We used to wait. (Chapter 9/?)
title: We used to wait. (Chapter 9/?)
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Through all seasons, though this takes place in an AU starting at the very end of season 2.
pairings: kara/lee, kara/sam
overall fic rating: R/NC-17
word count: 3,384
notes: See http://apodixis.livejournal.com/685.html for more information.
summary: If God isn't leading the fleet to Earth, can they ever find it?
Caprica: Before the Fall
Socrata stayed with Dreilide the rest of the week. In fact, he road the bus with her out to Delphi on her last day and said goodbye while making plans on when to see her next.
Over the following months, Socrata started to slowly eat away at the leave time she had stored up. It started with a couple days off to spend in his apartment, followed by a long weekend or two. For someone who had never looked forward to her time away, she had fallen into her new routine with ease. No longer did she live for the time she spent obeying orders to give her some semblance of a life. Now she measured her time in how many days or weeks until she would be afforded enough free time to make the return trip to him worth it.
The month following her first stay at his apartment with him, Dreilide found new work at a handful of clubs through Caprica City. He said goodbye to the restaurant and the lousy pay and hello to even lousier pay, but the chance to have someone recognize him by name. Sometimes, even Socrata would come see him play when he was contracted on a night of her leave. Those were his happiest nights.
What made her happiest was finally hearing the completed version of the piece she’d had him play for her that first night she’d spent with him. It had lingered untouched for weeks since that night, until on one visit she woke to the sound of him frustratedly playing at the piano, sounding out the next group of notes. It may have annoyed the neighbors to hear him play the same bars for hours on end, but she let his practice become every much part of her as it was him. Seven months later he finished it and she heard it for the first time when he played to a small crowd. He called it Dreilide Thrace Sonata #1 and after the performance, he told her it was about her. That night, she asked him to marry her and without pause, Dreilide said yes.
They didn’t wait long to make it official. She was granted a week’s worth of leave a month from then and they found themselves in a government hall, waiting with other eager couples for their turn to be married. As much as Socrata had wanted to be married in a temple, she knew Dreilide’s silence on any mention of the Gods meant he would have gone along with it only for her. She acquiesced in the end, and they were married by a judge, but went to a temple afterwards where a priestess blessed their union.
Dreilide’s career only went better from then on, and he credited his wife with how prolific he’d become. Listening to him play the piano and each piece he’d written with her in mind always brought a smile to her face, no matter how bad their fighting could otherwise get. In fact she’d accused him on a couple of occasions of using his music as an easy way out of a particularly brutal argument. He knew she was right, but would be damned if he’d actually admit it.
For them, everything seemed to culminate with an offer to play at the Helice Opera House. He’d been overjoyed and scared out of his mind when he received the news. Socrata was the first one he called, since she still spent most of her time living on the base in Delphi. As good as he’d been doing, they never expected a chance like that. Dreilide couldn’t turn it down and that night, the world was perfect. Socrata sat in the third row and shut her eyes as she listened to him play. The people beside her didn’t notice when she wiped away a few tears as he played that first sonata he’d finished with her in mind. When the music chips of his performance came from the press, she fell asleep listening to it every night on base.
Her fellow officers had found her to be a changed woman over the last few years. They teased her for it at first, but it simply became known that this was who she now was. The Socrata they used to know was long since dead, and everyone, including herself, was all the more glad for it.
A year and a half after Dreilide’s performance at the opera house and Socrata found herself pulled from duty after becoming pregnant. A bit of the old version of herself reared its ugly head, particularly at Dreilide, as she lashed out in anger over the situation she was in. She hadn’t wanted this. It had been a mistake, Gods knew how, and she was determined to correct such a mistake in the only manner she knew. As the shock of it faded, she allowed herself to actually consider the possibility of being a mother and though she wouldn’t ever have confessed it, not even to her husband, she warmed to the idea rather quickly once she calmed down. Dreilide on the other hand, had been over the moon since finding out, although he played the diplomat, promising to support her decision.
It was eight weeks in when she decided they’d keep it, and Dreilide even cried as he kissed her cheeks and spoke reverently of what a miracle it was. She’d never heard him be so overtly spiritual as he was that night, when he whispered a 'Thank God' against the thick of her hair. She planned to thank the Gods later and made a mental note to visit the temple in the morning to receive a blessing for her unborn child.
They had a daughter a few months later, though she came three weeks early. Socrata had been more than just relieved to have her daughter with her finally, as she knew her husband had spent the prior months in a near constant state of fear that their daughter wouldn’t make it to take her first breath. As it turned out, she was the picture of perfection. In the hospital, the only thing they fought over was who got to hold her first. Dreilide often won the battle, kissing the white hair on his daughter’s head in victory. They named her Kara and brought her home a few days later. Neither of them left the apartment for a week, with the exception of trips for groceries and diapers. For one small moment in their lives, nothing else mattered anymore.
-
Twenty-one years before the Fall.
It was a rare day that found the entire family home together. It was more likely for all twelve planets that made up the colonies and their suns to align properly than it was for Dreilide and Socrata to end up occupying the same apartment for the an extended period of time with their daughter. Long gone was the apartment in Caprica City, cramped enough for one person, let alone a married couple and their child. Unable to seek a job transfer nearer where Dreilide made the bulk of his work, the family had settled somewhat permanently in Delphi.
It wasn’t the ideal scenario, as it meant Dreilide was often away for days at a time when an important enough chance came up to play the piano elsewhere. Delphi was by no means rural, but what had been offered to him back in Caprica City wasn’t readily attainable in the smaller city. It had been a point of contention for the husband and wife, and they seemed to reach an unfortunate agreement just to no longer talk about it.
Dreilide sat on the worn living room carpet, just beside the coffee table set in front of the family couch. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt until they were secured above the elbows and out of harm’s way. Next to him was his daughter, all of four years old and completely immersed in the set of paints strewn out before her. He watched her work, tongue just barely stuck out of the corner of her mouth as she looked to be in deep concentration. Her hands were working on their coordination as she dipped the end of a thick handled plastic brush into one of the primary colors. Then, with all the carefulness a four year old could have, she dragged the brush across the page with no direction or pattern. Whatever she was drawing, it was completely in her mind.
He couldn’t help but smile as he watched her. Since he’d brought the gift back with him on his last trip, as had become customary since she was able to recognize and understand his return to her, she had been fascinated by the way she could make her mark across any blank piece of paper with ease not afforded to her with crayons. There had been a few incidents already where an over eager four year old, tired of waiting for one of her parents to deliver her the proper canvas, had taken to smearing a color or two over a set of bills and a report Socrata had been working on for the better part of an afternoon. That had been an especially unpleasant day.
“What are you painting today, Kara?” Dreilide leaned in to kiss the top of her head, his aged hands smoothing over the tangle of blonde hair that had once been corralled into a ponytail, now most of it hanging loose around her face.
Her attention stayed on the paper before her as she spoke, “Don’t know yet, Daddy.”
He laughed to himself, tucking back some of her wild hair behind her ear. “Mommy’s not going to be happy when she sees what a mess I let you become.” Kara giggled. It was their usual back-and-forth when waiting for her mother to return. He would tease her about how far she’d fallen from the neat little girl she’d started off as that morning when Socrata got her daughter ready for the day.
“I need more paper,” she said, that high pitched voice more like beautiful music to his ears than anything he’d ever written. One of her tiny hands speckled with the thick and strong smelling child friendly paint pushed at the paper half covered in a muddy mess of colors. This child was responsible for half the deforestation of Caprica with how much paper she’d gone through as of late, though her father could never do anything but oblige.
With a nod, Dreilide pushed himself up from his place, disappearing into Kara’s small bedroom only to return with a couple pages more. He’d been gone only a minute, but there was already a small puddle of blue paint pooled on the table, his daughter doing her best impression of innocence. A short detour to the kitchen to get a rag to clean up the mess and Dreilide sat down beside her, furiously wiping away until no evidence remained. “This is why your Mom hates when we don’t put down newspaper first.”
But Kara wasn’t interested in his explanation, instead she was readjusting herself to sit on her knees, a position she clearly deemed superior for her painting process. She pushed some of her own hair away from her face in an unsteady motion, and soon Dreilide could see that speckled hand had transferred some of the blue paint into the strands of her hair. There’d be something of a conversation about this later, but he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt his daughter to rinse out the washable paint from her hair just yet.
“Need purple,” Kara said. She looked up to him, her eyes a mix of green and brown and focused on him.
“Do you remember how to make it?” She shook her head and he nodded, his own hand reaching around her to take the brush out of the blue paint. “Remember how we made it last time? You mix the red and blue together.” He spoke slowly, never quite sure how quickly she could or couldn’t follow him, so he tended to err on the side of caution. “You’ve got the red, so why don’t you put it down first.”
She understood the request and made her best attempt of creating a slightly irregular circle, laying it down over a large print of dried yellow. When satisfied with the results, Dreilide’s blue paint laden brush touched to the center of her red. He went to mix the colors together in a circular motion, but hesitated, his brow furrowing.
“Don’t!” Kara shrieked beside him, her free hand nudging away at his arm. He was drawn back to the present, quick to obey the young child and her temper.
“Why not? Don’t you want purple?”
Her round face considered the question, weighing the options. With a firm shake of her head, her answer was given.
“Do you know what this is, Kara?” Dreilide set the paint brush down, his focus instead on his daughter’s expression, attempting to read her for any kind of reaction. There was nothing there, though, other than the smiling, curious face he’d been looking at for the last four years. For a second, he couldn’t tell if he was breathing heavy due to disappointment or relief.
“It’s just pretty.” She stated simply, and such a short statement warmed him completely.
For her, everything was so easy. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember being that young, couldn’t remember ever feeling like anything in life was so simple and straightforward. “Kara,” he spoke just above a whisper and she continued on with her painting, having resorted to dipping her fingers into the nearby paint container and then smearing it across the blank space surrounding the concentric circles centered on the page. “Kara.” He was louder the second time, though not anywhere near stern. This time, her head tilted back, eyes open wide as she looked up to him, waiting.
“Do you see this?” His finger tapped beside the mix of yellow, red, and blue. Kara’s attention was redirected back to it and she nodded with enthusiasm. “I want you to remember this for me, can you do that?”
“Why?”
A smile was brought to his face as he recalled the phase she’d gone through that still emerged on occasion, where every statement or question from anyone was soon followed up by his daughter asking why. Even if there was no explanation or sense to it, there she had been, demanding an answer. “No reason. You’re right, it’s just pretty, sweetheart.” Dreilide kissed the top of her head again, letting himself linger there as he breathed in the sweet scent of the baby shampoo she still insisted on using after she’d felt the sting of regular shampoo in her eyes just once. “When you’re all grown up and you’re an artist, I bet you’ll paint this everywhere. What do you think? Will you do that for me?”
On the very first day of her experience with paint, she had proudly proclaimed to her father as he tucked her in to sleep that she wanted to be an artist when she grew up. While most childhood pursuits were usually abandoned quick enough, for her, he hoped it would actually come true.
“Mmhmm,” she agreed with him, carelessly tossing her paintbrush aside as her fingers gripped at what she decided was a finished piece of artwork. She stood with it in her hands, abandoning her father without a second thought. Dreilide followed her to the kitchen, knowing what was going through his daughter’s mind. He found her waiting at the refrigerator, the metal surface already covered in some of her previous pieces. She held the paper against the fridge, now slightly crinkled from her over eager grip. “This one goes here, Daddy.”
He found a magnet on a higher part of the fridge and moved it down to where she held the paper in place, determined to let the latest piece be the new center of attention. From the middle of the refrigerator, the childlike rendition of a mandala stared at him. “It’s beautiful, Kara.” Dreilide took his daughter up in his arms, seating her against his hip for easy support.
The sound of the doorway to the apartment hallway opening and unlocking resounded through the kitchen and Socrata Thrace soon emerged, looking tired despite her rigid and neat form. Dreilide went to greet her, bringing their daughter along, and he slipped his arm around his wife, a quiet kiss delivered to her brow. Kara reacted similarly, her tiny arm slipped around her mothers neck in a makeshift embrace, a sloppy kiss given to Socrata’s cheek with something of a giggle.
“Your day all right?” He pulled back but Kara’s arm remain hooked around her mother, reluctant to let her go, so he transferred her tiny form to his wife’s arms.
Socrata rubbed her hand across her child’s back, kissing her shoulder as it was the nearest and most convenient place on her to reach. Only when the process was complete did she look to Dreilide, her free shoulder shrugging. “You know how it is.” She set Kara gently down on the counter and pulled the loose hair tie from her daughter’s hair, using her fingers to comb the strands back into order before refastening it. “Painting?” Her eyebrow rose as she looked to her husband after having noticed the smear of paint dried in Kara’s hair.
Their daughter answered for him as she pointed towards the fridge displaying her latest piece, still wet.
“I bet you worked a long time on that, Kara,” said Socrata, her hands already moving to moisten a paper towel. She rubbed it across the four year old’s hands until nothing of the paint remained, just her milky white skin. Looking down at her own uniform, she huffed in a moment of annoyance at the stains of paint across her clothes, obviously left behind by her daughter’s tiny hands. “You know Dreilide, you can’t just take her out of daycare when you feel like it. I know you aren’t home all the time, but she’s got a routine and when you aren’t here things aren’t as easy. You do this every time and you leave and I have to fight with her to get her used to things again.”
Dreilide stepped up, taking the paper from her to help wash it away. “Sorry.” It was more pre-emptive than anything, trying to curb further complaint he felt stirring in his wife.
Miffed at having her husband predict her nature, she kept quiet and stiff until he finished, the wet spot being the only remaining sign that her uniform had been out of regulation for even a moment in time. “I have a feeling we’re going to be hanging a lot of the same paintings from her.”
He tossed the used paper towel in the garbage. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen her draw those same circles a few times already. She even came back from daycare once with it done in crayon.” Socrata seemed to think nothing of it, her attention turned back to Kara, still perched on the counter top. Her hands had found the box of cookies beside her, both now filled with a small sugar cookie each, crumbs already scattered across the light green of her shirt. It explained how quiet she’d been over the last minute at least. Four years old and Kara was the master of getting and keeping what she wanted.
Dreilide stifled his laughter at the sight of her, leaning over to take a small bite from one of her cookies. Kara shrieked with childish laughter, pulling her hands away from him to prevent him from committing what, to a child of her age, was both a hilarious and terrible act of betrayal.
He chewed down what he’d gotten of the cookie before speaking. “You’re special, you know that, Kara?”
Once she stopped her giggling, she nodded to her father, eyes turning up to her mother. “Right, Mommy?”
Socrata took her sight off the pile of crumbs ever growing and already spilling to the floor. “You’re very special, Kara.”
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Through all seasons, though this takes place in an AU starting at the very end of season 2.
pairings: kara/lee, kara/sam
overall fic rating: R/NC-17
word count: 3,384
notes: See http://apodixis.livejournal.com/685.html for more information.
summary: If God isn't leading the fleet to Earth, can they ever find it?
Caprica: Before the Fall
Socrata stayed with Dreilide the rest of the week. In fact, he road the bus with her out to Delphi on her last day and said goodbye while making plans on when to see her next.
Over the following months, Socrata started to slowly eat away at the leave time she had stored up. It started with a couple days off to spend in his apartment, followed by a long weekend or two. For someone who had never looked forward to her time away, she had fallen into her new routine with ease. No longer did she live for the time she spent obeying orders to give her some semblance of a life. Now she measured her time in how many days or weeks until she would be afforded enough free time to make the return trip to him worth it.
The month following her first stay at his apartment with him, Dreilide found new work at a handful of clubs through Caprica City. He said goodbye to the restaurant and the lousy pay and hello to even lousier pay, but the chance to have someone recognize him by name. Sometimes, even Socrata would come see him play when he was contracted on a night of her leave. Those were his happiest nights.
What made her happiest was finally hearing the completed version of the piece she’d had him play for her that first night she’d spent with him. It had lingered untouched for weeks since that night, until on one visit she woke to the sound of him frustratedly playing at the piano, sounding out the next group of notes. It may have annoyed the neighbors to hear him play the same bars for hours on end, but she let his practice become every much part of her as it was him. Seven months later he finished it and she heard it for the first time when he played to a small crowd. He called it Dreilide Thrace Sonata #1 and after the performance, he told her it was about her. That night, she asked him to marry her and without pause, Dreilide said yes.
They didn’t wait long to make it official. She was granted a week’s worth of leave a month from then and they found themselves in a government hall, waiting with other eager couples for their turn to be married. As much as Socrata had wanted to be married in a temple, she knew Dreilide’s silence on any mention of the Gods meant he would have gone along with it only for her. She acquiesced in the end, and they were married by a judge, but went to a temple afterwards where a priestess blessed their union.
Dreilide’s career only went better from then on, and he credited his wife with how prolific he’d become. Listening to him play the piano and each piece he’d written with her in mind always brought a smile to her face, no matter how bad their fighting could otherwise get. In fact she’d accused him on a couple of occasions of using his music as an easy way out of a particularly brutal argument. He knew she was right, but would be damned if he’d actually admit it.
For them, everything seemed to culminate with an offer to play at the Helice Opera House. He’d been overjoyed and scared out of his mind when he received the news. Socrata was the first one he called, since she still spent most of her time living on the base in Delphi. As good as he’d been doing, they never expected a chance like that. Dreilide couldn’t turn it down and that night, the world was perfect. Socrata sat in the third row and shut her eyes as she listened to him play. The people beside her didn’t notice when she wiped away a few tears as he played that first sonata he’d finished with her in mind. When the music chips of his performance came from the press, she fell asleep listening to it every night on base.
Her fellow officers had found her to be a changed woman over the last few years. They teased her for it at first, but it simply became known that this was who she now was. The Socrata they used to know was long since dead, and everyone, including herself, was all the more glad for it.
A year and a half after Dreilide’s performance at the opera house and Socrata found herself pulled from duty after becoming pregnant. A bit of the old version of herself reared its ugly head, particularly at Dreilide, as she lashed out in anger over the situation she was in. She hadn’t wanted this. It had been a mistake, Gods knew how, and she was determined to correct such a mistake in the only manner she knew. As the shock of it faded, she allowed herself to actually consider the possibility of being a mother and though she wouldn’t ever have confessed it, not even to her husband, she warmed to the idea rather quickly once she calmed down. Dreilide on the other hand, had been over the moon since finding out, although he played the diplomat, promising to support her decision.
It was eight weeks in when she decided they’d keep it, and Dreilide even cried as he kissed her cheeks and spoke reverently of what a miracle it was. She’d never heard him be so overtly spiritual as he was that night, when he whispered a 'Thank God' against the thick of her hair. She planned to thank the Gods later and made a mental note to visit the temple in the morning to receive a blessing for her unborn child.
They had a daughter a few months later, though she came three weeks early. Socrata had been more than just relieved to have her daughter with her finally, as she knew her husband had spent the prior months in a near constant state of fear that their daughter wouldn’t make it to take her first breath. As it turned out, she was the picture of perfection. In the hospital, the only thing they fought over was who got to hold her first. Dreilide often won the battle, kissing the white hair on his daughter’s head in victory. They named her Kara and brought her home a few days later. Neither of them left the apartment for a week, with the exception of trips for groceries and diapers. For one small moment in their lives, nothing else mattered anymore.
-
Twenty-one years before the Fall.
It was a rare day that found the entire family home together. It was more likely for all twelve planets that made up the colonies and their suns to align properly than it was for Dreilide and Socrata to end up occupying the same apartment for the an extended period of time with their daughter. Long gone was the apartment in Caprica City, cramped enough for one person, let alone a married couple and their child. Unable to seek a job transfer nearer where Dreilide made the bulk of his work, the family had settled somewhat permanently in Delphi.
It wasn’t the ideal scenario, as it meant Dreilide was often away for days at a time when an important enough chance came up to play the piano elsewhere. Delphi was by no means rural, but what had been offered to him back in Caprica City wasn’t readily attainable in the smaller city. It had been a point of contention for the husband and wife, and they seemed to reach an unfortunate agreement just to no longer talk about it.
Dreilide sat on the worn living room carpet, just beside the coffee table set in front of the family couch. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt until they were secured above the elbows and out of harm’s way. Next to him was his daughter, all of four years old and completely immersed in the set of paints strewn out before her. He watched her work, tongue just barely stuck out of the corner of her mouth as she looked to be in deep concentration. Her hands were working on their coordination as she dipped the end of a thick handled plastic brush into one of the primary colors. Then, with all the carefulness a four year old could have, she dragged the brush across the page with no direction or pattern. Whatever she was drawing, it was completely in her mind.
He couldn’t help but smile as he watched her. Since he’d brought the gift back with him on his last trip, as had become customary since she was able to recognize and understand his return to her, she had been fascinated by the way she could make her mark across any blank piece of paper with ease not afforded to her with crayons. There had been a few incidents already where an over eager four year old, tired of waiting for one of her parents to deliver her the proper canvas, had taken to smearing a color or two over a set of bills and a report Socrata had been working on for the better part of an afternoon. That had been an especially unpleasant day.
“What are you painting today, Kara?” Dreilide leaned in to kiss the top of her head, his aged hands smoothing over the tangle of blonde hair that had once been corralled into a ponytail, now most of it hanging loose around her face.
Her attention stayed on the paper before her as she spoke, “Don’t know yet, Daddy.”
He laughed to himself, tucking back some of her wild hair behind her ear. “Mommy’s not going to be happy when she sees what a mess I let you become.” Kara giggled. It was their usual back-and-forth when waiting for her mother to return. He would tease her about how far she’d fallen from the neat little girl she’d started off as that morning when Socrata got her daughter ready for the day.
“I need more paper,” she said, that high pitched voice more like beautiful music to his ears than anything he’d ever written. One of her tiny hands speckled with the thick and strong smelling child friendly paint pushed at the paper half covered in a muddy mess of colors. This child was responsible for half the deforestation of Caprica with how much paper she’d gone through as of late, though her father could never do anything but oblige.
With a nod, Dreilide pushed himself up from his place, disappearing into Kara’s small bedroom only to return with a couple pages more. He’d been gone only a minute, but there was already a small puddle of blue paint pooled on the table, his daughter doing her best impression of innocence. A short detour to the kitchen to get a rag to clean up the mess and Dreilide sat down beside her, furiously wiping away until no evidence remained. “This is why your Mom hates when we don’t put down newspaper first.”
But Kara wasn’t interested in his explanation, instead she was readjusting herself to sit on her knees, a position she clearly deemed superior for her painting process. She pushed some of her own hair away from her face in an unsteady motion, and soon Dreilide could see that speckled hand had transferred some of the blue paint into the strands of her hair. There’d be something of a conversation about this later, but he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt his daughter to rinse out the washable paint from her hair just yet.
“Need purple,” Kara said. She looked up to him, her eyes a mix of green and brown and focused on him.
“Do you remember how to make it?” She shook her head and he nodded, his own hand reaching around her to take the brush out of the blue paint. “Remember how we made it last time? You mix the red and blue together.” He spoke slowly, never quite sure how quickly she could or couldn’t follow him, so he tended to err on the side of caution. “You’ve got the red, so why don’t you put it down first.”
She understood the request and made her best attempt of creating a slightly irregular circle, laying it down over a large print of dried yellow. When satisfied with the results, Dreilide’s blue paint laden brush touched to the center of her red. He went to mix the colors together in a circular motion, but hesitated, his brow furrowing.
“Don’t!” Kara shrieked beside him, her free hand nudging away at his arm. He was drawn back to the present, quick to obey the young child and her temper.
“Why not? Don’t you want purple?”
Her round face considered the question, weighing the options. With a firm shake of her head, her answer was given.
“Do you know what this is, Kara?” Dreilide set the paint brush down, his focus instead on his daughter’s expression, attempting to read her for any kind of reaction. There was nothing there, though, other than the smiling, curious face he’d been looking at for the last four years. For a second, he couldn’t tell if he was breathing heavy due to disappointment or relief.
“It’s just pretty.” She stated simply, and such a short statement warmed him completely.
For her, everything was so easy. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember being that young, couldn’t remember ever feeling like anything in life was so simple and straightforward. “Kara,” he spoke just above a whisper and she continued on with her painting, having resorted to dipping her fingers into the nearby paint container and then smearing it across the blank space surrounding the concentric circles centered on the page. “Kara.” He was louder the second time, though not anywhere near stern. This time, her head tilted back, eyes open wide as she looked up to him, waiting.
“Do you see this?” His finger tapped beside the mix of yellow, red, and blue. Kara’s attention was redirected back to it and she nodded with enthusiasm. “I want you to remember this for me, can you do that?”
“Why?”
A smile was brought to his face as he recalled the phase she’d gone through that still emerged on occasion, where every statement or question from anyone was soon followed up by his daughter asking why. Even if there was no explanation or sense to it, there she had been, demanding an answer. “No reason. You’re right, it’s just pretty, sweetheart.” Dreilide kissed the top of her head again, letting himself linger there as he breathed in the sweet scent of the baby shampoo she still insisted on using after she’d felt the sting of regular shampoo in her eyes just once. “When you’re all grown up and you’re an artist, I bet you’ll paint this everywhere. What do you think? Will you do that for me?”
On the very first day of her experience with paint, she had proudly proclaimed to her father as he tucked her in to sleep that she wanted to be an artist when she grew up. While most childhood pursuits were usually abandoned quick enough, for her, he hoped it would actually come true.
“Mmhmm,” she agreed with him, carelessly tossing her paintbrush aside as her fingers gripped at what she decided was a finished piece of artwork. She stood with it in her hands, abandoning her father without a second thought. Dreilide followed her to the kitchen, knowing what was going through his daughter’s mind. He found her waiting at the refrigerator, the metal surface already covered in some of her previous pieces. She held the paper against the fridge, now slightly crinkled from her over eager grip. “This one goes here, Daddy.”
He found a magnet on a higher part of the fridge and moved it down to where she held the paper in place, determined to let the latest piece be the new center of attention. From the middle of the refrigerator, the childlike rendition of a mandala stared at him. “It’s beautiful, Kara.” Dreilide took his daughter up in his arms, seating her against his hip for easy support.
The sound of the doorway to the apartment hallway opening and unlocking resounded through the kitchen and Socrata Thrace soon emerged, looking tired despite her rigid and neat form. Dreilide went to greet her, bringing their daughter along, and he slipped his arm around his wife, a quiet kiss delivered to her brow. Kara reacted similarly, her tiny arm slipped around her mothers neck in a makeshift embrace, a sloppy kiss given to Socrata’s cheek with something of a giggle.
“Your day all right?” He pulled back but Kara’s arm remain hooked around her mother, reluctant to let her go, so he transferred her tiny form to his wife’s arms.
Socrata rubbed her hand across her child’s back, kissing her shoulder as it was the nearest and most convenient place on her to reach. Only when the process was complete did she look to Dreilide, her free shoulder shrugging. “You know how it is.” She set Kara gently down on the counter and pulled the loose hair tie from her daughter’s hair, using her fingers to comb the strands back into order before refastening it. “Painting?” Her eyebrow rose as she looked to her husband after having noticed the smear of paint dried in Kara’s hair.
Their daughter answered for him as she pointed towards the fridge displaying her latest piece, still wet.
“I bet you worked a long time on that, Kara,” said Socrata, her hands already moving to moisten a paper towel. She rubbed it across the four year old’s hands until nothing of the paint remained, just her milky white skin. Looking down at her own uniform, she huffed in a moment of annoyance at the stains of paint across her clothes, obviously left behind by her daughter’s tiny hands. “You know Dreilide, you can’t just take her out of daycare when you feel like it. I know you aren’t home all the time, but she’s got a routine and when you aren’t here things aren’t as easy. You do this every time and you leave and I have to fight with her to get her used to things again.”
Dreilide stepped up, taking the paper from her to help wash it away. “Sorry.” It was more pre-emptive than anything, trying to curb further complaint he felt stirring in his wife.
Miffed at having her husband predict her nature, she kept quiet and stiff until he finished, the wet spot being the only remaining sign that her uniform had been out of regulation for even a moment in time. “I have a feeling we’re going to be hanging a lot of the same paintings from her.”
He tossed the used paper towel in the garbage. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen her draw those same circles a few times already. She even came back from daycare once with it done in crayon.” Socrata seemed to think nothing of it, her attention turned back to Kara, still perched on the counter top. Her hands had found the box of cookies beside her, both now filled with a small sugar cookie each, crumbs already scattered across the light green of her shirt. It explained how quiet she’d been over the last minute at least. Four years old and Kara was the master of getting and keeping what she wanted.
Dreilide stifled his laughter at the sight of her, leaning over to take a small bite from one of her cookies. Kara shrieked with childish laughter, pulling her hands away from him to prevent him from committing what, to a child of her age, was both a hilarious and terrible act of betrayal.
He chewed down what he’d gotten of the cookie before speaking. “You’re special, you know that, Kara?”
Once she stopped her giggling, she nodded to her father, eyes turning up to her mother. “Right, Mommy?”
Socrata took her sight off the pile of crumbs ever growing and already spilling to the floor. “You’re very special, Kara.”