Chapter 464 - Life is for Living

Simon didn’t sleep at the inn that night. He didn’t get drunk, either, though he certainly would have if a few more men had been awake. They certainly gave it their best. Still, he was riding back to his home before false dawn lit the sky, though he let his horse do most of the work.

When he arrived, he peered through the window and found everything as he had left it. Millie was asleep, along with their daughter and the midwife. The assistant caught a glimpse of him as she was starting to nod off and smiled as she sat up a little straighter.

He left them alone and took a nap on a saddle blanket next to the sheep shed, feeling like the king of the whole damn country. “I am the king,” he told himself as he laced his fingers under his head and looked up at the fading stars. “It’s a small nation, but it’s mine.”

The count would no doubt disagree, but Simon didn’t care. The man could rule over his part of the valley, and Simon would rule over his.

In the morning, he cured his mild hangover with a talisman and rejoined his family. The midwife left shortly after that, though she checked in every day or two for the rest of the week. Her further attentions were unnecessary, but Simon paid her generously in silver regardless. He couldn’t say when they’d need her services again, but she deserved to be rewarded for her service to his family.

He also paid the glassblower a small fortune to have their windows glazed in so that their home would be warm and bright during the dark months. Millie protested, insisting, “We could buy half a flock for that, darling!” but Simon wouldn’t hear of it. Warmth and fresh air were too precious to put a price on in the depths of winter.

Money couldn’t fix all their problems, though, and as much as Simon might have wanted to, he couldn’t spend every hour of the day indoors, doting on his daughter. Eventually, he had to save those activities for the evenings, so that he could spend the rest of the day working.

If he’d been productive last year, then he was a madman this year. Magic fell entirely by the wayside, except for the practical kind, which he used to accomplish more with less. He used words of earth to dig out a root cellar beneath their home, and filled it with barrels and shelves.

Simon still wasn’t sure if he actually needed to cool it and turn the whole thing into a sort of walk-in refrigerator, but it was on his to-do list. He also added running water to that list, but he still wasn’t sure how he’d pull it off. A well was probably more doable, but if he built an elevated tank somehow… Well, it was a job for later.

While that was certainly the largest improvement he made to their home that year, it wasn’t the only one. He added a lightning rod to their chimney, which was a perfectly mundane object with a chain that connected it to the ground, and he made a totem of plant growth that made their garden more bountiful than it had to be.

That one backfired. He’d made it so he could spend less time gardening, but it actually required a lot of extra weeding on his part, and he actually took that stone post out of the ground after a couple of weeks until he could add another minor word to it to tone the thing down. While he loved the bounty it provided, it helped the weeds more than everything else, and it was turning their side yard into a jungle.

Mostly, though, he shepherded his small flock in the fields. “When I’m back on my feet, you’ll have to let me take a turn in the sun,” Millie insisted, and he did let her, whenever she wanted.

Still, as much as she loved reliving her childhood by tending to the sheep with their dog, she loved Mirah more. Millie could hardly go once a week while Simon watched their daughter without her attachment to the girl drawing her home like an anchor.

“Soon, you’ll be able to take her out with you, and use Graven to wrangle her and the sheep both,” Simon teased as Millie nursed their girl one night.

That made her laugh. “She’ll have to walk before she can be herded.”

That was true, of course, but Simon knew it wouldn’t be long. Everything was a matter of perspective, and his perspective was vast. They’d already been here over a year, and every time he blinked, another week or month sailed on past him. It was hard to hold on to anything but the most precious moments, though, when they were all so wonderful.

He was invited to dine with the count once that summer, but since the invitation hadn’t included his wife, he snubbed the man. He did see him much later in the town square that fall when there were rumors that the Charians would start a fall campaign to reclaim some of their lost lands.

Then, Simon set aside his grievances with the man and trained the men of the region for a week before harvest with crossbows and pikes. He had the younger men take the front line, wielding the heavy polearms, while he had the older ones practice reloading and loosing bolts into bales of hay. The count was appreciative, but not so much that he forgave Simon his earlier slights.

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Ultimately, the rumored invasion never happened, though Simon spent more than a week grazing his small flock on the highest hill, just reading the wind and looking for signs of violence. If there was trouble, he was prepared to sneak off during the night and slice all of them in two with a wand of force before anyone knew there was a problem.

I should probably add an obelisk somewhere that can do just that, he mused. A standing stone carved with greater greater force, and programmed to send an invisible shockwave half a kilometer in every direction around it, would be a hell of a thing to have in his back pocket.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to do more than take notes on such a monstrosity. No matter what he did, no matter the season, his girls came first, and he always came home to them. Whether Mirah was crying her eyes out or giggling playfully, Millie always greeted him at the door with a smile. It was a good life.

While he was busy outdoors, Millie was just as busy inside. While she spent the lion's share of her time tending to their daughter, she still found time to sew and knit, and week by week, their home took on a charming atmosphere as she bought or made various decorations.

She sewed several throw pillows from a quilted fabric she’d got from a trader passing through, and she made curtains out of an old sheet that was too small for their current bed. She even found a vase somewhere and filled it with wildflowers.

After that, Simon made it a point to bring home flowers every few days. Even when there weren’t any in season during the end of summer, he would use a wand to make sure he always had a few blossoms to make their home brighter.

When the snows started, all those little improvements really added up, and their second winter was cozier than their first. The three of them went to town together a couple of times, but three on one horse was difficult, and he hadn’t had a chance to build them a wagon, so most of the chores that took him there he did alone.

He felt bad about leaving Millie alone during those times. Still, when he came home and found the home warm and full of the scents of the dried herbs that were hanging from the rafters, and food cooking over the fire, he assured her, “You’ve got the better end of this deal.”

It was around that time he started painting a family portrait of the three of them, which surprised Millie. She had no idea he could paint, let alone with ashes, earth, and egg whites. Simon only smiled, though; he enjoyed surprising her at every turn.

It wasn’t all sunshine, though. Toward the end of the winter, their food became blander and blander as they worked their way through the larder. Fresh food had vanished from the menu months before. Slowly but surely, though, they started losing other things that he thought he’d had enough of, like cheese and bacon.

They had enough porridge to last until the end of days, and they never quite ran out of cheese, but in the short days before spring, things were tighter than he would have liked. Millie didn’t complain. She wasn’t the type to complain about any hardship, but even so, he adjusted his mental shopping list for the coming year to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

She bore all of those problems with a smile, but one day it wasn’t her smile he noticed, but her glow. Something had changed about her aura, but it took him several days to figure out what. It was only when he studied her napping form one afternoon that he realized she was pregnant.

Simon opted not to tell her immediately, but only because she might think that was weird. She didn’t freak out when he used small bits of magic in front of her, but there was a difference between reading glowing words on his mirror and looking into her soul.

She would quite happily look on in wonder as he queried his vast database of notes without fear, but something so personal, he was less sure of. “Is all of that magic?” she asked, pointing to a journal entry from his time in Ionar that she couldn’t read about pottery glazes.

“There’s magic in every written word,” he answered, “But some of those spells are more boring than others. This is a spell for roof tiles.”

“You have a spell for roof tiles?” she asked after doing a double-take.

Simon laughed. “I have a recipe for pottery glazes,” he explained. “The magic is in the knowing and the writing, but the rest we’ll do by hand.”

“Why should we replace the thatch?” she continued, ignoring the prank he’d pulled on her. “It’s good enough for the rest of the village.”

“Good enough, and yet leaking,” Simon said, pointing to a dark spot in one corner. It hadn’t gotten bad yet, but he could tell he’d have to rip out and replace that whole section come spring.

Millie tried to downplay it, but he wouldn’t let it go. “What if the next leak should happen over our bed, or Mirah’s crib?”

That last one got her attention, and she relented. “If I’m going to redo the thatch, I might as well redo it for good, and if I’m going to do that much, I might as well add some extra rooms, too.”

“What would we need the extra rooms for?” she asked, amused by his sudden insistence.

“Well, you and I can do just fine in this space,” he said, “but little Mirah, well—”

“She won’t need her own room for years, yet,” Millie insisted.

Simon agreed, but quickly added, “But if she gets a little sister, or a brother, or maybe more than one…”

“Oh, Simon,” she slapped his arm playfully. “That won’t be for years.”

He sat there silently, then shook his head.

“Come on, stop teasing!” she said, less sure of herself this time. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’d never joke about needing more rooms so soon,” he said then.

That pushed his wife over the edge. She didn’t know what to think. She cried, she laughed, but Simon held her through all of the turmoil, and they came out happy on the other side. They were going to be parents again, and after the shock of the moment wore off, neither of them had a problem with that. It just meant there was more to do.