Work Text:
“Here,” Rhiannon says. “Our daughter.”
She’s soaked to the skin in sweat, her hair tangled in greasy loops, and she feels a little like she’s been run over by a gazelle. The baby is swaddled in a tatty, yellowed blanket Salomea found at the back of her cupboard. Most new mothers don’t birth their children in cramped, dirty hovels to keep them safe. But as Rhiannon holds her out for her husband to take, she has never felt happier.
Cenwulf gently lifts the child into his arms. His eyes are already damp. He’ll be weeping before long, the daft sod, Rhiannon thinks with deep affection.
“A daughter. A daughter!” he exclaims. “She’s as beautiful as her mother.”
Rhiannon laughs. “I don’t feel particularly beautiful right now.”
“Nonsense. You could never be anything but.”
The newborn is small and wrinkled. Her tiny eyes are worringly gummy. They were able to fend off malnutrition just long enough to avoid severe complications. Thank Rhalgr, and thank the rest of their village- if not for the extra loaves of bread slipped into their baskets, or the carrots delivered straight to their door, Rhiannon doesn’t know if the girl would have survived. To say times have been tough is a minor understatement. Sometimes she could have wailed in frustration at the cruelty of it all. The young bodies buried just outside of the village. The letters from her cousins at the Temple of the Fist, slowed to a crawl, and then nothing. Yet there was always Salomea, making excuses to drop by with a piping hot bowl of her homemade imam bayildi, or Albrecht, carving tiny wooden toys for the child to play with. The village sent well-wishes and gifts, so many that they’ve run out of room in the nursery. She grew more comfortable knowing there were those who would care for her baby should anything terrible happen, but did not truly relax until she heard its first, faltering cries.
The baby gurgles. She’s half-squinting at Cenwulf, clearly not quite used to being out and alive yet. Rhiannon’s heart could burst from love.
“I’ll get a sponge,” Salomea says, getting up from her spot beside Rhiannon’s bed. She moves to the doorway, ducking her head under the arch. “Give you two some time to meet her properly.”
“I can’t believe it,” Cenwulf says. His back is sloped to cram himself into the space, but he has not complained once. “Oh, you are a blessing. Hello, darling. Welcome to Gyr Abania!”
“We should have asked Salomea to bring back a cloth to dry your tears,” Rhiannon teases.
He laughs, one of those big, booming, warm laughs that she fell in love with when they were young. “I shall cry all night! A simple cloth won’t do. A basin, perhaps. We can water the garden with them.”
The baby blinks back at him, eternally perplexed.
“What of her name?” Cenwulf asks.
“There’ll be time for that later,” says Rhiannon. “I don’t know about you, but I need a bloody rest. It’s not like she’s going anywhere.”
She hopes. She prays.
“But,” she adds, a little reluctantly.
“But?”
“I did like Clairmond.” She sinks back into her makeshift bed. “She looks like a Clairmond.”
“My suggestion!” Cenwulf beams. “What do you think, little one? Perhaps your friends will call you Clair.”
“Perhaps not,” Rhiannon smiles. “It’s hardly a name that needs shortening.”
One day, perhaps, in the near future, when their work is done and Theodoric is rotting on a pike somewhere, their daughter will play in the streets with other children her age. Perhaps they’ll shout that nickname, perhaps they’ll come up with something else. She imagines a dusty stretch of land, just wide enough for ball games. Or perhaps the girl will sit with her in her workshop, eager to help her work. Rhiannon tries to imagine what she’ll look like, but the image is just out of reach, like an afterimage from staring too hard at the sun.
“Let me hold her,” she says. Cenwulf obliges.
Her daughter’s hand wavers. She does not land on anything in particular. It’ll be some time before she can take things in her tiny grasp. Right now, she’s too little and new to be aware of much. It must be exhausting, to be suddenly bombarded on all fronts with sights, smells, sound, and strange, large creatures talking at you. She is tiny, a precious thing to be protected and nourished. There are months and years ahead of waiting and teaching, and her parents will watch her for all of it. Whoever her baby turns out to be, Rhiannon just hopes she’ll be happy.
“Clairmond,” she says. “Yes. I like that for you.”