Welcome to Gaia! ::

Not being nearly so restrained, he chuckles at her comment: plainly he is not sorry for them either, for all that they are his own family, and he is glad that she sees the same humor in it that he does.

A server arrives then, with a pair of goblets, an unmarked bottle, and a tray of food for them both -- warm, fresh bread, slices of cheese and meat. It is not fancy fare, but it is of good quality, probably better than what is normally served here. The light wine, smelling faintly of cherries, certainly isn't ordinarily on the menu: despite the plainness of the bottle, it is clearly an expensive vintage, pulled out solely for the enjoyment of such a special guest of the Grimm family. Ferdinand sits back as all of this is unloaded onto their table, taking over the pouring of the wine himself; the server has even brought a smaller plate with some of the plain meat on it, which is set just underneath the table for Lucius, quite as if this is perfectly ordinary.

Ferdinand does not continue his story until the server has left them again, sitting back and sipping the wine himself as Unwelcome paces the length of the table to examine the bread with some interest, in case it might be something she likes.

"So, so: they are alike, the warden and the hedge-witch, two and two, and I say this but perhaps you doubt it -- when you've met them, you'll see, and I think I will tell them that you will make it a point to be able to tell which is which." He utters this with the absolute certainty that she will be doing so: after all, to tell her story properly she will need to know who the players are. "And now they are followed by two different creatures, whose very natures suggest that they are two very different fellows, and suddenly all the world can tell them apart." He glosses over, in this way, how traumatic it had all been for the Freds, how devastated First had been in particular, he who had not wished to be a hedge-witch at all. But he thinks that perhaps Senka can guess, and surely once she meets them, it will be easier for her to understand how hurtful it had been for them to be different from one another.

"But there has been all along another difference," he continues, leaning closer to whisper the secret to her, even though his 'whisper' is not at all quiet. "For he who is the hedge-witch has fallen for one lady, and he who is the warden has fallen for another. The lady that the warden is taken with, she is a blacksmith, bright and cheerful and confident enough to charm them both: she reciprocates his love, and their romance blooms.

"The lady that the hedge-witch is taken with is another story .." He shakes his head, tsk-tsking, and all of the sudden the rook (who has been listening quietly) fluffs up her feathers and gives an odd little croak:

"Yesraj," says Unwelcome quietly, then straightens and claps her wings together once or twice. "Yesraj," again, and she settles back down, soothing herself by preening Ferdinand's hair.

Having paused for this display, Ferdinand takes up the tale again right away, without bothering to explain Unwelcome's outburst: he had not meant Senka to know the woman's name, and it is better to distract her than chance her asking.

"She does not return his affection, and he knows she will not, so for a long time he hides it as best he is able. But one night he is forced to reveal the feelings he holds -- and she scorns him, even scolds him for his foolishness, and casts him fiercely away from her." Ferdinand shakes his head, but looks not at all angry at this unknown woman: he is far too caught up in telling the story as a whole, and plainly enjoying his role as tale-spinner. "I am told that for a time he drank himself into a stupor, though this did not serve him well: he was watched too closely by the rest of us to do himself any lasting harm."

"Isn't one's first love always like that?" Ferdinand flutters a heart over his own chest and leans back in his chair dramatically: he is trying not to smile, and after a moment loses the battle, sitting up straight again with a shrug. It's hard to imagine Ferdinand swooning or weeping over anyone, but perhaps it did happen, once, long enough ago that he can be cavalier about it now. "If you should ask me, I think we should look more to youth than any particular devotion; they are of that age, you know, when everything is felt so strongly." The words are a bit lofty for someone only twenty-one, but he doesn't seem to notice.

He takes a few swallows of the wine to wet his throat, and takes little crumbles of cheese and offers them to Unwelcome, who croons in a satisfied manner as if this is only her due.

"So and so, the hedge-witch is broken-hearted, and the warden, he is worried for his otherself, and that in turn worries the blacksmith." He makes a circle with one finger as he says this, though it annoys Unwelcome, who fluffs up and tries to catch his finger with her sharp beak, perhaps in retaliation for the lack of cheese. "So she decides to cheer him, and takes him by the arm for a turn about the town under the sun, thinking to be out will do him some good. And though it's a gel out walking with a man that isn't her beau, and ordinarily people would talk .. well, who is there to know that it isn't her beau, when the two of them are so much alike?"

His eyes glitter as he draws his hand back from Unwelcome, who turns her back on him deliberately and steps over to the plate to help herself. There's a curl of mischief to the set of Ferdinand's lips now, like he knows he's getting close to the good stuff, and he pauses a beat to see if she has some further reaction.

“Around and about they go, in the fair sunshine, with the hedge-witch beginning to see a little of the world he has missed, tied up in his affection for the woman who did not love him: perhaps he began to wonder at his own foolishness — that I am not sure of, but I am told that the smith was determined to see a smile from him.

“And,” he continues, leaning a bit over the table, “as soon as he had begun to smile, it just so happened that their paths crossed that of a very dear friend of the smith, a woman she very much admired: the self-same woman that did not, could not, love the man whose arm was hooked with her own.

“For a few moments they persisted, and he pretended to be the other: for the smith did not know it was her friend that had rejected him, only that he had been rejected. But there was one that could tell the difference between the two, or rather one who could make that difference known: and, all in innocence, in the middle of this conversation, she landed lightly upon his shoulder.” He runs his fingertips along Unwelcome’s back, and the rook leans into the caress: if she had been following the conversation before, now she does not, and seems as innocent as his words paint her.

“I confess, I do not know what was said at that point, but what I do know is that the smith returned home alone, and my brother did not return home at all, but was found at a pub some few days later. From then on he avoided his brother the warden, from whom he had never been apart for more than a day: he sought solace in learning fighting, in the running of this tavern, and in keeping company with the rest of our brothers.” Sitting back, Ferdinand actually sighs, still watching Unwelcome, and Senka will perhaps get the sense that he is carefully counting his words and avoiding speaking of — something. Even in such a story, giving this stranger such painfully intimate details, there are things that are too painful for even Ferdinand to touch. Perhaps she will seek the hidden details, perhaps not, but Ferdinand thinks he will let her find it if she will: he has no desire to talk about how they’d found First, how he’d said only that he was sorry for what he had done to Rosalie, and how Last had assumed the worst and cast him out.

The fight had been ugly, all the more so because the twins so rarely fought, and Ferdinand cannot bring himself to relive it by describing it. In retrospect the whole thing was stupid, because if in the beginning First had made plain that it was only some foolish thing he’d said that upset Rosalie, the whole damn thing could have been avoided.

“The warden was at first angry, but he had not been without his twin’s company hardly a day since they were born, and the loss of his sibling began to cut deeply into his heart. The both of them were a pitiful sight, I shan’t hesitate to tell you; we were all of us beside ourselves trying to repair them, but nothing we did seemed to help them in the least. Yet as we wondered if we were doomed to lose the one or the other for our failure to cheer them, there was another who decided to take up the task.

“After a time, the lady blacksmith had begun to realize that she could not stand to see in pain a man who looked so like the man she loved: and so she began to think of welcoming the hedge-witch into her arms, for she thought that what joy she had brought one, she could bring the other just as well.” He will wait a moment to see what Senka thinks of this, for it is perhaps one of the most startling aspects of the tale: that a woman would think of sharing herself between two men, and assume that they should come to this pass amicably.

“So do I think,” Ferdinand tells her with a nod which leaves no doubt that however he might bend the truth for other matters (such as money), this is something which he firmly believes: he approves of this woman, perhaps even admires her. It is a strange thing for a man to admit feeling for a woman — simple respect — but far less strange than most of the rest of the story. “So, too, my brothers all: even our eldest has laid his blessing on the wedding, though I think when they were younger he’d hoped to bind them to a merchant’s daughter and not a craftswoman.” He shrugs, as if the idea of the eldest Grimm son plotting their futures is of no particular concern, even should it be his own: and it is plain that whether or not the eldest really does approve of the blacksmith, he is wise enough not to stand in the way of an inevitability.

“The hedge-witch resisted,” he plunges on after a few swallows of wine, now ignoring Unwelcome as she paces gravely to the edge of the table, that she might lean over it and see what Lucius has been given. “For what his brother saw in her, the traits that the warden most admired, he had not been able to help noticing in the time he’d spent with her. He avoided the lady-smith entirely, using the rook to make certain that he was wherever she was not, for he knew that if she stood before him and pleaded with him, he would not be able to resist. But she was clever, and sent letters to him to make her case, while he returned those letters with all the reasons it could not be: that there’d be jealousy, that his presence would sour what she’d built so careful with his twin sib, even pointing out what was said in the small village we are from when he and his twin were born, that twins were unlucky and it were a fool’s game, her courting both, a thing that could only bring her bad fortune.

“Being that our smith is a strong-willed lass, she didn’t hold with listening too close to his silliness, for she knew very well what she wanted. She persisted, and when it seemed to her that his resolve had begun to weaken, she conspired with one of my elder brothers to see the hedge-witch delivered to her door, trussed hand and foot and quite pleasantly drunk. What they said remains between them, but now, some weeks later, I shall tell you with joy that I spent the whole of the day at the smithy, assisting them with the rearranging of furniture: the both of them have bought, as a gift to her, a bed big enough for three.

“It is the warden and the smith who are being wed, of course, warden to warden: but they are both at her side, always one or the other, and though they had sworn that no Grimm should go off to join a war, now when she speaks of fighting they make no complaint. Should the call come they know that she will answer it and they know that they shall follow. And our eldest brother, he who leads our humble family, who had in the beginning forbidden us all from participating in this rising tide of battle .. he has grown thoughtful, my dear, and let me tell you that when he gets such a look on his face the rest of us tread lightly! He has grown thoughtful, and I know he has begun to wonder how quickly a war might be won if the whole of the Grimms put their mind to winning it.”