Gratuitous Epilogue

24 - January

January 1

This is the year

In just over two months, my two families will meet properly for the first time. I hope. Five minutes seemed like a long time when I learned how long the gate stayed open, but now I’m convinced that our calculations will be off, that we’ll be a day late, that the way Earth’s years work, the way leap years work, means that I’ve told Mum the wrong day.

I’ve been stressing over it, enough that I went through a patch of not being able to eat well, and had Ista Tremmar giving me stern lectures and threatening to medicate me. Kaoren went over the comparative calendars with me, and then we had a visit to near-space to visualise Mum to do the same thing, and check that everything was going to plan on her end.

Aunt Sue is planning to come, but not Aunt Bet and Uncle Steve (Uncle Steve has a huge extended family and isn’t keen on leaving them for another planet). And Dad.

I have a sister called Teresa, and a Step-Mum who thinks my entire family is insane and who wouldn’t want to go to some alien planet even if she thought it was real. Apparently. Fake-Mum kind of avoided giving me any opinions about this, as she does whenever she has to talk about Dad, but she did point out that if the gate really does open once every year-and-a-bit, this won’t be Dad’s only opportunity.

I didn’t tell fake-Mum about Tyrian. I want to see her real reaction.

After that, Kaoren turned what little energy Tyrian leaves me to planning a place for Mum and Aunt Sue to live. A pair of houses around past the guard quarters, with lots of room, and beds for gardens, though I decided not to have them planted out so Mum could pick what she wanted to grow. I got the kids involved in that, and we had a lot of fun designing it.

There’s been a fair amount of adjustment adding Tyrian to the family. Sen wants to be with him all the time, and we ended up making up a little bed for her again in the baby’s room. She’s at least been relatively nightmare-free. Lira finds Tyrian a little annoying – babies are definitely an attention-suck, and she’s a fairly finicky, cleanly creature, not accustomed to milky spew or drool. Rye, in the first few days, was painful to watch: some of the old uncertainty came back, the sense that now Kaoren had a real son, he wouldn’t be necessary any more. Fortunately the time off from active duty has given Kaoren the chance to spend more time with Rye, and along with the book project, he’s been giving him plenty of one-on-one combat training, and is pleased with his progress. Ys showed no hint of being threatened. She’s taken our measure now, and was simply pleased that Tyrian was healthy, and that I seemed to be coping. Tyrian always seems to quiet down when she holds him, too.

Have told Sen firmly that, no, no more babies just now.