Milliways Bar, November 19

[kitchen_maid]

It's warm and comfortable and cozy over by the fireplace this evening. Bar was kind enough to produce a low cradle for Susan, which Amy is rocking with one foot, murmuring a light, dreamy lullaby while she does.

Susan watches with bright blue eyes that Amy doesn't think are ever going to close, before she blinks . . . and then blinks again . . . and finally drifts off to sleep.

Amy has brought a small stack of invitations and letters and assorted correspondence she's supposed to be answering, and she starts to sort through it, to accept, to decline, to reply, to . . . surely it won't matter if she closes her eyes, just for a moment.

Just for a moment.

Or two.

Comments

[sai_delgado]

She shifts the baby and moves until she is sitting beside Amy. Susan puts her free arm around the other girl as she murmurs,

"I know thee have, and I'm sorry for it, I am. I remember thee, though-- I remember everything."

Her hair smells like sunlight.

[kitchen_maid]

There's a moment of silence and utter peace, and then Amy smiles at Susan.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Amy says, putting her hand over Susan's on her shoulder. "You remember, and I remember, and someday we'll have all the time in all the worlds to chatter away about whatever we like."

[sai_delgado]

"Aye," she says, simply.

(the peace of the clearing)

"When it's time."

(no secrets between souls)

Susan smiles back at Amy, and then looks down at the baby in her arms. Carefully, she lifts her up and holds her out to her mother.

[kitchen_maid]

"When it's time."

Amy settles her daughter back into the cradle, and then gives Susan a proper hug.

[sai_delgado]

She hugs Amy back, and as she does she whispers something in her ear--

--and what she says sounds a little like the breeze blowing through the grass, and a little like hoofbeats pounding at a run over a far-off plain, and a little like the wash of waves upon some distant shore--

(there are other worlds than these)

--and all around them, somehow, the scent of roses and lilies spreads through the air.

[kitchen_maid]

And then there's a cry from baby Susan, and Amy opens her eyes to find that they're alone by the fireplace.

It's the nineteenth of November. A year, in way time is measured here, since last she saw Susan Delgado Allgood.

Amy closes her eyes again for a second, her fingers wrapped around her necklace, and there is joy and hope and love, and she whispers to no one in particular, "Thank you."

And then she gathers her daughter up out of the cradle, and settles her in her lap, and Susan quiets a little, and wraps her own hand around her mother's necklace.

"I am," says Amy softly, "am going to tell you a story. About two girls and a picnic they had, with two squirrels and a crow and the tiniest of elephants, with pizza and grapes, sitting on the floor of room at the end of the universe, because it was too cold and too dark to go outside . . ."