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Later, when he had the time to think back and reflect, Kniene would always see the funeral as the turning point. As a follower of the guard, he knew that change was not always born of great forces, of heroes and princes. Sometimes change crept in in small moments, and even heroes and princes were born of a million invisible influences.

It was at the funeral, standing before that great pyre in the back of his son's home, where he felt the Lady's closeness as he hadn't in too long. She had been close to him, she had been in the flames, in the ash, in the wind. He had called her name and tasted her nearness as he hadn't since last she'd allowed him the grace of a visit to his home. And then, as the flames had turned to embers, her presence too had faded.

He brooded on it, though. The Guard's children were not meant to be held by pity, and he told himself he wasn't. But in the quiet of his home, always quiet but more so now that Autsu rarely returned except to sleep sleep, it was hard not to be caught on the sharp hooks of memory. And if he was, then so was Autsu. So was Sethos. His boys, like himself, lived half in dreams of days past.

Again, it was not the Guard's way to refuse a change when given one. They were the children of the dance, and to refuse to learn the steps to a new song when given one was to insult the Lady. Was she angered by his melancholy? It was hard to say. She loved him, in her way. She forgave him more than most. Forgiven that in loving her he could not fully accept the life he'd been given. She had not yet forgiven him his betrayal.

He brooded on it, and was brooding on it when the early light of dawn found him making tea in the small kitchen of his Gaian home. It was a ritual he found comforting, one unique to this world he'd found himself in. There were no electric stoves in the camps of the Autumn Guard, no neat little bags of pre-mixed tea. He was not unaware of the luxuries of the world he'd been given, and he tried to be grateful as he sat in the warm morning silence. Central heating too, was something to be thankful for.

Kniene? The Lady's voice was the rustle of leaves in Autumn. It was the Guard on parade, the call of trumpets. It was a kiss.

She rarely spoke to him so, rarely contacted him outside of his meditations, though the whisper of her presence was always with him.

"Lady. I serve." He whispered the words, though she could have taken them from his thoughts.

A gift. A Change. It is time, Kniene. I have arranged it. Twisted strands of fate.

Gifts from the Lady were never simple. Still he didn't hesitate. "What gift would you give me, Lady?"

A child. Our child. Our would have been. You will open the front door, and care for it.

His mind shuddered with the momentous nature of her proclamation. The Lady did not speak idly. If she said this was their child, then it was theirs, by blood and birth. And if she said to care for it, then he was in service to the child as he was to the Lady. Shock, confusion, worry, those were but thoughts. To Autumn, there was only one answer to give.

"I am blessed Lady. I serve."

The pressure of her presence left him then, leaving only the whisper of her closeness behind. He stood, dazed, half-entranced, and walked to the door.

There was a cabbage on the doorstep.

He did the only thing he could do. He took it inside.

He had heard somewhere that plants grew better when you talked to them. And he had heard somewhere else that babies were smarter if you played them classical music while they were still in the womb. The ideas did not seem so disparate.

He sat on the ground, with his legs crossed, the cabbage in front of him. He had a striga, the stringed instrument popular in the Guard, resting on his knees. It was a bit like a sitar, and he plucked lightly at the strings creating a bright yet mournful melody. If the cabbage noticed the playing, it gave no sign.

He studied it. Studied the green of the leaves. Studied the curled, almost protective way that they bent inward. How did this work? Did life grow within? Or would the cabbage itself become the child?

Sethos had come to him from an ankh and a vase. He carried certain traits of his origins, even still. What would a cabbage child be? Green? Would his child photosynthesize?

But... the Lady had called it their child, of blood and birth. So it would be of her, wouldn't it? Beauty, grace, charm, cruelty, power.

Change.

He sang quietly, the old campfire songs, the dancing twirling parade songs.

The cabbage did not deign to notice. So like its mother, already.

Essentials

Autsu was babysitting, an idiom which did not, in fact, include the actual action of sitting on an infant. Instead, he was to see that the girl did not come to any particular harm. It was an appropriate task. Autsu was good at protecting things. And this thing was his sister, a child brought into their lives, a child that had brought light back to his father's eyes. It was important to protect her. He just wasn't, well, he wasn't sure what to do with her. The protecting bit, that was easy, but the entertaining was not. Usually he dealt with other criminals, and with them, even the infants had angry, experienced eyes. One knew what to do with them.

"Seed lions, Brofur. Girl lions." Otessa told him. He was in his room, sharpening one of his blades and she was standing beside him, leaning on his knee, and apparently not worrying about the sharp steel above her head. Not that she needed to, Autsu would have thrown himself on the knife before letting her get even a small cut.

"I do not know what a seed lion is, my sister." Autsu replied turning the blade against the light before returning it to its sheath.

"No seed. See-ed."

"Saw." Of course, who was he to argue linguistics in a language he hadn't mastered. Absently, he spoke the word for saw in his own language.

"What that?" Otessa asked, perking immediately at the sound of something new and unfamiliar. "What means it?"

"It is a word, sister. It means, for all intents and purposes, saw."

Otessa repeated the word. Her accent was horrible, but then, she'd only crawled out of a cabbage a few weeks ago.

He spoke it again, more slowly, and had her repeat it again. She played with it a bit before settling on a close enough approximation to please him.

"That was satisfactory."

"What means satisfactory?" Otessa asked, almost the moment the word left his mouth. It was dangerous, talking around the girl. She always had more questions.

"It means... not perfect but good enough. It means--" he spoke a phrase in his own language.

"Now that!"

So he broke down each word, and sometimes broke down those words, and Otessa nodded, and repeated, and then repeated again. And together, they worked their way through the conversation until Autsu found himself contemplating what it meant to hold a second language within you, one you had no one to share with. Father could now speak to Otessa, but who could he speak to?

Perhaps he could speak to the little one as well. She learned quickly enough, when engaged. If nothing else, it would do to fill an afternoon of babysitting.

On occasion, the watching of Otessa fell to Autsu and in truth, Kniene enjoyed watching the siblings together. There was something truely comforting about the domesticity of a family at rest. But often, most often, in fact, Autsu was out, was at his Unit or with his Kian. At such times, it was only Kniene and Otessa, father and daughter. Those times, too, were special in their own way.

She was a marvel to watch. A marvel to experience. There was no darkness in her, no sorrow. The quiet pain that weighed so heavily on the other members of the family didn't touch her. She didn't seem to sense it, certainly didn't absorb it. Where the house was quiet, she was vocal. Where the house was hurt, she was laughing. Where they hid to themselves, she banged on doors and demanded friends with which to play.

She was not, in some strange way, of them. Hers was her own unique culture and she sucked Kniene into it, demanding his attention, his laughter, his emotional investment. It hurt sometimes, allowing himself to love her so. She was so like her mother at times. Beautiful and sacred but also demanding and self absorbed. She had no apparent sense of the feelings of others except that they should be as her own. But she loved deep and hard, and her feelings were positive. She never seemed to try to offer hurt or offence.

Of course, she was a little thing, a toddler. How much hurt could there be in her.

They were in her room. He was brushing her hair. She had amazing hair, with all of autumn hidden in its colors. She was still as she could be, she seemed to find something soothing about the task. He did. Neither of his sons had welcomed such closeness. He did not love her better, but he found he loved her difficulty. His sons were his sons, but they had never been his babies in the way this girl was. There was nothing of her that he didn't know, no secret pain yet to be revealed. It made him hope, vainly, that he might ever shield her from hurt.

As if anyone could be shielded from hurt.

"Daddy?" She called him that, fearlessly. As if she wasn't afraid to be a child.

"Yes, little leafling?"

"Can we go see Mommy?"

"No, darling." He kept his voice settled, calm. As if it were nothing special, that separation.

"She seed me though."

And he could almost be jealous of his own daughter. "I'm sure she does. She loves you very much."

"You too!"

And he thought, 'No, darling.'