The bedsit was cramped, to say the least.
But for now, it was certainly home. Wedged in between my little brother, Dominic, and older sister, Brienne. They, alone, made it all worth while in the little flat above the taxidermist's shop.
As the pregnant burden, I seemingly took priority as my brother took up refuge on the floor, laying beside the bed and rolling his eyes up at me. A face so picturesque that any venture made through Bree-town consisted usually of feminine attention and turned heads. With all good reason, he was handsome and strapping. Tall, well-built and the desire of many young lasses - yet to no avail. For he was a man, who preferred the company of other men.
The nights I would spend keeping his secret safe with me, sneaking him out of the house to meet with eligible young men. He was repaying the favour, by lending me the spare bed.
"Do you think he'll ever come back?" Dominic questioned, propped up on his elbow from the bedroll below.
"Who?" I replied, turning to a more comfortable position to peer down upon him. I knew exactly who he was referring. And he knew, that I knew.
"You know exactly who."
"I don't..." I sighed, a subtle shake of my head accompanied a hopeless shrug. "I sought him out at one point, but I found nothing. Not even a...--"
"--trace," Dominic agreed, followed by a bitter tut. "If he cared, he'd have shown by now."
"You just don't know him like I do, Dom." I had taken to fiddling with a lock of raven, a nervous habit developed from excessive worry and an intense lack of drink. "There's more than meets the eye."
"Like you had so graciously assured about your husband." He had moved to sit up properly and cross-legged, grey eyes lingering over those of mossy green. "Need I recall how I found you in those woods--"
"--You needn't not. I bear Dagramir's child, I shall not talk ill of it's father." A protective hand shielding a growing bump.
"Are you two alright in here?" Brienne's silhouette had appeared in the doorway. A curvy woman with darkened, shoulder length locks. It was clear that she honed an adequate bosom and hips for birth. But birth she would not, for my mother was yet to be aware that her eldest daughter had the inability to produce her own.
Met with a silence, she inched further into the room and lowered herself onto the end of the bed beside my feet, the mattress sinking inwardly.
"Ash..." she began, her tone softer than what I was normally used to.
"Don't." There was a surge of a numbing sensation, a twist in the pit of my stomach. Emotions were unable to settle, and thus the strongest of the lot surfaced in a single, rogue tear. I scooped it away with the side of my index finger whilst Brienne enacted what she almost always did- ignore my protests.
"This is not what you're meant for." Her words chimed in, tingling with truth. "Carrying bastard children. Out of us all, you are the one with a role to fill. A role to make the rest of us proud to even...grace your presence."
She smiled, as did I. Yet mine appeared much more watery.
"And with that new promotion," she continued gently. If not somewhat cautiously. "You shouldn't feel as if you need to throw it away." I stilled the hand that lingered inches from my face, pausing to watch her over poised, spindly fingers.
"I'm just suggesting," Brienne held her hands in surrender, likely in response to expression of distaste I was unable to control. "If you wanted to, after the babe was born."
"Brienne..."
"Ash, I can't...-you know that I can't I have my own." My sister's voice became small and cracked at first, but then broke entirely and her hands, once aloft, had fallen limp in her lap. "I would take it away from here and keep it safe. Raise it as if it were my own and write to you as often as I could."
"You would just...up and leave?"
"For your own good. This isn't the life you're supposed to lead. With Ava, the choice was entirely out of your hands. But now your future is brighter than mine and you shouldn't have to struggle with something that could easily haunt you, looking into that infant's face and seeing his reflecting back up at you."
A silence of growing due to the words I could not conjure. From the floor, Dominic did not speak either. Thus, as the eldest sibling usually did, Brienne salvaged some shred of light from the situation.
"'Tis not set in stone, sister. I just...--I would like you to consider."
Yet I glanced away to a simple patch of nothingness where thoughts were free to stir, noting the practised nature of her words. Evidently so, she had been planning this idea for some time.
And consider it, I must.
