#mariheart

Sofie turns and blinks a few times. It’s always a very funny experience, telling Sofie not to do things—she doesn’t seem to know how to react when it’s from Shadowheart. Chiding from Marigold’s sisters or Jaheira is either ignored or argued with, but Shadowheart appears to have a bit of goodwill stored up from her introduction to Sofie, back when she was black-haired and implicitly dangerous.

(She thinks she was very implicitly dangerous. Marigold says, laughingly, that she was adorable. Marigold, however, thinks Us is adorable, so Shadowheart takes this opinion with a grain of salt.)

“You’re going to overbalance,” says Shadowheart.

Sofie chews on her lip. She clearly doesn’t like the thought of giving in, but she also doesn’t seem exactly inclined to argue.

The expression on her face is so strikingly like her mother in that moment that Shadowheart feels an absurd, amused rush of love, and it’s a thousand different experiences with Marigold that inform what she says next. “We all know you’re perfectly capable of staying up on this roof by yourself if you like,” she assures Sofie, “but for my comfort, might you consider coming down? I’m still getting to know what makes you so different from all the other little elven girls who would fall off this roof.”

Sofie gives Shadowheart a small, sharp smile. “For your safety,” she says, and clambers carefully, deftly over to the window, graciously allowing Shadowheart to pick her up.

She’s very small. Only twelve, which means she can still fit on Shadowheart’s hip. If Shadowheart and Marigold spend the rest of their lives together, Sofie is going to spend the better part of a century being Shadowheart’s…is it too presumptuous to say “daughter,” this early? Marigold is so firmly rooted in this little girl’s heart. One of many things that Shadowheart and Sofie do seem to share.

Sofie is not complaining. This strikes Shadowheart abruptly and makes her feel…gods, too much. Sofie refuses to let anyone who isn’t a member of the family pick her up and carry her anywhere.

“Sofie?” she says, quietly, heart hammering.

Sofie presses her cheek into Shadowheart’s shoulder.

“I’d like to be your mother,” says Shadowheart. “If you’ll let me.”

Sofie says, “I have one o’si and one mumma, so mother is an open position.”

“Oh, gods, no, we’re not—please don’t call me mother,” says Shadowheart, a small chill running down her spine. “It’s not—” How to explain this to such a little girl? “No.”

Sofie considers this very seriously. She raises her head, staring at Shadowheart with an intensity that isn’t anything like Marigold, and says, “Did Mumma tell you about how my o’si died on the road?”

Shadowheart stares intensely back at Sofie. Something in her is blossoming. Painfully.

“I remember,” says Sofie, “because there was a lot of blood, and i’osi thought I was hurt, at first, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t fair, even. We didn’t even have anything that anyone would want. They just killed us because we were in the wrong place and it looked like we might have things, but we didn’t. My o’su had books. They tore them up and they laughed about it.”

She flattens her hand against Shadowheart’s shoulder. She says, “I’osi and Commander Jaheira said you had to kill your parents.”

“In front of you?” says Shadowheart, indignant more on Sofie’s behalf than her own.

Sofie gives her an are-you-stupid look. “No,” she says. “They just haven’t figured out my hiding place yet.”

“Which is?”

Sofie gives her an are-you-REALLY-stupid look. It occurs to Shadowheart that no daughter is ever inclined to give their mother an instruction manual. “Anyway,” she says, fingers tightening quietly around the beautiful fabric of the blouse that Marigold’s sister made, “I just wanted you to know that I know what it’s like. Seeing it. I didn’t do it, but sometimes it feels—I have bad dreams. Mumma sings to me.”

Shadowheart’s heart is too, too full.

“Does she sing to you?”

Marigold does have an extraordinarily sweet voice. Singing or speaking, it’s high and melodic like a bird, every octave higher or lower expressing something radically different. Shadowheart doesn’t have nightmares, exactly—her dreams are strange and fragmented, like swimming in darkness—but when she wakes up with her chest tight, Marigold is somehow always lying on her side, eyes half-open, reaching up to card her fingers through Shadowheart’s hair.

She’s always sort of wondered how Marigold learned to do that. Somehow this makes a lot of sense.

Shadowheart picks her favorite of Marigold’s songs. “The grass is just as green,” she sings, “the sky is just as blue—”

Sofie lets out this wobbly little laugh. She says, “So you are my mummy!” and it’s a good thing she hides her face in Shadowheart’s shoulder again, because the look on Shadowheart’s when those words hit home isn’t something she’s ready for anyone to see just yet.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

Marigold finds them a few hours later, still curled up together. Shadowheart isn’t someone inclined to put something so small and trusting down, and Sofie, uncharacteristically, hasn’t moved, so they’ve just settled in the window while Shadowheart sings. She’s gone through all of Marigold’s little lullabies twice by the time she realizes they have an audience.

Softly, Marigold says, “I didn’t realize I sang to you enough for you to remember all of those so well.”

“I pay attention,” says Shadowheart. “Unlike some people.”

Sofie raises her head. She doesn’t launch into her usual tirade of mumma-look-at-me chatter, just stares up at Marigold, eyes a little glassy, and says, “I have two mums.”

“Mm.” Marigold leans down, tugging gently on Sofie’s braid.

“You can’t be jealous of mummy. You have to share.”

Shadowheart has to press her face into Sofie’s hair to hide a laugh. Marigold says, “Sofie, I’m not—”

“Well, I would be,” says Sofie, “because I am a very special little girl, and you’ve been my only mumma for a very long time, but you have to be able to share.”

This sounds suspiciously and almost exactly like a conversation that Shadowheart overheard between Jaheira and Sofie a few days ago, with a few words artfully altered for Sofie’s own purposes. She decides not to comment on this, if only because the expression on Marigold’s face is fucking hilarious. “Yes, Marigold,” she agrees sweetly. “It’s very important that you not be jealous of—”

Marigold kisses her in what is a transparent and slightly irritated attempt to shut her up, then kisses the top of Sofie’s head. “I am surrounded by horrible people,” she says.