggling voice in the back of his head whenever he was with Sharona. She didn't say much, but she made him feel a wave of love wash over him and out onto her.
It was a nice feeling. Not completely unlike how he loved Kipfel, who was sometimes irritating but nonetheless endearing. He knew, somehow, that he'd do anything for the little wyrm inside the egg.
Meanwhile, outside, the snow continued to fall. Not all week long, mind, but for a while, it was snowing every other day. Sometimes it didn't amount to much, but that's hard when there's so much water around to dump on the islands. Everyone started getting cabin fever, no matter where they were, and Tor wisely suggested they invest in sheep or at the very least yarn in the coming year.
"At least then we'd have somewhere warm to hang out," he muttered as he drew dangerously close to the fire one evening, daring to lie beside Kip and Ira. His habitual vestments were somewhere, probably in his room, soaking wet, since he had gone around the town to check on everyone. Instead of them, he was wearing heavy pants and several layers of shirts, which he shed layer by layer the more warm he got.
*We'd have ready access to wool and yarn then, too,* Ira pointed out.
"Duh," Tor said and set a kettle into the fire to heat up some snow from one of the decks that hadn't been boarded up for the winter. He wanted tea, dammit. No ridiculously long winter would take that away from him.
He selected a tin from off of the mantle and dropped some tea leaves into a tea pot. "Any other takers for some nice warm tea?" he asked.
Ira sighed and raised his tail. Kip kept away from the fire as far as possible. *Rather be cold,* he muttered.
*I'll take some,* said the cultured voice of Oberon as he slinked down out of the tower's upper rooms to be remarkably sociable. He was about as antisocial as Kipfel, but he wasn't beligerent about it in any way. Virens and Xylon were close behind the clarus, but they declined any sort of drink.
As they waited for the water to boil, the group sat about complaining of boredom and things that needed to be done that couldn't be done. Tor sat quietly against the wall, tuning Cecelia.
*My flowers will die if it keeps on like this,* Oberon fretted.
"They'll be fine," Xylon reassured him. "I put them in dormancy before the snow hit."
*My poor flowers,* he whimpered.
"Bah on your flowers," said Virens. "I want some quality birdseed. I just can't get that without freezing my tailfeathers off!"
*At least you can mostly go outside,* Ira sighed. *I get ridiculously tired if I'm out too long in the cold.*
*I don't know why you're complaining,* Kipfel muttered as he licked the back of Löwenherzchen's neck, grooming it. *You hardly ever come outside when you have 'work' to do anyway.*
*I'm studying theory,* Ira protested. *You wouldn't understand.*
*Yeah? One day you'll try me and I will understand.*
Ira scoffed a little, and Sharona wiggled in her egg in a vain attempt to quiet her parents.
Just then, Tor began to play a repetitious series of notes on his guitar. He looked up to see them all looking at him and promptly stopped the strings' vibrations. "What?" he asked.
They all continued to look at him expectantly.
"Look, I'm not here for your own amusements all the time," he said on the defensive. In his defense, anyone would shrink up like that with the looks the group was giving him.
*Oh no? Then what are you here for?* Ira asked with a drawl.
Sharona tried to tell him to be nice, but it didn't work very well. Try as they might, Ira and Kip just couldn't keep Sharona from taking a fond liking to Tor. Ira suspected it was because he and the human were bondmates. Children often have the same fascination with their own grandparents. Ira smiled wanly and Tor jumped to his feet.
A full second later, the kettle began to whistle. He reached into the fire and pulled it out, obviously ignorant of the fact that such an act was supposed to cause him painful burns.
*Err, Tor?* Ira asked. Tor just poured the tea and set the kettle on the hearth next to the pot.
Kip blinked, watching Tor's hand. He looked up and noticed the youth had a strange, pained look on his face. *Salvatore?* he asked, blinking.
Tor didn't say much as he waited for the tea to steep successfully. And then he blinked the slightly glazed look out of his eyes and the pain from his face and was back to smiling in irony as if nothing had happened at all.
*That was certainly odd,* Oberon said.
Tor pretended not to hear. He continued to pretend not to hear every time the subject came up. In fact, he pretended so much not to hear, that he started humming to himself.
The awkwardness that began to follow was stopped short thanks to the timely arrival of Havelock.
Ira noticed Sharona perk up at his arrival, since she'd never had the occasion to meet the young norse/demon halfbreed. That was a story in and of itself that Ira tastefully sidestepped relating. Let the kid do that sometime by himself, he decided.
"Master Xylon," Havelock said with a bow that bent his body in half.
"You're dripping wet," Xylon observed. "I taught you the proper spells..."
"I didn't have time, Master Xylon," the young boy replied, still not looking up at his teacher. "Lady Astrid said to send for all of you at once."
*All of us?* Ira asked.
*But it's cold, and my flowers...* Oberon protested.
*Stop whining, you soft excuse for a dragon,* Kip growled and Löwen set about poking Ira's subconscience into readiness.
*Tor,* Ira called as he wrapped his tail protectively around Sharona. *We have to go, so do you.*
Tor nodded listlessly and smiled a little to himself.
Ira narrowed his eyes and gave his bondmate a sharp *POKE!* in the frontal part of his wakened self. The seer sat bolt upright, Cecelia falling to his lap, strings down. Tor blinked around. "We're going somewhere?" he asked.
*I'm worried about you,* Ira said quietly as the others followed Havelock. *You haven't been like this for a long, long time.*
"Mmm." Tor agreed. He got to his feet and set Cecelia against the wall as he followed the others down the stairs. "Where're we going?" he asked.
Ira dutifully explained with a sigh.
***
Astrid's place was ridiculously far from the Tower. Since the town stood between the two sites, Havelock took it upon himself to invite....... everyone who could be roused to join them. That meant that there was this ridiculous crowd of people that showed up.
Astrid boggled and blinked when she opened the door. "You were all at the Tower?" she asked.
Havelock rubbed the back of his neck. "Gee," he said. "That smells great, Lady Astrid. What's for dinner?"
Astrid was still recovering from shock and bothered to let everyone in. All... thirty or so of them.
She was at least a little relieved when Annabel arrived with some other kind of food. "I noticed the crowd," she explained. "And this was going to start dinner for Tren and I and probably last us until ... three days from now. But it's best fresh."
Astrid motioned vaguely over to the table in the center of the kitchen which Egil had stopped setting so he could stare at everyone. "Er..." he managed.
Ingegerd grinned broadly. Somehow she and Havelock were the sociable ones of the group.
Gunnhild swooped in and startled Ira, but not enough to cause any danger to his daughter. *Ira!* she trilled with excessive sweetness. *Let me see my granddaughter.*
*There's... uh... not much to see, Mom,* Ira managed with difficulty.
*Yeah,* Kip agreed, Löwen riding on his head. *She's an egg.*
*She's so strong...* Gunnhild mused happily, cradling the egg. *I hope you named her suitably.*
Ira cleared his throat a little. Kip pretended to be deaf.
*You did name her, didn't you?* Gunnhild asked.
*Uh... yeah. Of course, Mom.*
*What did you name her, then?*
*Sharona,* Ira said weakly, ready for any wrath from her mother that might be coming.
*What kind of name is that?* Gunnhild asked, puzzling at the egg.
"The name of a very loose woman in a song," Tor supplied easily before kissing his hand and reaching up to touch Gunnhild's cheek. "Hello, Mom," he said.
*You should be thankful I'm not really your mother, Salvatore.*
"Grateful every day of my life," Tor agreed before wandering through the crowd of people to find Sandrylene. She wasn't hard to find, actually. She was trying to coax Tren to playing music for them.
The opportune arrival of Tor just seemed to guarentee that from the two of them. Annabel, reasonably tone-deaf to be half an octave off pitch and totally unawares, took to balancing Dagmar on her very pregnant knee. Not that her knee was very pregnant. All of Annabel was very pregnant. It's a good adjective.
Meanwhile, Kip and Löwenherzchen were sitting in a corner, snacking. *You know,* Kip said, *we seem to have an awful lot of parties.*
Löwen nodded in agreement.
At just that moment, Ingegerd called silence to the music and the crowd. "Friends," she said, a bit too much mead in her stomach, "we weren't expecting so many of you. But we welcome you anyway. Now, Astrid's going to tell a story."
"I am?" Astrid asked, blinking.
Dagmar cooed and clapped happily.
"I ... guess I am," Astrid admitted and rose, clearing her throat and straightening her sweater self-consciously. "Alright. Um... Gather round the fire. I have a story for you."
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