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“Do a ponytail then,” you grumbled, “Do what you feel like otherwise.” Magnus moved behind you on the turret, and you felt his fingers draw your hair back, test how it fell. The hairs on the nape of your neck stood up in reflex- this was too much like getting pet on the head for your tastes, something you’d normally react to with a smack. “So,” you kept talking as he worked, to distract you. “How are your folks doin’?” Magnus had a full family. Mother, father, younger sister and brother. He was a good age gap away from them. Ten and twelve years.
“They’ve been adapting,” Magnus said, “Palatenhugel is close to Ellowie and Sosaldt both. Every time war has reared its head, they’ve wondered whether the family will once again have to move like they had to from Ellowie. However, with Mittelsosalia in command of the wastes and Netilland and Ellowie begrudgingly allied, it is calmer than it has been in decades. How about you? Is your half-sister well?”
You just called Alina your sister. It wasn’t like your mother had known who either father had been. Neither had stuck around. Both may as well have been mist on the wind. “Alina is fine,” you said, “She’s got a guy locked in, she thinks. Some Strossvald Silver Lance that she cared for while he was wounded. Alina thinks he’ll pop the question any day now.” It had only been a few months. Alina had wrapped that Von Rotehof guy around her little finger, much to the chagrin of his family, apparently.
“You must be happy for her.”
…
“He’s a better catch than she would have gone for locally, I guess,” you said. “Not like she’d listen t’ me if I told her to do different.” Same for her to you. You were blood, the only family in the world, but whenever you tried to make her see your way, or vice versa, you ended up fighting, yelling, to the degree that everybody seemed surprised that you still cared about one another, would sleep in the same bed on occasion, if there were visitors.
She was like Richter in a way. You ought to be apart, but the thought of losing someone so close, so irreplaceable, made your blood run cold.
“You should be happy for her,” Magnus told you, seeing you fail to hide the resentment, the regret. The time you’d failed to have been there for your sister, because you had thought her dead, your failure so long ago a total one. “As I’ve heard, marriage was uncommon in the wastes until recently.”
That wasn’t <span class="mu-i">quite</span> true, but it may as well have been. Most of what the wastes had had, and still had, was what would be referred to here as <span class="mu-i">common law marriage</span>. “It’s just that,” you said with a bit of hesitation, “She’s in too much of a rush. I feel like she hasn’t seen enough of the world t’ know the most important things.”
He finished and moved to your side. You’d appreciate a mirror right now. “Have you?” He asked.
You shook your head. “I know I could know a lot more.”
