Daily Affirmation

There's a warm squash soup that is simmering to keep it warm. There is fresh bread, and a salad with dried cranberries mixed into the leaves of lettuce and other greens. There's even a nice dessert ready in the oven to keep it warm. A special sort of apple pie made to taste more like cinnamon rolls. It is even rolled into sections that have a vaguely rose-pattern. Auranar had found this particular type of pie in one of Grandfather's cook books and has been waiting for an occasion to try it out.

With all the food ready, they - Verna and Auranar - have been sitting in the house with the scent of food filling the space. Auranar has Hunter in her lap at the moment to occupy the no-longer-kitten. He is in a spicy mood tonight, playing with her fingers aggressively as she smiles patiently and teases him.

With all the preparations made (and predominantly by Auranar's direction and effort), Verna sits adjacent. After adjusting the steeping and steaming teapot's position on the table one quarter of an inch for the third time, she resumes observation of Auranar and Hunter. "You named him most appropriately. I trust he shall leave you with all fingers and is wise enough to not bite the hand which feeds him."

It's no surprise that Grandfather appears in his usual fashion. As Auranar and Verna both know, the man appears outside of Alexandria, then he shapeshifts into a raven and flies into the city, where no one pays much mind to a raven in flight, and few are so eagle-eyed (or raven-eyed, as it were) to spot a raven with unusual violet eyes while it soars in the sky. He comes to alight on the front step, where he becomes a man again, but this time wearing a rather splendid and fancy outfit the likes of which rivals Telamon's wardrobe.

Alud'rigan lifts a gloved hand and knocks at the door, awaiting entry into the abode. He waits patiently. After all, he is fae, and he will live so long there is not a certain blade aimed at his heart.

Auranar looks up at the knock and eagerly smiles. Knowing that Grandfather is here fills her with childlike zeal and she gently places the rambunctious feline in her lap on the floor so that she can stand up. "He only nibbles. He knows better than to bite me." She teases Verna lightly as she walks to the door and opens it.

"Grandfather!" She smiles as soon as she sees him, and throws open the door. It takes a small amount of restraint not to hug him on the porch, so she welcomes him in with a gesture. Then she hugs him.

Verna rises at the knock, but does not do so quickly enough to pre-empt Auranar. Leaving Hunter to his devices, she steps with her to the door. "I do understand his inclination to do so, love." Then the door is flung open and offers her own greetings, if a bit more reserved than her wife's. "Welcome, Grandfather. It is a pleasure to see you, as always."

"My little rose," Grandfather says happily as he sweeps Auranar into a great big hug. He even leans down and plants an affectionate grandfatherly kiss into Auranar's hair. But then he murmurs, "Let me look at you."

He draws just enough away from Auranar while still holding her to look down at her face. Those violet eyes don't miss a thing. Not a single detail. "Auranar..." His eyes narrow a little, his brows furrowing. "You have aged, yet I know the time has not passed to warrant such. What happened?"

As though Verna might be to blame, he looks at the other woman, but a light smile crosses his face. "I see your lady-love has shed the curse that was laid onto her, Auranar... Are these two events related, perhaps?"

Auranar had been avoiding this little bit of truth with Verna. Not wanting her wife to worry, so she has an embarrassed expression as she smiles at her grandfather. She should have known that he'd be able to tell. "They are." She confirms finally. "But this is more a celebratory dinner that Verna is back to herself."

She would rather not focus on her own aging. She after all, doesn't feel much different really. Not like Verna had. "Suffice to say I found a way to return her to her natural state and give us the time we deserve together."

By shortening her own life, but that needs not said.

Verna may have had her suspicions, as well: no matter how comparatively minimally nor gracefully Auranar may have aged, Verna had spent a great deal of time prior memorizing every tiny feature. Or perhaps she did not notice? If any inquiries were present, they were not pressed; content to accept her wife's explanation whenever it might be given.

"She is correct, on all counts," she affirms and supports eve not. She steps in once Auranar is released to offer a half-embrace with one arm at the least. "In addition to her other near-inumerable qualities. Please, let us celebrate the present as it should be."

Grandfather seems to eye Auranar all the more with her words, but Verna's remark has him nodding slowly. "Let us proceed, then," he says. "It's been a bit of time since I last came over; Auranar's cooking smells lovely."

Which is, of course, a compliment from someone who would know good cooking very well. He goes to seat himself where the arrangements have been made. "I'll request to have my dessert taken on the go, as it were, however. While I will stay as late as you'd permit me to, I do have someone else in Alexandria that I should see before I return home. Otherwise he might get grumpy if he were to find out I was in the city and I hadn't said hello." This is accompanied by a smirk on Alud'rigan's face. "Plus, I like to spend every moment with him that I can."

Auranar doesn't sit, she starts porting the soup, the bread, the salad all over to the table. Each in its own time. There's tea too (of course) it being Grandfather's favorite. She makes it almost every time that he comes over. Though there's a warm tangerine tea for after dinner.

Finally the table is set and Auranar joins everyone at the table to eat. "Have you made a new friend?" She's a little surprised that Grandfather has someone else - besides Lana - who he wants to visit. Someone so jealous of his time? Her eyes are astute as they examine Alud'rigan. "Or... is he something more than a friend?"

Verna responds to Grandfather's smirking last comment with a warm, if reserved, and somewhat knowing smile. "A course most prudent and wise," she remarks to the very familiar desire to spend all available time with another.

After they are seated (well, most of them), her gaze follows the energetically-hostessing Auranar more than the food and drink she attempts to assist with.

She then echoes her wife's curiosity, focusing upon Alud'rigan more fully, brows raising in inquiry. "You have made a new acquaintance within the city? Or a prior acquaintance more recently arrived?" From her limited understanding of fey in general, and Grandfather in particular, either seems a touch unlikely.

"Ah." Alud'rigan is a little flushed at the questions, particularly the one that Auranar asks about being 'more than a friend'. "This is a fellow that I met several months ago. An Absolution of Vardama, actually. I do not believe that you know him... Although Verna might, due to proximity."

He smiles a little in bashfulness as he cuts and portions out his food. "He's had a hard lot of life. I got him to quit drinking. I met him at a very low point when he was deep in his cups, and now, he's working on himself and cleaning up his life. I am very fond of him. We go on dates; I've taken him home to Quelynos."

Grandfather has some of his food before he says, "But he doesn't seem keen on going to the next stage of things, as it were. I understand... commitment is a serious thing, especially for a mortal to one of the fae, and I want nothing more for him to be comfortable, nor would I seek to besmirch my late wife's memory in any way, even if she had urged me to one day again find love. I am attempting to be content." He chuckles a little.

If there was one thing that Auranar had not expected its the idea of Grandfather falling for someone new. Not that he doesn't deserve happiness, but to love yet another mortal... She worries for his poor heart. Even so she finds herself encouraging him, because she of all people knows how valuable love is. "You should tell him how you feel Grandfather."

She doesn't mention - doesn't need to mention how short time is - for them both. "Mortal men - especially if he is human; they tend to think they have forever to tell people how they feel. Besides, he might not know how precious to you he is. Don't be content; be happy. You deserve that."

"I advise the same, Grandfather," Vern echoes. "Even those in service to The Harpist and well-aware of the mortal journey ..." she looks to Auranar and offers a smile " can discount the present far more than they should." Her eyes to Alud'rigan. "Only if you are both fully informed of the other's desires can you forge a mutual happiness, in whatever form best accommodates."

After this, she realizes the possible presumptuousness of herself offering social commentary to an immortal and adds a caveat, "That said, I am a poor advisor on the topic," eyes again go to Auranar, "given that I stumbled into love by pure chace and maintained such only by an excessive amount of patience on Auranar's part."

Grandfather smiles gently at Auranar's words. "I should, shouldn't I," he says. "Tell him how I feel, that is." That response is telling in regards to how he might feel on deserving happiness, but Grandfather's predilection for that is not new.

He chuckles a little at Verna's words. "My relationship with my wife, Lana'lel, was by pure circumstance. She went into the woods to chastise me because my birds carried the sound of my cries and screams of loneliness into the mortal world, and when she learned it was because of my loneliness, she chose to stay with me."

Alud'rigan smiles tenderly at them both. "I suppose... the only hesitation I have is that he might not feel the same as I do. He seems to greatly enjoy our time together--I do endeavor to give him a good time, when it's possible--but he has yet to say those three words that bring a relationship beyond casual notions of companionship to something more. I have not yet, either, but I would like to speak them to him."

Auranar isn't surprised that her grandfather is in love. She doubts that he would have brought the man up at all if not for that fact. She reaches over and touches his hand. Resting her fingers on top of it for a moment. "Do it when you take the pie over to him tonight, and if he turns you aside, come back here. You can spend the night here and we will have tea and talk until the morning comes or longer. You need not be alone any longer."

Auranar pats that hand and she hopes that whoever this man is that has found his way into her grandfather's heart loves Alud'rigan as much as the man seems to be in love. She hopes that her grandfather is as brave as she knows that he can be, and that he takes her advice. That she will not find him at her doorstep yet again because he will be in the arms of someone who loves him.

"You need not fear such concerns," Verna attempts to reassure him, adding a slender smile, "so long as you inquire -after- he partakes of the pie." Perhaps it is enchanted. That, or Verna is making a complimentary jest. The hint of humor passes and she adds more earnestly, "If he does not see you in kind, that is his choice to make, albeit a poor one."

The touch of Auranar's hand to Alud'rigan's truly puts a warmth into Alud'rigan's hands and smile, his violet eyes regarding Auranar in the same way he looks at Cor'lana. They are both his precious gems, his jewels, his descendants, his children, his babies. "I should hope that he does not give me reason to send me back here," he says gently. "But I think with your pie... I stand a chance, indeed." His violet eyes twinkle with mirth.

But then he looks contemplative. "You know... He is the only one I've ever met, in a romantic sense, that wasn't bothered by my claws. I showed him my true form--not this form that I wear--and he regarded me no differently. We've held hands, even. It might be a good sign of his feelings about me."

Auranar flushes, and ducks her head. "My pie may help." She murmurs, sounding embarrassed. It does look like a rather good pie after all. She only hopes that it will stand up to the standards she knows that Alud'rigan is capable of. "I have never understood what it is you think is so fearsome about yourself." Auranar smiles at her grandfather. "Your claws may claws be, but they are gentle things. It sounds to me that he knows the truth of you better than you do."

There's not much more dinner left and Auranar helps Verna clear the plates and such. Auranar firmly packs two pieces of pie into a small basket for Alud'rigan and pushes it into his hands. "Not that you are unwelcome to stay any longer - you know you are always welcome - but I don't want you to have the regret of one day lost because you hadn't said it. When you love someone... you should tell them so every day from the day you know it, without fear."

Verna attempts to do more of the clearing given that Auranar did more of the preparing and to allow her more focus upon the conversation with Grandfather. "If he knows well enough.. " she begins, only to realize that Auranar advised precisely that. After a light, bemused sigh, she shifts tacks to simply affirm. "Truth ever the best option, as it is eternal."

Pie parcel held in gloved hands, Alud'rigan nods, and there's a mote of the courage and fire that Auranar has so often in her eyes that is now in her grandfather's eyes. He might say that it's something that she got from him--in another life where she was born of a member of his line, perhaps--but in that other set of memories that Auranar possesses, it is one of their shared qualities. It is one of the things that makes them belong to each other as family.

"I love him," Alud'rigan says, and just saying it makes his cheeks flush. "I appreciate you both for all the courage you've given me."

He gives his parting embraces to Auranar and one to Verna, and he murmurs into Auranar's ear that on another occasion, they _will_ talk about how Auranar has come to look older (to him, as a fae misses no detail of age on a sildanyari face even where others would easily miss it). But he leaves. This time, he doesn't transform into a bird.

After all, he knows that Vardama's temple is not far away, and there's a man who's working there that might appreciate him dropping by.

-End