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Everything was ready for the Christmas celebration at the Nordion household. All of the servants had gathered together at their countryside home. The house was decorated with many different wreaths, wreaths with hollies and ivies and primrose flowers. The holiday puddings, made at the end of November a month ago, were ready. Lachesis and Finn were there, as were their children. Ares was home as well.
…Wait, where was Ares?
“I swear, that boy is too old for this.”
“Grahnye, please, you don’t need to exhaust yourself,” Eldigan responded.
“I thought he would be whipped into shape by college…” she was muttering.
Grahnye walked briskly through the house. Ares didn’t slink off to his bedroom after the events of the morning. It was extremely unlikely he would be in any of the other bedrooms, so next was the library. Of course, he wasn’t there, not that he was particularly bookish anyway. Afterward was the sitting room, where she was startled by her sister-in-law shushing her. Lachesis pointed towards her husband who was taking a rare nap.
“Quiet down, Grahnye! He’s trying to sleep.”
Seeing that Lachesis was about to try something mischievous, Grahnye moved along. She next visited the kitchen where the final preparations were being made for the evening meal. She thought that perhaps Ares would have taste tested the pudding, his favorite Christmas dish. Nobody there had seen Ares, in any case.
After that, Eldigan tried again (unsuccessfully) to stop Grahnye. But she merely ignored him. Eldigan just shook his head; he knew better than to try to get in front of her.
She checked the stables, thinking that perhaps Ares had sneaked out. (To where, she was unsure – it’s not as if he had ever shown any interest in young women at any of the debutante balls he attended.) Diarmuid and Nanna were just returning from a jaunt, and they said that they saw no sign of their cousin. Finally, Grahnye descended into the basement. There, she found Ares along with Yves; they were hard at work. He didn’t notice his mother at first, only stopping when she called out to him.
“Ares, what are you doing?”
“Nothing much, Mother. Just preparing for tomorrow,” he said.
She looked over the project that they were working on: many decorated boxes with piles of coins, warm scarves, and even food to be placed in them. Grahnye turned around when he heard her husband’s soft voice.
“Yves, you didn’t need to enlist my son to help you. I was going to be here to finish it.”
“He volunteered,” Yves responded.
There were certainly a good amount of things which Grahnye had regretted with Ares, least of all that at times it seemed that he lacked manners (she feared for what would happen when the time came for him to inherit the dukedom). But despite his brusque treatment of others (especially those who hated cats), Ares had a good heart residing within him. This was visible even in little things.
“Sit down, Mother.”
Grahnye saw that Ares had found a chair for her. She practically collapsed into the chair as the fatigue from running around the house had caught up to her. Then she watched as Eldigan joined Ares and Yves in finishing the preparations for Boxing Day. Grahnye, a bit tired and starting to nod off, merely folded her hands over her lap and smiled. Her little kitten (now a lion in his own right) had grown up to be so unlike his father, and yet, he was so like Eldigan in the things that mattered.