[@] Merroth's Journal . . . . » romesilk

[romesilk]

"This one," said Emma, and of the three bedrooms they had looked at, it did seem the best. It was a second-floor room. The walls were beige-tan, with dark grey and dark red trim, pale grey carpeting, and big windows along one side that looked out over a nice patch of garden. A big four-poser bed occupied the center of the room. There were three dressers and a desk, much better than the one Edward John had. There was a full en suite bathroom with slate tile shower and bath, and grey marble double sinks. The toilet even occupied its own little niche. The walls of the shower were unframed glass, which to Merroth seemed a neat, if risky, trick. (He would later discover that they were in fact a very high quality plastic which resisted all attempts at breaking and scratching. Eventually, Merroth would discover a way to break it with sonic resonance, but by then he was too old to waste his time breaking his own shower.) The closet was quite huge, even for a walk-in.

Rosa left and Merroth bounced on the bed experimentally. It was by far the nicest bed he had ever encountered in his life. Plus, there were half a dozen pillows, and two nightstands, and lamps and wall lighting fixtures. He might have objected to the room on the sheer principle of the fact Emma had selected it, but he called her decision an "assignment" to pretend he had no choice, and in labeling it so got what he wanted, which was the important thing.

He would soon discover that he had not just been given a single room in the mansion. His was the entire wing.

He had a library. He had a dining room. He had four bedrooms total, and five offices, and an entertainment room, and six staircases, and half a dozen sitting rooms, plus random rooms that apparently were just there for the heck of it. He had his own turret. He had closets and storage areas. He had a swimming pool and Jacuzzi in his basement. And Emma, who followed him everywhere.

At first he thought she was just looking after him. Then he thought she was looking after the stuff in the house, which was fair since he really wanted to break most of it, but with her hovering it was hard to achieve any real degree of mischief. He tried to make her angry, but she didn't seem capable of that emotion. He knocked stuff over, and she laughed, or scrunched her face up like she would cry, or shrugged it off completely. He tried kicking her instead.

Emma did not fight back. Nerys and Black had always fought back, and Edward John had at least resisted, but not Emma. He kicked her bitterly for five minutes and she just stood there, face scrunched, tears on her cheeks, until Boston came running.

"Merroth!" Boston shouted, and Merroth, expecting a beating for sure now, took off, but Boston was faster and swept Merroth up into the air. "Merroth! Stop! You'll hurt yourself!"

This was a peculiar choice of words. "You're hurting me!" squealed Merroth.

"I'm not! Calm down and I'll put you down. Just listen to me for ten seconds."

Merroth struggled a bit more, got tired of failing to escape, and stopped. Boston did lower him, but did not let him go immediately. Leaning over Merroth's shoulder, Boston said, "I want you to listen to me very carefully, Merroth. Do not hit Emma ever again. If you want to hit someone, you come and hit me instead, okay? Here, take my arm."

Boston offered Merroth his arm like a gift and released Merroth completely. Merroth stared at the arm, thinking this was too good to be true. Then he grabbed hold and bit. Boston grimaced and ground his teeth but nothing more. No return blows. Merroth tried to bend Boston's arm over his knee to no effect. Then he just pounded with his fist until Boston's arm was red and sore. Nothing. Finally Merroth gave up. He had clearly hurt Boston, which was something.

"Feel better?"

In all honesty, Merroth wasn't sure if he did or not. On the one hand, his murderous rage was gone, on the other hand, he would have liked to have had more effect.

"Are you okay, Boston?" asked Emma.

"Depends," said Boston, rubbing his tender arm. "Are you okay, Merroth?"

"Hmph," Merroth grunted. He did not realize it consciously at the time, but he had just discovered two people whose happiness was contingent upon his own, and it was a dependency which would shape him in ways he could not know.

===

By the third day of Emma's constant presence Merroth began to realize there was something more at play here than simple adult supervision.

He woke up, she was there. He went to sleep, she was there. He went to the bathroom, she was there, though she always found something else to occupy her attention. (Not that Merroth cared, he had no shame in it.)

On the one hand, it was annoying. The sheer principle of it was frustrating. On the other hand, it was amazing.

Emma knew lots of stuff. She talked incessantly, but it was interesting, about historical figures and astronomy and chemistry and works of literature. She talked to entertain him as Nerys occasionally had, but Nerys's stories had always been tales of great oceanfaring exploits. Emma covered so much more. Not only pirates, but Greek philosophers, Classical composers, world leaders, scientists. People in every walk of life Merroth might aspire to. He even asked her, "Do you know Scarbreast?" and she did. Generys Anne Scarbreast, scourge of the southern seas, and Merroth felt sick with loneliness as he listened to Emma relate tales of his mother's exploits on the seas, including things he had not learned from Nerys herself, but he could not tell Emma to shut up. When the story ended with "and she and her brother disappeared, never to be heard from again," Merroth said only, "Oh," and left it at that.

Not only did Emma talk, she listened. She listened to Merroth's every word, agreed with him if he was right, hesitated if he was wrong or missing something, but no matter what she paid attention. So did Boston.

Boston turned out to be a very busy man, but when Merroth wandered into Boston's office one day (Emma never warned him about these things, letting him figure it out for himself unless he asked) Boston dropped everything. "Hey, champ. How's it going? Find anything interesting? That's a good spot, but have you seen..." and so on. Even if Boston was not present, if Merroth wanted to ask Boston something, he had only to turn to the house computer and say, "Connect to Boston" and Boston would be there, communicating from his office.

The house computer was central to everything. No matter where you were, no matter what room you were in, the house computer was there. In every window and corridor and several terminals the computer waited. Voice commands could be spoken anywhere in the house or even in the garden. Connect to, display schedule, display menu, display map, rotate map, adjust lights, locate. The thing even activated automatically if it detected health changes or duress.

When Merroth expressed dismay about the computer system, Emma's response was immediate. "But computers are so wonderful!" she exclaimed. "You can play so many games on them!"

What? went Merroth, so Emma showed him Civilization.

They played it for two days straight. Emma had to get out her original manual to show him, of course, and they played through all the various victories. It was always a struggle to choose between space and world conquer. When one game was going badly and Merroth was getting frustrated, Emma said, "So let's cheat."

Aha, went Merroth when she showed him how to hex edit, and he had access to some small part of his maths. Not the all-encompassing pattern, but hexadecimal was so easy it was child's play. Literally.

Then cheating made the game lose its challenge, so Emma said, "Then let's make up some rules so it's harder." That was fun, and had tons of possibilities. Play with only one city, and raze all other cities to the ground. Do not declare war with anyone and pay all tributes demanded. Do nothing that will increase research points. Build no settlers, cities through huts and conquering only. And so forth.

There was something else Emma showed him on the computers. "Can we listen to some music?" she asked as they wiped out the Mongolians, and Merroth grunted in non-response. "What kind do you like?" That only made him grunt in incomprehension. So she put on one of her own favorites.

At first he did not pay it any attention. Then something buzzed in the back of Merroth's head. He completely stopped playing the game. Impossible. He could hear it.

Numbers. He could hear numbers, and patterns, and the latticework. "What is this?"

"Philip Glass. If you don't like it I can change it--"

"NO."

Merroth sat back in his chair and let the music wash over him. It wasn't just the notes he was hearing, it was also the notes he wasn't hearing. He could hear layers, layers of music, and then layers beyond the music, in the space behind the patterns, and he forgot all sense of the game and the room and Mongolians.

The song ended, and Merroth's demand was immediate: "No! Make it come back!" So Emma played it again, and just set it to loop, and Merroth sat there transfixed on the space behind the music and extrapolated gorgeous, beautiful patterns that became fractal visions. Every time you peered closer there were still more patterns unfolding and unfolding.

On the fifth repetition, Emma ventured, "He wrote more, you know." Then she showed Merroth how to work the audio archive in the house computer.

The audio archive was absolutely brilliant. It was a repository of songs, millions of them, and not only could Merroth rate songs, he could see how Emma and Boston had rated them. He went through tons of Philip Glass, then noticed the Kronos Quartet, which let him to Steve Reich, and he began to make playlists of music he wanted to listen to while he was in the middle of listening to music, queuing up hundreds of hours. He listened. Boston came in, but he ignored Boston. He was not aware when Emma fell asleep. Meals passed, plates were brought, and Merroth forgot to finish eating them, and refused to go to sleep, did not even hear anyone ask.

This went on for so long that Merroth's head began to spin and he felt dizzy. Everything went fuzzy, the patterns got all jumbled, and he blanked out.

He woke up in Boston and Emma's bed, not his own, and Boston was there, working from the bedroom instead of the office. As usual, Boston stopped work as soon as Merroth was awake. "Hey, champ. How's it going?" Merroth could manage only a very confused mumble, not totally sure what had happened. "Ever seen a baseball game?"

Boston and Emma's shared bedroom had a huge screen in it. Boston swiveled in his chair and turned it on, revealing a huge stadium full of people watching a much smaller group of people run across a field while throwing and hitting a ball. It was new, so Merroth watched it and absorbed it, but was not so totally engrossed that he neglected the steaming hot cheese omelette Kendall delivered. It was delicious, and Merroth was completely famished. He devoured it in record time.

"Do me a favor, champ. Don't get so caught up in things you forget to eat and sleep."

Oh, was that what had happened? Merroth could kind of remember it now, but it was still foggy. He did not like the sensation of being unable to completely recall events. It made him feel like he was not in control of his own body. More powerless than anything Black had thrown at him, but not quite as powerless as when Edward John had beaten him, or Peri had made Black abandon Merroth. Still, any amount of powerlessness was intolerable, so Merroth resolved to keep better track of the food and sleep thing from that day.

He ate a tuna sandwich next, and had a glass of cranberry juice and a glass of lemonade. It was the eighth inning. Boston came and sat down on the bed next to Merroth. "Listen, champ, there's something I want to talk to you about." These were not words and a tone Merroth had a lot of experience with, and he glanced at Boston, wondering where it was going. "I know Emma loves following you everywhere, but it would really be nice if every once in a while I could have my wife back."

Merroth blanched. As if Emma's puppy dog loyalty were somehow his fault! He had tried to make her go away, but... but it had not worked and he had kind of gotten used to her presence. It was like he had some sort of power over her, power over another person for the first time in his life, and he liked that.

"Maybe you could just bugger off for a few hours a day?" said Boston sardonically. "Do something useful?"

Useful? Merroth made a sour face.

"After all, nice as it must be for you to mooch off my hospitality, it'd be even nicer if one day you earned the keys to the castle, or maybe took over the corporation."

An unfamiliar word. Merroth was perturbed. "What corporation?"

There were a lot of great things about Emma. She was loyal and sweet and knew lots of interesting stuff. But nothing she could do or say would ever equal what Merroth learned about from Boston on that day.

===

"I don't think my dad adopted me to take over the corporation, no. I don't think mum did, either. Frankly, if I had not been capable of doing the job, Boston would never have offered it to me, or even made the suggestion in the first place.

"I'll tell you quite plainly. When he first told me about Clark Co., it was just bait to get me to imagine the power I could have after the benefit of a good education. He was a very manipulative man. As much as I hate to admit it, in that regard at least , my father was once smarter than me. He had a way of making his proposals look like the answer to all your problems. How do you think he ran the damn company for so long? He didn't even have to originate the idea. He was just smart enough to back the good ideas when they did come along, no matter what the risks.

"A certain degree of manipulation is an absolute necessity in dealing with people. People are terribly vain. If you don't stroke their egos, then you're not being polite. Frankly, honesty is the most overrated virtue. If you're honest, you get called an a** because no one wants to hear it. Loyalty and honor are important, but honesty is best used sparingly.

"I absolute did not manipulate anyone or cheat to get into university. My school may not have been one anyone had ever heard of, but my credentials were good enough for Yale and Harvard, anonymously. Why the hell do you think Boston got that legislation passed, anyway? Just being his son didn't make me good enough to run the company. I had to earn it. My SAT scores were perfect. I took them three times just to prove it. My college entrance essays, you've seen those? I made the administrators cry, and you know, I would have liked it if those essays were false. I would have loved to say I was cheating when I wrote about that stuff. But it was true, all of it was true. The stuff I published under my nom de plume? The mathematical theorems I contributed? My bloody rocket program! Oxford was beating down my door!

"If you get nothing right in your history books, get this: Boston Clark taught me that in order to get everything in life, you have to work hard. Even if you start off with every advantage, like we did, if you don't work hard, you can't keep it, because it isn't true. I could have cheated to get into university, I have no doubt of that, but if I had, I would never have graduated with all those honors. I may have employed some unorthodox methods in the process, but I got results, and anyone who bickers about my methodology is just jealous of my success."  

[romesilk]

On the one hand, it was a disappointing requirement that Merroth undergo some form of education prior to taking hole of the planet's largest, most ubiquitous corporation, but on the other hand...

"Clark Co. is a company about people. If you don't understand people, you can't run it," said Boston. "The only way to learn about people is to live among them."

Emma stuck her tongue out at that, and if that was not a clear enough illustration of her views on people, she later made her thoughts known in words as well: "There are two groups in the universe. Us, and them. They are never to be trusted, they are not your friends and they won't understand you. You must never let them know anything about you, Merroth, not who you really are. If you do, they'll attack you, and lock you up. We're not like them. They resent us for it. Let them know anything about us and they'll exploit it. You can't trust them."

"What happens on this island stays on this island, and it's only between us. We stick together, Merroth. Never, ever trust the outsiders. If you do, you will regret it."

So Merroth would go to school, armed with Boston's wisdom and Emma's paranoia, but there were a few details that still needed to be hammered out, and in the meantime that meant more getting settled on the island.

Having known so very little for most of his life, the island represented a kingdom of riches beyond Merroth's wildest dreams and expectations. He made sure not to repeat his mistake with the music. The music was incredible, and important, but Merroth was discovering a lot more. Books, for starters. If Edward John had gotten anything right, it was his teaching Merroth to read, and Merroth put that to very good use now. He and Emma would sit in the library, reading things as the audio system played any number of things. Merroth learned to identify Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Holst. He could see the mathematical correspondences in their compositions, and upon hearing an unfamiliar piece could guess as to its composer with startling accuracy. Emma was a repository of trivia and facts, and Merroth began to absorb that as well. Soon he knew the models and exact specifications of the entire 2009 Mitsubishi lineup.

The strip of asphalt that circled the island was a driving track. Boston had a lot of cars hidden in an underground garage. Merroth expressed some interest in them, but with the whole universe opening up, it was hard to stick with just one thing. There was so much to learn, and Merroth's mind was swimming in the influx of new information and ideas. Emma was no help in that regard. She, too, seemed torn by all the interesting things there were in the universe, jumping from one subject to the next as quickly or quicker than Merroth did.

But as fun as learning new things with Emma was, Merroth did feel a bit cramped. It was a pleasant relief when Boston turned up to whisk Emma away for a few hours and Merroth could spend a bit of time by himself, generally just resting his mind as he listened to music and imagined his way through infinity, but also exploring his limitations in the household.

The two people Merroth could count on running into every day besides Boston and Emma were Arno and Rosa. Every meal was prepared by Arno, and if he was in a good mood, sometimes snacks as well. There were plenty of snacks that did not require Arno's presence, though, and Merroth was all too happy to raid the kitchens for all sorts of sweet treats. Fruits were nice and all, but there was nothing that quite compared to chocolate bars, and chocolate truffles, and best of all: triple-chocolate fudge cake, a blissfully rich experience that would make your eyeballs roll back in your head. Merroth wanted to eat it every day, except it took a long time to make properly and Arno, upon receiving the same request for the third day in a row, threw a fit and Boston had to be called to break up the altercation between Merroth and Arno. "I'm only going to explain this to you once, Roth, because you're not stupid, so I shouldn't have to repeat it. In order to get what you want, you have to be willing to give people what they want. Everyone on this island is here because they choose to be. They don't have to be here, we can't force them. If you piss Arno off, Arno will leave and take his chocolate cake recipe with him. You cannot force Arno to make chocolate cake. I could, because I sign his paychecks, but I'm not going to. You wanna know why? Because I like Arno's cooking and I want to keep him here. Arno is a bloody good chef, Merroth, and he could work anywhere he wanted to. He works for me because I give him what he wants: creative freedom to pick the menu and cook what he wants to cook. If we force him to cook things he doesn't want to cook, he will quit. And do you know what that would be, Roth? A ******** travesty."

Boston grinned, and Merroth had to smile at that.

"Now, if you go and apologize to Arno, I think he'll make you a cake." Boston tousled Merroth's hair and sent him running off to the kitchens, and sure enough, all Merroth had to do was say "Sorry," and Arno made him the biggest, richest triple-chocolate fudge cake of all time. It was a wonderful lesson in the power of apologies.

And then there was Rosa. Boston's maid as well as Merroth's, it was hard to understand why she had been hired. She was less than friendly. Strict, firm, and totally unwilling to put up with any nonsense. A good adjective was "scary." When Nerys or Black got mad, it was fairly easy to predict what they would do, but with Rosa there was this simmering anger that promised her vengeance, when it came, would be from an unexpected source. Because Emma did not like Rosa much, either, the only time Merroth had any lengthy interaction with the maid was when Emma was not around. But those interactions, when they happened, were lengthy indeed.

When Merroth made the mistake of leaving his dirty clothes strewn about the floor, Rosa made sure Merroth knew exactly what a mistake that was. A ten-minute lecture followed, all of it in Spanish, and Merroth could only stare, dumbfounded, as Rosa moved about the room pointing out the pieces of clothing and speaking quite rapidly.

Until she was pointing at something and Merroth suddenly got it. "Ropa!" he repeated. "Clothing!"

"Sí!" said Rosa furiously, and then continued her angry lecture on how he should put his clothing in the clothes hamper which had been designed for that purpose because of a reason Merroth could not understand. But he was beginning to understand some parts of it, especially when he called her "Rosa" and received the correction, "Consuela!"

"I don't know what that means," persisted Merroth.

"Mi nombre es Consuela. Su nombre es Merroth. ¿Hay alguna parte de este no entiende? ¿Eh?"

Realization dawned again. "Name. Consuela is your name."

"Sí! Soy Maria Consuela Sanchez Martinez de Garcia. Madre de Dios..."

"But then why does Boston call you Rosa?"

This resulted in a five-minute rant that Merroth got bored of and tuned out. From that point on, though, he began to pay more attention when Consuela was speaking.  

[romesilk]

In his own mind at least, Merroth had always thought himself rather quiet, so it came as something of a surprise to learn the truth. He was lying on the bed working on his reading with what was actually quite a good book, Robinson Crusoe. Kronos Quartet was playing in the background. Emma started laughing. Merroth looked at her, intending to silence her with a glare, thinking she was laughing at something in her own book, but she was looking right at him. "I thought the exact same thing when I read it!" The confusion must have been fairly apparent on Merroth's face, so Emma clarified, "What you just said, about the island?"

Merroth was not aware he had spoken. He had thought something as he was reading, but had he really said it aloud?

"I don't mind. I like it," said Emma.

"What?" asked Merroth, as if hearing himself speak for the first time.

"The dialogue you've always got going. I find your lack of repression charming." She would, of course.

He found himself asking Boston about it. "Do I talk a lot?"

"No more than anyone else in this house," shrugged Boston, and for a moment Merroth was hopeful. Then Boston followed with, "Though you do have a habit of muttering all the time."

He had not realized in the slightest. On some level, he had surely been aware of himself speaking, but on a larger and more conscious level, the sound of his own voice had become part of the background noise and slipped under the radar. He was oblivious to it, oblivious to his thoughts manifesting audibly in a near-constant, under-the-breath mutter, but now that he knew it was there, he could not stop hearing it.

If he had been fully aware of his voice, Merroth would have also known when the muttering started. That time on the island when he had run off to live destitute and lonely in the jungle. The trauma had been so overwhelming he had not noticed it. The little room adjacent Black's office he had known as his home for several weeks had only contributed to the phenomenon.

"It's nothing to get upset about," said Boston to the cloud of upset that settled onto Merroth's shoulders. "There's nothing wrong with talking to yourself."

This did nothing to alleviate Merroth's anguish. He could not explain to Boston that the problem was not the habit, it was the fact he had been unaware of it -- the lack of control he felt not just over his environment, but over himself. He did not yet trust Boston enough to reveal that information.

Boston could tell his attempt at reassurance had failed, but could not discern precisely why. Still, he reached into his desk and produced a chocolate bar with pistachio, which was some comfort. Merroth took the offering and scampered off to eat it alone, hiding where no one could see him cry.

When he was still upset some hours later, after dinner, Boston pulled him aside. "Look, Roth, I can't get at what's eating you, but I can tell you this. There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who hide from their problems, and those who own them. If you don't take control of your problems, your problems take control of you. Take whatever it is by the horns and find a way to fix it."

The analogy was, as usual, a little beyond Merroth, but he understood the gist of it. He could mope about the issue or change it. Be the kind of person who ran and hid or be the kind who fought and conquered. He saw, for the briefest, fleeting moment, a vision of Black triumphant, but the knowledge of what had happened in reality quickly swept it from his mind. Still, the idea of triumph remained. Becoming someone who stood so tall would be a bit of vengeance for Black.

Merroth could live for that kind of vengeance.  

[romesilk]

"That's it, then," said Boston. Merroth was not impressed. It looked like a door, just a regular door, set into a bit of stonemasonry. He did not know what he had expected. Some sort of glowing magical portal? Crackling static energy? Boston started towards the door. "On the other side of this, the future."

Emma held Merroth back a moment. Merroth was confused until she pointed up in the sky. "Look, a crow." It was indeed a black bird, winging in the air above them. "That's Black's bird. She's watching over us."

For a moment, Merroth thought he had misheard Emma. "We love you, too, Black," said Emma, and Merroth knew there was no mistaking her meaning. It was shocking to hear the sentiment of his own heart echoed in Emma's voice.

Boston waited by the door for them to catch up. He had something of his own to say. "I'm going to tell you something that nobody else knows, Roth. On this island and outside it, we stick together. Anything that happens out there, you can tell us, and anything you want to know, all you have to do is ask."

Merroth must have made a doubtful noise, a scoff, because Boston frowned and put his hand on Merroth's shoulder in sincerity. "I mean that, and I'll find a way to prove it to you. Call it a mathematical theorem." Boston grinned, ever the charming maverick, and they family of three set off.

Mathematically Speaking
PRP with rosemilk/Beatrix/Jace

 

[romesilk]

Boston was as good as his word. Actually, he was better. He had recorded the whole conversation on his PDA. "I told you, no secrets between us," insisted Boston. "I played along with your advisor. Emma stood up for you." Emma could only mumble in embarrassment, but Merroth was proud of her for trying. He hoped she never found herself forced into that position again. It was clear Emma was still a bit upset about the trip as a whole. In the future, she would not be the one to fight Merroth's battles. That was a role Merroth relished for himself.

===

It took only two days for Merroth to barge into Boston's office after school in a fury. He hated it. He did not fit in, the kids made fun of him, he had no sense of belonging.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," said Boston, "slow down, Roth. From the beginning. And slower." Boston listened patiently as Merroth outlined a whole laundry list of offenses by students, teachers, not to mention how far beneath him all the lessons were.

"I hate it, I'm not going," concluded Merroth.

Boston's judgment was quick and cruel. "You're giving up already?"

Merroth stopped. He did not give up. He wanted nothing short of vast conquest and victory.

"This is how the world works, Merroth. The people you're having trouble with in school are the same people you'll have trouble with when you're older. The difference is the things you do now? They don't count. My advice to you is to figure out a way to deal with the kids at school, that way when you're out of school and in the real world, you'll already know how to do it."

Merroth still protested a little, just out of the need to be stubborn about it, but Boston was firm. "If you can't deal with people, you can't run the company, and you certainly can't rule anything else. I know it's hard, Merroth, but stick it out. Work out what you need to do, find a way to get what you want, and don't let your school problems defeat you." Merroth continued to feign a tizzy until Boston relented and gave him a chocolate bar. He might not have figured out how to take over the school yet, but he had figured out a few ways of dealing with Boston.  

[romesilk]

Full Speed Ahead
PRP with Faewynd/Kaimi

 

[romesilk]

Pretenders to the Throne
PRP with romantic wishes/Carlisle

 

[romesilk]

Merroth and Carlisle
PRP with romantic wishes/Carlisle

 

[romesilk]

Counting Stones
PRP with Faewynd/Galleai

Merroth awoke with a start, his hearts rushing, and he was frightened for no easily evident reason. He tried to sit up but there was something heavy and warm on him. He let out a little panicked half-shriek and Boston woke up beside him. "Roth!"

Hearing Boston's voice, the unknown terror subsided. It was Boston's arm, and Merroth clutched it tightly for reassurance, sniffling.

Boston frowned in the darkness. He hoped Merroth was actually awake this time because he didn't think he could take another bout of sleep-screaming. "Hey, champ, are you okay?"

"Mhmm," sniffled Merroth, pressing his snotty nose against Boston's shirtsleeve.

"You had me worried." When Merroth replied with a confused "huh," Boston explained, "You were screaming and I couldn't wake you up."

Merroth was confused. "No I wasn't." Well, excepting that little shriek when he woke up, but that wasn't what Merroth termed screaming, not given the times in his life when he actually had screamed completely and truly.

Figuring Merroth was embarrassed, Boston tried a different angle. "What happened in your dream?"

The complete lack of reply could be characterized only by a "?". Mistaking the confusion for reticence, Boston said, "You don't have to say if you don't want to, champ."

This was beginning to get frustrating. "I don't know what you're talking about!" Merroth exclaimed. "What time is it?"

Boston was equally confused now. Merroth had never, ever needed to ask the time before. There wasn't even a clock in his room. Boston's watch was back on his bedstand. "It's, um, four in the morning I guess. Five, maybe?"

Merroth could not have been more confused. "I don't understand!"

Boston's response was interested, but in the sort of way that half-asleep people are interested, when everything and nothing invokes appeal. "What?"

Merroth's internal clock told him the time was 4:47am, which Boston's lamely indecisive guess seemed to confirm as correct, but that was a good two hours and fifteen minutes off what it should have been. "I was supposed to wake up at seven."

Boston sighed heavily. "You had a bad dream. It happens. You don't remember?" Merroth's reply was negative. Boston closed his eyes and relaxed against the pillow. "Just go back to sleep."

Sleep was the last thing Merroth wanted at the moment. He readjusted his position and lay there, listening to Boston's breathing, trying to understand what had happened, but he had no explanation for any of it.

Drifting at the edge of consciousness, Boston mumbled out, "No more screaming. You scared me."

"Sorry, dad," whispered Merroth, and waited for the sun to rise, running over calculations and music in his head to pass the time.

As the light from the morning sun came in through the window, Merroth looked at Boston as if for the first time. His father's face was lined and tired, eyes ringed with exhaustion. Crinkles that looked happy when Boston was awake seemed old and worried. The rough stubble on his jaw was spotted with shades of grey.

Merroth very gently reached up and touched Boston's face in the way a young child explores a face. He had never been so young a child in Boston's care, but now he wished he had been. Boston barely stirred at the touch. Merroth found himself wondering if Boston had always been so old, but in his memories Boston was always moving so it was hard to tell.

He knew Boston was older than Emma, and Black, and Nerys and Edward John and even Beatrix and most of the teachers at school. He wasn't terribly old like a grandfather, just older than most everyone else Merroth knew, and now that he was asleep Merroth could tell Boston was so, so tired. He spent all his time managing that giant machine that was Clark Co., and looking after Emma and Merroth. In daytime it looked like Boston was superman, handling everything and always there when Merroth or Emma needed him, but now Merroth saw the truth of who his father was. Someone who worked and worked and worked and never asked for a single thing back.

It was nearer seven now. Merroth recalled that Boston usually got up at six, six-thirty on the weekends. Today was a weekday. "Dad?"

"Mm?" Boston answered indistinctly, most definitely still asleep.

If Merroth did nothing, no one would come to bother him until at least seven-twenty, when it was time for breakfast. He remembered the time he stayed awake for days and woke up in Boston's bed, where Boston had left him to recooperate for as long as he needed. Now the roles were reversed. An extra hour and twenty minutes was not a lot, but it was what Merroth could offer under the circumstances. He let his hand fall back onto the pillow and whispered so softly it was barely audible to himself. "I love you." Boston did not hear the words, but the look of peace on his sleeping face was answer enough.  

[romesilk]

Act Naturally
PRP with Kotatsu-chan/Casia

 

[romesilk]

Merroth loved Saturdays because Saturdays were Emma’s day.

On Saturdays, Emma would appear beside his bed and ask him as he was waking, “Who do you want to be today?” Not what do you want to do, because adventures with Emma were always about more than simply the things that you did. The first few times Merroth had not known how to answer, but Emma had supplied the answers for him so quickly he did not have to. “We could be astronauts, or spies, or pirates.” Of course, Merroth had shouted that they should be pirates on more than one occasion, and they would swashbuckle and carouse across the island pretending to terrorize merchant ships and digging for chests of gold and treasure. Sometimes they would bury treasure, only to retrieve it weeks later. They had horrible, mean pirate names, Goldenbones and Blackdagger, and they were two of the scurviest, most ill-tempered scoundrels every to sail the seven seas.

If they were astronauts, they would find a rocket ship and blast off into space, flying through the imagined darkness past comets and stars and strange planets filled the alien dangers. You could die as an astronaut, have a leak in your space suit and be forced to hold your breath until you expired in space’s vacuum or the atmosphere of a poison planet, performed by collapsing onto the floor and laughing. This was fun, but not nearly as fun as being spies who had to sneak around and hide from enemy agents, transporting critical information and stopping evil organizations from taking over the world. More than once they found themselves infiltrating a lair hidden inside a violent volcano and had to sneak their way across channels of hot magma by jumping from one safe spot to the next without falling.

There were other professions, too, suggestions of Merroth’s own devising. Archaeologists would need to carefully research in the history books to determine the best places to dig for fossils which included dinosaurs and ancient, long-gone civilizations, both real and fictional. Thieves had to sneak into tightly-secured areas and abscond with the most valuable objects they could carry, hiding from the police who were after them -- or they might become the police, chasing after the thieves to retrieve stolen items for their rightful owners.

Hunters on safari, knights in search of damsels and dragons, adventurers in dangerous jungles filled with snakes and spiders. If it was Saturday, it meant an adventure. Though they never left the confines of their little island, between Merroth and Emma, there were more places than could ever be seen in a single lifetime.  

[romesilk]

Merroth loved Sundays because Sundays were Boston’s day.

The hours Boston worked during the week were long, longer than even he would care to admit. For six days, he was slave to his own company, attending meetings and overseeing projects and signing off on proposals. If there was a matter that needed his attention, he was there to take care of it, even in the middle of the night. On Sundays -- barring sudden, terrible disasters -- Boston did nothing work-related at all.

The first few Sundays, Emma had prompted Merroth to go and wake Boston, and Merroth did not need to be asked twice. It soon became his habit to proceed directly to Boston’s room if it was Sunday morning. He would find his father there, sometimes asleep and sometimes laying awake, and say, “C’mon dad, it’s time to get up.” Boston would never rouse immediately. Instead he would invite Merroth to join him on the bed and ask, “So, champ, how was your week?”

Merroth would narrate his week’s exploits as Boston slowly achieved full wakefulness, recapping all the things that had made him happy or upset, and if they had been upsetting, how he had dealt with them. Breakfast would arrive in the middle of this and by the time Merroth was done explaining his Saturday adventure with Emma, Boston was good to go.

Sometimes they would go down to the dock and do a bit of fishing or sailing. Boston taught Merroth all the ins and outs of working the sails on the little skiff, and everything Merroth could want to know about lures and fishing. Sometimes they would go down into the garage, pick a car, and go driving ‘round and ‘round the track that circled the edge of the island. Boston showed Merroth everything about the car’s various parts and how they worked. Merroth supplemented this knowledge with things he read online and in the manuals, but it was always a good deal more fun to experience it hands-on.

Depending on the season, they would watch baseball or football or rugby, or football of the American variety, and soon Merroth understood all the rules and the various sports analogies with which Boston peppered his speech. There was always a delicious moment of understanding when Merroth grasped the nuances of those analogies, a lightbulb going on in his head, and he would let out some small exclamation reflecting this new revelation. Boston’s smile was always a mixture of pride and smug amusement.

In the end, Merroth eventually outgrew Saturdays, but he never outgrew Sundays. Sundays he loved for as long as he lived, even when eventually they served only to remind him of days long gone and things which were lost.  

[romesilk]

Christmas  

[romesilk]

And Your Bird Can Sing
PRP with Kotatsu-chan/Casia

 

[romesilk]

Birthday 1