#i am reverting to being a cranky toddler

[dawns-beauty]

I would be so comically bad at living in Skyrim. It snowed several inches and I'm already longing to be in bed under a pile of blankets (and cats.)

[yarnings]

Fitting In

I am far too concerned about little details, so here’s a fill-in. This takes place before the epilogues in A Breath of Snow and Ashes, and contains spoilers for that book.

If you’re better off not reading the stories that get too deep into religious content, let me know if there’s a specific tag that you’re filtering, I’m not quite sure yet how I’m going to tag these going forward, so here’s your chance to influence it.

As always, if there are problems with the story or its content, please feel free to let me know.

The sound of the blaring alarm clock slowly brought a groggy Bree to wakefulness. She blinked open her eyes, and fought the strong temptation to turn the damn thing off and go back to sleep. Up until now, Mandy had handled moving residences calmly, not seeming to notice changes in either century or location. But this last change had not gone as smoothly. Whether it was the fact that, at 18 months, she was now old enough to be more aware of her surroundings and be particular about them, or just that something about Inverness disagreed with her, her sleep had been horribly disrupted these last few nights since the move, resulting in Bree’s sleep being lacking as well. Mandy had finally fallen into a sound sleep around 4am, giving Bree a solid 3 hours until the alarm clock woke her so that she could get herself and the kids ready for mass at Saint Mary’s in Inverness.

But why bother going to mass today? She was too tired to focus, and once Mandy was woken up, she was likely to be cranky all morning due to her lack of sleep. Brianna sighed, and pulled herself out of bed before shutting off the alarm. Mass today wasn’t just for herself. She didn’t want to do anything that would give the busybodies of the congregation (or worse, the priest) reason to judge her. There would be enough of that as it was. Not only was she an outsider coming in – a sassenach, as her father affectionately referred to her mother – , but she was attending with just her and the kids.

Bree wasn’t actually sure if things would be better or worse once it was known that she did indeed have a husband, and a church-going one at that. Having a mixed marriage had raised a few eyebrows back home. Here, the main reason that the heavily outnumbered Catholics weren’t warned daily of their pending damnation was that their Presbyterian neighbours assumed the message had already been delivered. With the relations being so much more strained, the mix would be even more outrageous.

And that’s before Roger figures out what’s happened to his vocation to ministry.

Having taken the time needed to wake up enough to get out of bed, she grabbed a bathrobe and tied it tightly closed before she left the bedroom in search of some coffee and some breakfast. If she was going to play the part of a devout mother who would never consider neglecting her Sunday obligation in the name of a few hours more sleep, she would do so while well-caffeinated and on a full stomach.

Despite having left herself ample time to drive to the church, a couple of wrong turns followed by a search for parking resulted in Bree rushing up to the front door, Jem in tow, Mandy in her arms, shortly before mass started. Things were not looking good. With the perversity inherent to all toddlers, Mandy had reacted to her lack of sleep by being high-energy (once she got over being woken up). Jem was behaving as well as he ever did, but that wasn’t saying a lot in terms of sitting quietly.

At the door of the church, Bree paused and reflexively patted her head. Upon encountering nothing but her hair, she remembered where and when she was, and converted the motion into smoothing her hair. She was apparently so tired that she was reverting to her teens. Despite her two years’ practice with the new mass – not to mention the two children with her – she seemed to be expecting to walk in to a Latin mass. And wouldn’t that do a wonderful job of convincing everyone that she had been to church some time in the last decade, if she got her responses mixed up.

There was a small table with a couple of missals left on it just inside the door, and she snagged one for Jem. Neither reading nor following along with the order of mass were enough to keep him distracted, but hopefully these were the kind that included stories about the lives of the saints whose feast days were being celebrated this month. Presumably he’d find something sufficiently gory to keep him from needing to look for some other form of entertainment.

The processional hadn’t started playing yet, although Bree had to squeeze past the priest and altar servers at the back of the church to get into the nave. Not wanting to take the time to let Jem and Mandy be picky about where to sit, she got moved them to an empty pew she spotted about a third of the way back, and hurried genuflected in the direction of the old altar as she set Mandy down just inside the pew. Bree had just enough time to sling the bag of books and dolls off her shoulder and on to the seat before the processional hymn was announced. Kneeling just long enough for a quick “Please let us all make it through mass without anyone melting down”, Bree grabbed a hymnal and brusquely motioned for Jem to do the same while she leafed through it.

To her surprise, the mass was sung. The priest had a good voice, and even the ability to vary the note he was singing, and Bree lost herself in the ritual, the familiar Latin and Greek responses helping her find a peace that she hadn’t expected to be able to find this morning, following her harried night. Jem and Mandy even seemed to sense her mood, because Jem was on his best behaviour, and Mandy had decided to imitate him in sitting in the pew (although Jem had rather less of a tendency to suck his thumb, and lacked an older brother with a shoulder at a convenient height for resting a head.)

At the Prayers of the Faithful, Bree mentally added her parents’ names to the list of the dead being prayed for. For some reason, when she was at church she could acknowledge the fact that both Jamie and Claire were long dead. At any other time her mind shied away from the thought, preferring to work instead in the strange personal timeline she had lived, where it was not more than two hundred years ago that her parents had bid her farewell, but less than a year, skipping over all the years that she had not herself lived.

After mass was over, Bree lingered over gathering up their things, accepting compliments on how well the children had behaved themselves from the old ladies she had been worried about making a good impression on. By the time that she and the children made it to the back of the church, nearly everyone else had left. Just outside the open doors, a last couple were finishing up their conversation with the priest when Jem remarked in a conversational tone (and volume)

“I think I like mass here. It’s less boring than at St. Finbar’s.” Bree could see the grins on the faces of the couple as they walked away, and felt herself blush. At least he didn’t say it was the other way around.

The priest managed (mostly) to keep his smile friendly as he came up to Jem and bent down slightly to be at the same level. “I’m glad to hear that ye enjoyed the mass. Will we be seeing you again then?”

A little surprised by the realisation that other people had heard what he said, Jem got suddenly shy. Bree answered for him.

“We hope to keep coming, Father. We just moved to Inverness, and are trying to buy a farm nearby that turns out to have been built by an ancestor of mine. Hopefully it works out, and this will be home now.”

“Weel, I look forward to seeing ye and yer sweet bairns again. Have a good week.”

With that he walked inside to lock up, leaving Bree and the kids to make their way to the car.

 As she navigated the unfamiliar streets back to the flat, Bree scoffed at herself for being so worried about if she’d be welcome at church. No questions about where the kids’ father was, no pointed remarks, not even any subtle fishing. And to think that she hadn’t been willing to risk someone noticing that she’d been in town for more than a week before she showed up for mass. She gave up that sleep for nothing. Well, maybe not nothing. At least she made it to mass.