The water was cold and clear and exactly what a summer morning after a race needed.
Saya took to it immediately — forest people knew water. She moved through the creek the way she ran, easy and purposeful, surfacing with her blue hair streaming and her tail floating behind her like a banner.
Clara splashed everyone in reach and announced she was not sorry. Thomas swam steady laps because Thomas did everything with a purpose. Lyra floated on her back under the willows and looked thoroughly at peace.
Mira and Edric were in the shallows talking quietly in the way they did when they thought no one was close enough to overhear. Edric's hand was at her waist and she was laughing at something private.
Clara swam past them, noted this, swam back to her siblings.
'Extra lovey today,' she reported.
'Mom looks nice in the swimsuit,' Arthur said, purely factually.
'Dad thinks so too. He got all shy earlier and was ogling our dear mother.'
Thomas, completing a lap: 'At this rate we will have a younger sibling before winter.'
He kept swimming. A silence followed him.
'Thomas,' Lyra said.
'It is a reasonable projection,' Thomas said, from the far side of the hole.
Clara started laughing. Lyra covered her face. Saya looked between everyone with the expression of someone who understood the general shape of this conversation and found it wonderful.
In the shallows, Mira laughed at something Edric said and reached up to kiss his cheek.
◆ ◆ ◆
Shadow had gone hunting that morning and come back with a young boar from the deeper forest — well-sized, more than enough for everyone.
Edric looked at it and rolled up his sleeves with the expression of a man who knew exactly what to do with this.
They built the fire on the flat ground above the swimming hole where the willows opened to let the afternoon light through. Edric managed the fire and the preparation with the quiet confidence of twenty years of practice. The smell of roasting boar spread through the clearing and probably most of the way back to the farm.
They ate as the afternoon moved toward evening, sprawled on the flat stones and soft grass. Haru and Kona arranged themselves near the food in the strategic way of dogs. Shadow was under the willows, visible only as two ember-lights in the shade. Kiiro was in Saya's lap, purring.
Saya tried the boar and made a sound of approval she appeared not to have fully planned, which Clara found extremely funny.
The fire went low and was rebuilt and went low again. Edric told a story about the farm from before the children were born that made Mira pretend to be annoyed and then laugh despite herself. Thomas explained something about the north field drainage that nobody had asked about and somehow held everyone's attention. Clara did impressions of the village blacksmith that were too accurate to be kind and too good to stop.
The stars came out. Nobody moved.
◆ ◆ ◆
Arthur was aware of falling asleep in the way you were aware of it when it was already happening — the warmth of the fire and the weight of the day settling together, the monitoring network quiet and green.
Saya had been beside him for most of the evening, which had shifted at some point from sitting beside him to leaning against him to the arrangement that now existed, which was that she was asleep against his side with her blue hair loose and her tail curled around both of them and Kiiro a small warm weight across their feet.
He had not moved. He was comfortable. The stars were good. He was asleep before he had quite finished deciding whether to stay awake.
◆ ◆ ◆
Mira found them like that when she came back for the last of the dishes.
She stood in the firelight and looked at them for a moment — her youngest son and the blue-haired girl who had come from the forest and stayed — curled together on the grass with the ease of two small people who had run hard and eaten well and run out of reasons to be awake.
She collected the dishes quietly. Then she came back and crouched down and looked at Arthur's face, soft in sleep in the way it was never quite soft when he was awake and managing things.
Edric appeared beside her.
'I'll take Saya,' he said.
Mira gathered Arthur up the way she had gathered him since he was an infant, settling him against her shoulder. He was heavier than he used to be — seven now, growing — but he was still her smallest, and he fit the way he always had.
His hand found her collar in his sleep. Not urgently. Just held, the way he had always held in sleep since he was too small to do anything else, his whole body knowing where he was and glad of it.
She stood with him and watched Edric lift Saya gently, the girl stirring slightly and settling again without waking.
'Edric,' Mira said quietly.
'Mm.'
'For everything he can do —' She looked at the small hand at her collar. 'At the end of the day he still just needs to be tucked in.'
Edric looked at Saya in his arms, blue hair across his sleeve. 'So does she.'
They carried them home through the warm summer dark, the farm ahead and Shadow trailing behind, the two ember-eyes steady in the dark.
They put them both in Arthur's bed. Mira tucked the blanket and stood in the doorway with the lamp low and looked at them. In the bed, Arthur's hand found Saya's in his sleep. Neither of them woke.
She put out the lamp and pulled the door nearly closed and stood in the warm hall for a moment.
◆ ◆ ◆
They put them both in Arthur's bed. Mira tucked the blanket and stood in the doorway with the lamp low and looked at them. In the bed, Arthur's hand found Saya's in his sleep. Neither of them woke.
She put out the lamp and pulled the door nearly closed and stood in the warm hall for a moment.
Then, from down the hall, came the soft sound of Tsuki's large-fox paws on the floorboards.
Mira turned around.
Lyra was at the far end of the hallway, mounted, in the house, past the threshold she had been clearly and specifically instructed about, with the particular expression of someone who had thought the adults were busy and had miscalculated.
Their eyes met.
Lyra turned Tsuki around to escape rather than dismount.
'Lyra Voss,' Mira said, with her eyebrow twitching, in a voice that did not require volume to carry.
Lyra only went faster. The corner of the hall, taken at speed, proved to be a problem. Tsuki made it. Lyra's elbow caught the hall table. The vase — fifteen years in the family, a wedding gift from Edric's mother, blue glaze with a small chip on the rim that had been there since Clara was three — tipped, caught nothing, and shattered across the floor.
The sound was considerable.
The silence after it was worse.
Lyra sat on Tsuki's back in the dark hall surrounded by blue ceramic pieces and nervously looked at her mother, her eyes darting around to afraid to make eye contact with that scary maternal energy.
Mira looked at the vase. She looked at Lyra. She thought of the rule that had been clearly stated, multiple times clarified, and violated at the first opportunity she believed nobody was watching.
'Get down from Tsuki this second,' she said quietly.
Lyra got down.
'I've told you repeatedly not to ride Tsuki in the house and now look what you've done. Come here.' What followed was Lyra hesitantly walking toward her mother, fully afraid of what she believed was going to take place. Once in front of her now sitting mother she was placed belly down on her mother's knees while her pants were yanked down. The shame immediately hit her and involuntary tears already began dripping down her face as she looks across the room for some help from anyone only to find Tsuki shivering and hiding under the dining table. Her bare butt is now exposed for the empty room to see. Mumbling and stuttering out for mercy. Her mom's strong hand slapping across her little cheeks. Lyra's face was now slowly distorting and becoming a very ugly cry on such a pretty and delicate face. Her silver hair stuck to her damp cheeks. Lyra's screams and cries about it were communicated clearly and at volume to the entire house.
Down the hall in Arthur's room, two small people slept through all of it.
The sounds of Lyra's screams that traveled under the door and through the walls — Lyra's very sincere expression of her feelings, begging and pleading for mercy, Mira's firm and unhurried responses in the form of a spank— registered somewhere below the threshold of anything that disturbed two children who had raced four laps, swum a creek, eaten roasted boar, and fallen asleep in the warm dark against each other.
Arthur's hand was still in Saya's. Her tail was still curled around them both.
The summer night was quiet, except for the parts of it that weren't.
The farm was safe and everyone was home and the vase was in pieces and Lyra was going to remember this particular rule going forward.
That was all right. That was how rules became remembered.
This was now, and now was good, for everyone except Lyra.