Episode 47: Going Home (Nim)

Nim was, now and forever, a sleepless current existing inside the known realms without a single care in the world. 

She was too tired to care.

Puke in her hair? Hilarious.

Puke on her shirt? Hilarious.

Puke on the rug? Hilarious.

What wasn’t hilarious, because hilarious was not a strong enough word, was the way Soren’s face got all puzzled when it saw the spots of milk spray on the wall behind their bed, behind the chair, on the chair, on the window….

Parenting was an explosion of what am I doing mixed with how did I get here and please don’t send me back because they’re really cute and I hated being nine years pregnant.

When Rhoda had dropped off the newest kid she just knew that it was her soul baby. She had carried him with every ounce of heartburn and misery as the other two.

Except, he was a lot older so not really. 

Also, just not really.

His hair though? It was on the list of hilarious things. Therefore, she loved him.

Soren hadn’t asked about the spots since the first day, when Nim said they looked like little bug feet had trekked through a dish of milk and asked him if they could adopt a kitten next.

She didn’t actually want a kitten, she just found it… hilarious… that she now had three kids.

It was odd, because three was an odd number and because her family was full of twins.

She really needed more sleep.

Which brought them to that particular day, which had a name and number and some other forms of coordinates to coordinate you to that moment in time in memory, but of which she deemed going home day.

She spent the whole night, after Jay and the dancing and the drinking and the being with Soren for all of seven seconds before someone cried, packing.

“I’ll just move the whole house home,” Soren said as he kissed her cheek.

It was really sweet that he made her feel thin by hiding that their house was so small they couldn’t even pass each other at the moment without touching. 

She wasn’t insecure, but it was still cute that he kissed her.

Or maybe he just couldn’t not kiss her. He knew her well enough to know that she really didn’t care if she looked like a prancing whale or a petite … fairy? Fairies tended thin. She had no other word that was more accurate.

At any rate, she was destined for thin and she loved Soren’s kisses and she really needed sleep.

Also, what did he just say?

The whole house.

He was going to move the house that he let her pack.

She was.

It was the water all over again.

“Are you serious?” She asked.

Soren turned and gazed at her with his innocent alligator eyes – alligator because the color – and asked her what she meant, because there was a flat space behind the barn and it was only logical that they take the whole house.

Like that time when he brought all that water up the hill, because logically she needed it.

“I just finished packing,” she said.

His face moved in waves from laughter begging to escape and choking solidity. 

He was going to break his face.

Finally, he stepped closer and the laughter escaped.

She laughed too, because it was… incredibly amusing.

Amusing was a new word.

Not new to the dictionary, but new to her current list of synonyms for hilarious. She could make her own word up. Life with triplets, or rather twins and a hairy-tod-ball were laudacious. Lau- from the word laugh, and audacious from the word audacious. Or maybe laughdacious. It sounded the same but it looked more creative. She wasn’t sure it mattered how it looked living in a community of people that didn’t really care about reading, or know how to read, and didn’t really own paper.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Move the house.”

Her hands met the air above her and collapsed around his neck.

And he was still laughing. Surprisingly, his body supported her underneath the crippling weight of her humility.

“What water magic?” he managed to say, sprinkling her in a mist of tease.

“Are we travelling with the entire wagon?” a voice said from pretty much below them, and just to the side.

Jay. The guy they were travelling with.

Romance had officially died.

“Probably not,” Soren replied. “But we can put it somewhere safe – like home – where we can get supplies any time we want.”

Soren had entangled his plan with words and himself with motion as he spoke. It was sad and cold without him.

Sort of. She still did have fire magic, so it wasn’t veritably cold.

Veritably was a word she had not used in ages.

Need for sleep made her vocabulary expansive and creative. She loved it – the words not the lack of sleep.

Jay was now sitting up, “Where is home?”

She wanted to joke, and tell him she didn’t know where his home was, but Soren had been to an emotional funeral since birth and the lack of intimacy, and replied with a simple, “The Dells, in Elesara.”

He then looked at Nim, with his chunky dreads of cornish color, mixed in with earthy browns that made him gorgeous and sexy and incredibly hers, “The king and queen owe us a huge favor for saving their grandchildren from starvation.”

Romance, it turned out, wasn’t dead.

She grinned back, “Permanently indebted.”

Then, they transported, and she opened the door of the vardo.

She breathed in home sweet home and the taste of so much life, filling one place. Pine trees, fruit trees, nuts, hay, disgusting manure and possibly a full diaper, and sand. Everything that made home home. 

She loved home. The Rhoganoi were awesome, but she still had a strong preference for the palace on the rift. 

She stepped back inside and picked up Meldrey and Tsura. Meldrey was more of a monkey on her shoulders with the minor support of her arms, while Tsura was a potato locked in the loving embrace of her fingers curled around her back and stretched in support of every floppity inch that made her beautiful.

Tsura had her lips and her brown hair, but she had Soren’s face and his dazzling alligator eyes.

She couldn’t wait until Tsura had a personality to be in love with and not just tiny baby toes and chubby baby cheeks.

“Permanently indebted,” she said as she carried Tsura and her tan skinned, hair coated, monkey boy out. It was an incredibly fortunate thing that Rhoda had brought Meldrey over, because she loved him.

Not in a weird way or in way that would have been looking for him, but in an all my life needs is a hairy-tod-ball to complete it, and my every wish has come true, kind of way.

He was not very good at granting follow up wishes, such as sleep.

But she was home. 

Home, while she was exhausted word thinking, was a funny word for the place. 

It was earlier than the palace was alive for. An eerie silence in the expanse of the land it spanned. While there were gardens everywhere the hum of life and love and community was dampened by a silent blanket of sterile perfection.

She never understood how people could  live that way, with such a beautiful landscape. The stone walls were like prisons, jutting out above the rift in the most unnatural way possible. Like a bone sticking out.

Nim was glad she had babies; even Meldrey was a great distraction from participating in Dells life. 

Soren looked at her, amused as he sipped black coffee in a tin cup that had a weird combination of images (a few eyes, a worm, a tree..) that she had given him to symbolize seeing the world together.

He was also leaning against the counter. It was an important detail she studied for at least thirty seconds.

She loved him so much. She had hair beads for him! She sprung up, Meldrey in her arms, and opened the door to the vardo.

They had been caught. The door gave way to a hand as it fell through the sky, irs companion hand rested on the hilt of a sword. The security guy was there. Army guy. the scare everyone guy. She had no idea what his name was at the moment because she was caught in the onslaught of his hand and the glimmer of his fire opal eyes behind it. She moved Meldrey in a swoop to avoid his calloused and dirty hands. 

Those were the kinds of hands she loved. Hands that said I do stuff. 

Her mom had dirty hands often, from gardening, but that was like saying you had given birth when you had actually only been outside the room while someone else gave birth. Definitely not the same, she now knew without a doubt way too intimately.

So while her mom had soft dirty hands, Konrad had life worn hands. He also had shaggy waves of dark hair and facial hair and scars here and there across his exposed skin. She loved how his face could be incredibly.soft and hard at the same time. If she was ever forced to be male and old, she would have liked Konrad. As it stood, she was female and young and in love with Soren. Still, she reserved the place in her heart for if-I’m ever-a-gay-man for him.

Jay had life worn hands too, except they were younger. Soren had somewhat cracked and occasionally bleeding hands, but that was because he was still healing from the water bucket incident.

“It’s you,” the guy – Konrad! – said. She was proud she remembered his name. Names weren’t her strength.

He looked past her and frowned. Maybe he didn’t like her new house.

“What happened?” he asked. As if she had time for questions. “Full description, without embellishment or forgotten pieces of important information.”

“Lovely to see you,” she replied to Konrad as she slipped past him. 

“Nim,” he stated in a deep growl of obey-me. 

He would make a scary king. One that people would admire for their strength but be obedient toward.

Her dad was the kind of scary king that seemed like your best friend until you realized your arm was being served for dinner.

Not that he was mean to her. That’s just the kind of king she felt like he most associated with.

He was also not a cannibal.

Still, the image fit in contrast with Konrad.

“Sorry, but I have places to be,” she said. She looked down at Meldrey, who smiled back, cuddled him tight against her chest, and ran.

She made it to her room without acknowledging that she had passed four siblings and one parent.

There, in her vanity drawer, where the beads. She had a dozen, in case the kids were different people once they were born. Not different different, but expectation different.

She picked out three as Meldrey jumped an open cube of bracelets everywhere.

He squealed so loud she thought she might die of laughter. Meldrey was pure joy for her. 

Beads in hand, she decided to leave by window. 

She did have air magic after all. That part of her existence was unforgettable.

Outside, the scene had deteriorated without her.

“Unhand my slave!” she yelled at Konrad, who was now escorting Jay toward the palace.

“And where were you, Nemethne,” her dad said.

Ouch, the full name. Good thing it was a gorgeous name. Nim was better, but Nemethne was like breathing out minty air. It was refreshing to hear from her almost-cannibal of a dad.

“Oh, you know, just hunting for a few things I forgot to pack before we were graciously kidnapped.”

The silence of her dad’s confusion gave her enough time to retreat to Soren’s side. He gave her a second baby then wrapped his arm around her waist.

It was Caden, with his delirious blue eyes. Her heart melted again. She was way too in love. 

She turned her focus to Konrad, “So you had questions. I’m a bit hesitant to share the full details because I don’t think you want to hear about how it felt to expel a baby or the exact volume or stuff that came out. I also don’t have those details. What I can say,”

“Nim,” her dad said. She was pretty sure the drick portion of his name was also the word to describe the plinking sound of water that a sink made when it was broken. 

She glowered at him, “What I can say,” she restated loudly, “is that we almost lost Caden, but some fortune tellers looked into their crystal balls and waves and stuff and decided to save his life. Now that he is saved, we are repaying them by escorting Jay to the land of our enemies.”

No one seemed enthused by her accurate response. 

Her mom was now walking out too, from the palace. Her mom was hard to deal with. She always wanted to rope Nim into girl things like watching movies and talking about feelings.

How her mom had time to talk about feelings with each kid was amazing. Nim would have rather just fallen aside into the abyss of “oh yeah, that’s my kid too. Glad she’s fine.”

Instead, her mom was attentive and observant.

She didn’t understand how she had come from someone like her white-skinned dad, with his very rectangly shape; though the hair thing she got. His stood straight up, even though it was cut short, and looked soft and fluffy like Meldrey’s.

Even her mom’s body seemed boxy compared to Nim’s curvy shape. 

The rational explanation was that she had only ever looked at herself in trick mirrors.

In reality, she probably had the same.body as her mom, before her mom had a thousand babies with hers.

Soren’s hand made a series of stop-being-lost-in-your-head-circles on her back.

“What?” she asked.

“Enemies?” her dad echoed.

“Yeah. This is Jay.” 

“Is he an enemy?” her mom asked.

It must have been a joke.

“No, he wants to meet our enemies,” she replied, to continue the joke.

She liked Jay. She wasn’t amazing at judging people like Konrad, but he just felt like someone worth trusting.

Plus, no one would.make up a brother named Oscar. That was a terrible fake-brother name.

Plus, she wasn’t a complete idiot and the Rhoganoi were home long before they saved Caden’s life.

“Do you want to hold Caden or Tsura?” she asked.

Her mom moved closer, and Nim handed her Tsura.

“This is Tsura,” she explained. “That’s Caden and this monkey is our hairy-tot-ball Meldrey.” She flipped Meldrey off her shoulders and cradled in a hammock of her arms in dramatic waves from side to side.

“You adopted him?” her mom asked.

Nope, we had a baby older than our twins after the twins because we’re really insane magic crazy. 

“Yeah,” Nim stated.

“They forced us to,” Soren joked. “It was that or death-by-hair.”

She knew him better, but she hoped he didn’t feel any resentment about the forced part. It was forced, but it was wanted. So wanted.

Her mom and dad doted on the balls of adorable while she looked around. She sent out a few messages for her twin, Terren, and got nothing some guarded responses from Raqqa, which meant he was probably on some adventure. 

Her uncle, Nell, was bringing out the baby dragons though. The absolute best part of being a dragon heir was having a dragon. It was second to not dying if Soren dropped her from the sky.

Not that Soren ever did, for two or three hundred feet…

Nell had three dragons. She collapsed onto the ground to love them all.

These were her babies’ dragons. Even Meldrey. She loved Rayka; a dragon for Meldrey was a choice not an heir thing. She sent a dozen thank yous as Rayla landed and walked over. Her own babies jumped at her feet and pranced around her until she settled on the lawn. Evanesce was there too, grabbing his dragon spawn by the tail and dropping them on top of Rayka so they could topple off.

Meldrey crawled over and started to rub his own dragon – the colors of an autumn leaf. Browns mixed in and reminded her of Her sister’s horse, Whisp.

Tsura’s dragon was red, and her stomach dropped imagining a fiery little teenager with her tendencies toward rebellious by curiosity. 

Caden’s was blue, like Rayka. 

Then there was a some milky blue one, small and hiding behind Rayka’s tail.

She glanced back, because there were only three when Nell had first come out of the barn. The fourth must have been hiding with Rayka. She looked over at Nell to see if he noticed it.

He was busy pretending she didn’t exist, so he probably did and wanted to talk in private about it.

Actually, she was practically yelling in her head about the surprise of it and there was no doubt he had heard her thinking.

He was probably listening right now. She needed to stop thinking about him listening to her thoughts, but she couldn’t because he had a tiny little grin and she knew beyond a doubt he was listening and she couldn’t get her mind to shut up.

So she looked to her parents, who were in baby-land still, “Where’s Terren?”

Her dad looked at her mom, because they apparently didn’t guess that she had already communicated with Raqqa. She didn’t even need to ask, she just needed to stop thinking about how loud she was thinking and the way Nell’s chest moved in a ripple of underneath-laughter.

“Terren,” her mom started to say, “is off on some adventure, like you just were. Though we don’t suspect kidnapping.”

“Oh, okay,” she replied, because what else was there to say. She already knew the exact same thing, and probably would have phrased it in the exact same way. 

“Where you kidnapped?” Konrad asked, his wings fluttering about in trepidation. 

He must have been having a bad day.

“We were surprised away,” Soren said. 

It was a good idea to hide the fact that it was a scary and legitimate kidnapping to begin with, because Konrad had a way of latching onto details like that.

“In a good way,” Soren added. “They had a way to save Caden.”

Konrad’s eyes widened at the place they wanted them to – the save part – and Nim relaxed. This would go well. The Rhoganoi were their friends. 

Konrad hardened again like a statue unawakening, “Are you willing to talk to us under truth serum? We won’t ask you anything not related to recent changes.”

Nim was pretty sure that meant ‘I’m not going to offend the king and queen by asking to put their daughter and son and law under truth serum because I don’t trust their responses are pure at the moment, so I’m going to drug the guest.’

She had to agree with the method, it was a smart move and it would result in happier parents. Still, way to not trust them. They were still harboring normal insanity levels.

“I promise,” Jay said, slowly so Konrad could hear in case he was one of those people that refused to hear what you were saying (sometimes he was), “I’m the most boring person ever.”

“Nevertheless,” Her mom and Konrad said.

Nim loved that word. 

“If you were boring,” her mom continued, “they wouldn’t be entertaining you.”

Truth.

“Do you distrust your instincts so much that you have to rely on truth serum?” he asked.

Konrad’s stoney demeanor was nothing, compared to the way the corners of his mouth sunk and his shoulders dropped and his hand graced his sword.

“We just stopped by for some magic and immortality,” Nim said, to highlight that this was not necessary and they would be off as soon as they granted Jay superpowers.

She got it, how that wasn’t a reasonable way to go about life – hey make him powerful without getting to know him – but it was also part of her optimism complex that made Soren the voice of reason in their relationship.

Airy, gorgeous, amazing-dad, lazy Soren with his bushy eyebrows and amazing eyelashes and his little patch of hair on his chin that she loved to feel when she kissed him.

“Alright,” Konrad said.

Alright, as in I’m doing this my way but I do listen.

He had pixie powers too.

“Magic and immortality are this way,” he stated.

Other places that were this way? The Dungeon.

“Really?” Nim said, as she rubbed the scales on each dragon and hugged hers before following the group, “That’s the dungeon.” She thought Jay ought to know, since Konrad was opposed to honesty and hospitality.

“Why don’t we just talk over brunch,” her mom suggested. “Are you hungry?”

See, that was classy. Food, secret truth serum Jay would definitely notice, more food.

“I am. Starving,” Soren stated. “Do you like Nim’s shirt?”

Her shirt was solid black with a row of corn that ran along the base of it. A crop top.

Her dad looked over at it and grinned, “it’s a little long.”

Nim laughed, because it was supposed to be long. That was the joke. Except, a crop top that was cropped would have also been very funny. Though, less comfortable.

“Jay, these are my parents – the king and queen.”

Jay offered his hand to them, “Hi. I’m Jay Laurens.”

Her parents shook his hand, so at least things weren’t going terribly.

“It’s nice to meet you, Jay,” her dad said. “What business do you have with our enemies?”

“I’m not sure,” Jay replied.

The group began walking, and things felt better. Jay was innocent, so lunch would be good.

Jay continued to retell his tale, “I’m looking for my brother, who was kidnapped a few years ago. A mutual friend said they might be able to help me find him.”

Soren lifted Meldrey onto her shoulders, “Actually what she said was that his brother was with our enemies, so if you have a nice succinct list of those that would be great.”

Meldrey played with her hair and she held his legs. She was excited to someday have the babies be big enough to hold like this, but at least they weren’t crying. They had found the perfect time of day to stop by, because the babies cried  a lot.

Maybe they liked her parents better than her. 

“In realm or out of realm?” Aadya sked. “What are their capabilities?”

“I think they take kids. That’s about all I know,” Soren explained. It would have made more sense if Jay had, but she loved that Soren was willing to speak up about things he just found out about.

“And they realm travel,” Nim added. The Rhoganoi wouldn’t send Jay with them if he was looking for a Babylon enemy. Jay also wouldn’t have found his way out of realm and it wouldn’t be their enemy if it was a Babylonian based group.

Though, that wasn’t true. There was still the potential that the group was from Babylon and they were just capable of realm travel or maybe Talise had enemies there. She and Niels were there often, for his band, and it was possible they had alerted some group of child-stealing crazy enemies.

“Are you sure it’s not us?” her dad said as he opened the palace doors.

She loved that about her parents, not the horrible jokes that made Jay tight, but the way her parents opened doors for people. Some royalty would be all high and mighty and make other people do it but they were just people to her. They were amazing people. She loved them. It was good to be home, she realized, even though she hadn’t seen Terren. She sent a message out to Raqqa to bring Terren home, even if it was a secret brief meeting behind a bush. She just wanted to see him.

“We know of one child stealing group, at this point. They don’t realm travel though,” her dad stated.

Secret enemies? Awesome. This was a puzzle worthy of her and Soren’s attention.

Part of her was worried about her kids and their safety, but she trusted Rhoda after she had saved Caden. It could be a trap, but she felt good about things and her babies were dragon heirs. Still, she would get some wards put on them by Zero and some spells to keep them safe. Adventure wasn’t an excuse to disregard caution.

Jay was more tense, though, “Are you sure?”

“Relatively,” her dad responded.

Jay looked a little defeated at that. She figured he was just tired of chasing dead ends and working on a puzzle that seemed unsolvable. They were there now, and she promised him silently she would see it through. 

“We can start there,” Nim said. Whoever those enemies were, looking into them would only be beneficial for her parents. They could make an enemies guide book as a present.

“Plus,” she added as they entered the dining hall, “We’re taking him to Sylem.”

“You should talk to Spence then,” her mom said, feeding into her desire to make sure they had some magic protection. It was so easy to get her mom to follow her down logic paths to get things she wanted, as long as those things were reasonable.

“Okay,” Nim said, as she took a squirmy Caden back. Soren pulled the monkey off her back and placed him in a chair next to them. She sat in a chair and Soren offered to get her food while she nursed him. She looked down at his face and then glanced at Meldrey who had wide eyes like he wasn’t sure if he was going to be discluded from eating or if he could ask. He was a little shy still, because he was still sorting out that they were keeping him, but she gave him a smile and ruffled his hair.

“In a minute,” she said. 

Content, he slipped under the table. She wasn’t sure how many of the other little kids were under there, but she was certain he would have a group of friends within minutes. Maybe she could even fit Tsura in before he was needy. 

Soren kissed her head as he set food down in front of her and a small plate for Meldrey, and lunch was underway. 

She still needed that nap, but she had Soren and her family and she felt a little bit more complete sitting in the dining hall with the tables of food and the endless expanse of seats for family.

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