#varali

🌸 They’re girlfriends 🌸

Solarine beamed. “Yes, absolutely! I’m rather hoping for two more, but I would settle for one. Not any time soon, either way, as I would like for Varali to be attending school or being tutored by the time the next one comes along. Old enough, at least, that I will not be dealing with any more toilet-training accidents from more than one young child at a time.” The beaming smile was marred by a slight shudder. Clearly, there was a story there. 

It was the first day of the Midsummer Fire Festival, which would mark the second year that Illapa and Solarine had been together. Their two-year anniversary would come later in the month, but a gift had already been made and left for the elder Priest. 

Solarine and Varali were already fast asleep by the time he arrived at their shared apartment that evening, but the distinct scents of Midsummer incense and gingerbread still filled the air. A plate of freshly baked gingerbread cookies greeted him on the dining room table, along with a second surprise. 

Next to a box of crayons - Varali's new favourite thing - were several papers marked in a toddler's distinctively crude and messy drawings. Atop the pile, clearly set apart from the others as being special, was a drawing of Illapa. Labeling the drawing was Solarine's handwriting, which had carefully been copied down in the first word Varali had spoken, a year earlier, and now the first whole word she had written. 

He knew she had been practicing her letters already, a rather precocious child in some respects, but now, the fruits of her practice stared up from next to a crude drawing of his own smiling face. 

“I haven’t had a real birthday celebration in so many years that I’ve largely forgotten the customs,” Solarine admitted, grinning to herself. “Varali is now old enough to enjoy cakes and songs, of course, and I’ve rather enjoyed showering her with such things for her own.”