A little boy of around seven whacked a stick against a tree with bravado. He twisted to whack it with a backhanded strike, but the stick snapped. He vigorously waved his broken stick around until the end fell off. He walked up the slope of a fallen log with his arms out like an airplane. He slipped, fell, and found his pristine clothes splattered with mud.
“Oops.”
He wiped his muddy hands on his shirt as he wandered off. He smeared it across his fair forehead as he brushed up his blond hair. He splashed in a babbling brook, washing his hands and drenching himself further. His mother was not going to be thrilled with any of this.
High-pitched chittering like an insect crossed with a mechanical-like whistle pierced his ears and drew his attention to a darting creature the size of a thumb. It zigged and zagged through the air, dipping to touch the water, and flew off with a faint glow trailing behind.
“Pixie!”
He gave chase, coming nowhere near the pixie and soon losing it among the forest. The discomfort from his damp clothes and soggy shoes was starting to bother him anyway. He started the trudge back, slowing even more once he returned to the brook.
There was an odd, little animal trying to drink at the edge. The back and hidelegs were like a lion cub’s, complete with a tail that whipped around wildly as it knelt on its dark, scaly front legs that went up into a dark gray, downy body. There were numbs branching out of its shoulders that were just beginning to sprout feathers.
“Are you a gryphon?”
The little gryphon splashed about in a clumsy attempt to spin around. It opened its steel-colored beak and let loose a chirpy hiss.
A smile spread over his face.
“Ira! Ira, where’ve you gone?”
“That’s my mum,” Ira whispered to the gryphon. “I’ll come back with something to eat.”
---
Dinner was quiet. Ira was allowed to wear his pajama pants from last night in lieu of his wet, muddy pants. The reasoning being it was far too late in the day to change into something nice when dinner was just the three of them. His father had joined him in the pajama bottoms attire while his mother feigned disapproval in her sweats and a t-shirt too stained to ever see the light of day.
Despite the lightheartedness of preparing for dinner, choosing relaxed wear, deciding to eat in the kitchen instead of the formal dining room, dinner was quiet. There was a tense air between his parents that Ira didn’t know what to do with. It wasn’t a situation that happened enough for him to recall the last time a meal with just the three felt so uncomfortable.
Ira inspected the bit of steak on the end of his fork, narrowing his blue eyes as if trying to see through it.
“Wot has that cow done to offend you,” Clayborne asked cheerily.
“What do gryphons eat,” Ira asked.
Clayborne and Elsie shot a look to each other, silently deciding which of them would take what role in this. Elsie sighed and set her fork down.
“What brought on this sudden interest in gryphons, sweetie.” Elsie asked.
Ira looked at his plate but could feel his mother’s light hazel eyes on him. “I found one in the wood….”
“I reckoned our pride moved on,” Clayborne said with a frown. “Was it only the one?”
“Yes, a little one,” Ira said eagerly, turning to his father. “It was all fuzzy with nubs.”
Clayborne and Elsie exchanged alarmed looks. Clayborne set his fork down and stood quickly. Elsie hastily rose too.
“No, m’dear, I’ll return shortly,” Clayborne said. “Finish supper.” He cast his gaze to Ira, smiling warmly. “Where did you see it?”
“N-near the stream…,” Ira said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, sweetie,” Elsie said soothingly. “Take my coat along too. I fear a towel won’t be strong enough.”
The rest of his dinner was unenjoyable. Ira kept stealing looks at the door, or straining his ears for sounds of his father. He was scolded a few times for not paying attention to his meal, or to whatever smalltalk his mother was trying to make to get his mind off things.
He was tucked into his bed and his father still had not returned. He watched his mother tuck a stray strand of her long, toffee colored hair behind her ear as she recited from a thick, leather book. He was in no mood for a fairy story.
Ira sat up suddenly as a door downstairs slammed shut, like it was kicked closed. Elsie gently pushed him back down, snapped the book shut, and kissed his forehead.
“But–,” Ira started.
“Bed now, sweetie,” Elsie said firmly. “We’ll talk in the morning.” She smiled softly. “You were right to tell us about the little gryphon, Ira. We shall have a lesson on them tomorrow.” She hesitated on her way to the door. “Ira?”
“Yes, Mummy?”
“Are you terribly lonely?”
He inched up in an attempt to see his mother’s face better, but with the only light now coming from his nightlight it was impossible. She was turned halfway out the door, teetering on leaving.
He felt his insides squirm with embarrassment as her question lingered in the room. He shook his head but could not force the words out.
“Elsie,” Clayborne hissed. His steps were light in the hall. “Elsie!”
She vanished, the door clicked closed behind her. “Shush, I’m here. Did you find it?”
“Is he asleep?”
“Likely not, but he’s tucked in.”
“Downstairs then,” Clayborne said, dropping his voice.
Ira crept from his bed as the creaking in the hall receded away. He tensed as the door latch clicked. He eased open the door.
“--finally found her,” Clayborne’s voice drifted from downstairs. “Malnourished, but not dangerously so.”
“Such a relief,” Elsie’s voice came. “I feared getting his hopes up when he mentioned how young–she, was it?--how young she was. Tea?”
“Please; I’m starved.”
He tiptoed out to the landing as his parents moved towards the kitchen. He sank to his knees and squished his face in the bars of the bannister, straining his ears.
“My worry now is how long she’ll need to stay,” Clayborne said.
“That is a worry for when it comes,” Elsie said. “Ira will enjoy caring for her.”
“Ira?”
“Our son is lonely,” Elsie said with a bite in her voice. “Clayborne, look at me. He’s desperately lonely and has been, and we’ve ignored that too long. Remember your childhood?”
He couldn’t hear what his father said. He had a weird, mixed up feeling inside, like a cross between shame and relief. His mother clearly hadn't believed him when he tried saying he wasn’t lonely, but his father also appeared to have had a lonely childhood and he was loved and respected.
“Folant wrote,” Elsie said solemnly.
“You mentioned.”
“I won’t drop this, Clayborne! Not with our son–.”
“Don’t bring Ira into this,” Clayborne said. Then added, dropping his voice, “Ssh, we’ll wake him… He was not even born when we came to this… arrangement with Folant.”
“And he would have never been born without her help,” Elsie stated. There was a long pause. “I wished I could have given him a sibling; you another son or a daughter.”
There was another long pause, but this one had an oddly stifled choking sound. Ira turned his head to listen harder. His stomach sank when it clicked that the noise must’ve been his mother crying. She, or his father, was trying to stop it.
Ira stood and staggered, bumping hard into the rail. He froze as the sounds downstairs abruptly stopped, and awkwardly stumbled back to his room on his sleep-prinkling legs, diving into bed and yanking the sheet over his head.
Footsteps creaked on the landing outside his door. He shut his eyes.
“Fair play, but you forgot to shut your door,” Clayborne’s voice whispered from the hall. “Goodnight, Ira.”
---
Gryphons were dangerous according to the thick, old book Ira was trying to read. His eyes kept glazing over, and with it written at least a hundred years ago, he often had to pester his mother for help.
Elsie sat in an armchair by the cold fireplace. Her toffee colored hair was loosely tied off to the side, and her ivory, silken dressing gown had fallen off her shoulders as she stared unseeingly into the opposite wall. Ira spotted the edges of a rash peeking from the stretched-out collar of her oversized shirt as it too slipped from her shoulder.
“Mummy,” Ira questioned. “What’s that?”
Elsie startled, looked at him, his pointing, and readjusted her dressing gown to cover her neck and shoulders. She gave him a papery smile.
“Are you stuck on something, sweetie?”
Clayborne strode into the study before Ira could answer, or re-ask his original question. He was dressed in heavy leather pants and his coat had a metallic sheen when the light caught it just right. He promptly kissed Elsie on top of the head with a faint “morn, m’dear” and beamed down at Ira.
“I chopped the livers up,” he announced. “You want to take a crack at feeding her?”
“Clayborne,” Elsie warned, “it’s too soon. Let him observe longer.”
“I’d say three days is long enough,” Clayborne said. He smiled at her softly. “You’re fretting too much. Ira can handle this.” He winked at his son. “Can’t you?”
Ira looked between his parents; his mother’s tired worry and his father’s joyous excitement. He jumped to his feet, allowing his father’s excitement to spark his own that he’d kept smouldering ever since finding the gryphon.
“I’ll get my boots!”
He raced to the foyer to don a set of calf-high, thick leather boots. He could hear his parents murmuring at each other, but he was too busy squatting down to tie the laces to care about his mother worrying and his father reassuring. He propped up on his toes, waving his hand about to snag his coat from its hook. It was just a denim jacket, not as protective as his father’s coat, but his mother would surely appreciate his efforts and realize he was serious about helping care for the little gryphon.
He proudly, and calmly, walked back towards the office, slowing at the tense tones in his parents’ voices.
“--exhauted as of late,” Clayborne said. “More reason not to have Folant come, if you ask me.”
“They’re coming, Clayborne,” Elsie said firmly. “I’ve already bought everything for supper.”
“Looks like I really am spending some quality time with your dear brother then.”
Elsie gave an exasperated sigh from the other side of the wall. Ira could picture her pinching at her eyes. He picked that moment to re-enter the office.
“Ready,” he announced.
It was gross and enjoyable dropping chopped livers into the baby gryphon’s mouth. She started out wary, but was soon making a wheezing purring sound and soft chirps between clumps of food. Ira’s ecstatic face was reflected back to himself in her enormous yellow eyes.
“Her coat is quite mottled,” Ira commented. “Do you think she’ll have rosettes? I read some gryphons have them on the cat part of them.”
“Fair thought,” Clayborne murmured. His head was resting on the shed window, his blue eyes staring up at the house.
“Dad? Are you okay?” He quickly looked to the gryphon to avoid eye contact. “You and Mummy… seem odd.”
He didn’t want Clayborne to know how much he’d been eavesdropping lately. It would make his parents too careful and he’d never be able to overhear another thing, trivial or otherwise. He wanted to ask about Folant; who she was, what arrangements they had with her.
Clayborne was staring into his hands. His face was tense with concentration as if trying to see through them.
“You understand that we aren’t a normal family, right?”
“We’re not?” Ira dropped another bit of liver down the gryphon’s throat. “How so? Is this because Uncle Lachlan is a duke?”
Clayborne smiled in bemusement. “You’re feeding a gryphon right now.”
“Oh. Right.” Ira blushed. “What of it?”
Ira did not know life without creatures and magic; them being as common as snow in the winter and his mother scolding him whenever she found snacks hidden in his room.
Clayborne toyed with a button on his coat. “Speaking of your uncle, I plan on staying the night. Perhaps tomorrow as well.”
“Just you? Without me or Mummy?” Ira eyed him. “Don’t you have any friends that’ll take you in when you and Mummy are disagreeing?”
“Alas, no,” Clayborne said in false pain. He smirked. “Part of my upbringing, I’m afraid.” A sudden, horrified look of realization overcame his face to the point that Ira drew back when his father reached out to clap his shoulder. “You have been lonely, haven’t you?”
Ira half-shrugged, squishing the bit of liver in his fingers. There didn’t seem to be a right answer to this question his parents kept throwing at him. He wasn’t sure exactly what it meant to be lonely; he had never had anyone to play with or talk to or simply laze about with that was anywhere near his age to compare it to. If he had to put a word to the most nagging feeling he had though, lonely would be it.
“Ira, watch your–.”
“Ow!”
The end of his finger dripped scarlet on top of the gryphon’s downy head. She tossed and snapped her beak at the travesty of it.
“Lemme see it,” Clayborne said, sighing. “All there. No stitches. Your mother won’t be happy, mind, but this is part of learning. Come on, I’ll get you patched up at the house. I’ll finish her feeding.”
“Can I,” Ira asked timidly. He thrust his bleeding hand behind his back. “I’ll use my other hand. And be extra careful. Please, Dad?”
Clayborne’s eyes sparkled as he smirked and held in a laugh. “If your mother asks, I brought you up straight away.” He nodded to the half full bucket. “Go on, then.”
---
Clayborne had left for Uncle Lachlan’s as soon as lunch was finished. There were no words between him and Elsie on the subject, just tense pecks on the cheek and murmured goodbyes. Ira flattened his hair after his father ruffled it on his exit, watching him drive off before he was shooed upstairs for an early bath.
He wasn’t allowed outside for the afternoon. Elsie had set out his Sunday clothes and those were absolutely not allowed out on the grounds. He was sequestered to her study to continue his studies on gryphons. He suspected his bandaged finger played a part in that.
“I best get supper on,” Elsie said, glancing at the large, ticking clock against the wall.
“I’ll help.”
“Thank you, but no,” Elsie said, easing out of her chair. “I’d hate for you to stain your good clothes. Do what you wish, as long as you keep clean.”
There was not much for him to do in the study other than read, and his mother had been forcing that upon him lately. She forbade him–in so many words–to go out to see the gryphon again. He opted to follow her into the kitchen to watch her cook.
Elsie was seasoning a long tray of diced potatoes that sat out next to a large leg of lamb.
“Dad’s favorite,” Ira said, climbing onto one of the counter seats. Elsie gave him an impish smirk and started seasoning the lamb. “He could be having lamb tonight with Uncle Lachlan.”
“Your uncle couldn’t roast a lamb to save his life,” Elsie said.
“Are you two fighting,” Ira asked anxiously. “Is it… about me?”
His loneliness was at the center of all the arguments he’d overheard. His parents normally got on really well, and were the right mix of teasing and loving so that neither was strong enough to give him worry or make him gag. It was only recently, and always with mentions of his loneliness, that thing had grown tense.
“That makes it sound like you’re at fault, and you’re not,” Elsie said, sliding the lamb in the oven. “Your father and I disagree on how to help you, or if we even should.” She smiled affectionately. “You are not to blame, Ira. Arguments are normal. Don’t fret.” She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the countertop. “Do you feel a salad or some cooked sort of greenery?”
Elsie nearly dropped the tray of potatoes as the front bell clanged. She shot a wide-eyed look at the clock, and murmured something that suspiciously sounded like a string of curse words.
“They’re early,” Elsie said, setting down the potatoes and fumbling them about to re-even them out. “Come, sweetie, to the door.”
“Couldn’t I just answer it if you’re busy,” Ira asked.
Elsie hesitated. “No… I think it best we go together. Come along.”
He trailed his mother out to the foyer. She checked her face for smears of lamb blood and bared her teeth to guard against any greens stuck in them. There was a nervousness he wasn’t used to seeing coming from her. It reminded him almost of Christmas mornings.
“Smile,” Elsie whispered to him, wrenching open the heavy, wooden door.
A petite woman with long, black hair and gleaming silver eyes was revealed. She wore a coy smile, and her clothes looked expensive even to Ira’s young, inexperienced, boy eyes. There was something about how she stood, carried herself, that gave him a foreboding feeling. His skin prickled as his danger senses rose.
The woman’s eyes darted to him so quickly he could have imagined it before softening on Elsie. She made a quick curtsy with a bend of her knee.
“Elspeth.”
“Folant.” Elsie and Folant bumped cheeks. “It’s been ages! Oh, I’ve missed you.”
“And I you, my dear friend,” Folant said. Her eyes flashed beyond Elsie. “Clayborne…?”
“Not here,” Elsie said, her jaw set. Ira blinked, shocked, as she rolled her eyes.
“Just as well. We did have our arrangement.”
“Oh, do come in, Folant,” Elsie said, rushing aside. “My manners, I swear.” She yanked Ira out of the way and in front of her. “This is Ira.”
Folant looked at him with an odd fondness. His body was still yelling that he was in danger, so he shrunk against Elsie and fought the urge to bury his face.
Folant gave a deeper curtsy. “Your highness.” She looked up to Elsie. “He senses me.”
“Oh, of course; how stupid of me,” Elsie said, crouching down to look Ira in the face. She smiled reassuringly. “Folant is a witch, sweetie. She’ll feel a tad different than the mages you’ve encountered.” She brushed his blond hair with her long fingers. “She’s a friend.”
“Hello,” Ira said quietly. “Pleased to have met you.”
“Entirely mine, highness,” Folant said, her coy smirk softening to something more motherly. She flinched. “And this—blast, where did she get to?”
Elsie’s grip tightened on his shoulders as she tiptoed in place, peering out the door into the dark as Folant stepped out. He was starting to feel nauseous between his mother’s bizarre behavior and this Folant woman’s hair-raising pressure.
Ira stepped out from Elsie’s grip as she softly gasped in time with Folant re-entering the house with her hand firmly on a girl’s shoulder. She had the same long, black hair as Folant, but was a shade or two lighter in complexion, more like his own. Her eyes were a definitive amber. She couldn’t have been more than ten, and she had the same pressure as her mother. Perhaps even wilder.
“This is Enid.”
Elsie firmly pulled him into her side. She was trembling. “She is your sister.”
-----------------------------------
Originally, Ira was going to have an older brother (likely named Folant since it's considered masculin) but I kept liking the idea of an older sister more and more. This was partly to get down the names Folant and Enid so I don't lose them. I've always kept Enid in the back of my mind, so if I end up liking it too much it could be a middle name if I have another girl. But, for now, the name belongs to Ira's estranged, half-sister.
This is also a reminder that Elsie and Clayborne were Keepers, specifically stalkers. They live in a large-ish house in the country where a lot of critters reside or migrate through. Other than a pair of maids that come three times a week, they don't have servants unless it's for some type of event and they have fewer and fewer of those as they get older. I don't know if I'll get into what's up with Keepers (and the Order of Ferblanc) while writing Nellie's stuff or not. Maybe the Order. The gist of it is that Keepers have to undergo a sort of transformation thing in order to be protected against a lot of the creatures, and that transformation comes with some nasty side effects, the big one being reproducing. Folant being a witch (like Ava but x1000) was able to help out so Clayborne and Elsie could concieve Ira, but it took a trememndous toll on Elsie so they could only attempt it the one time. So, Elsie had a whole other thing going on separate from her dragoning.
The whole arrangement with Clayborne, Folant, and Elsie will definitely come in during Ira's story(s). I wasn't sure if I'd get to introduce Enid in Nellie's, orignally that was supposed to be the first time I introduced her to readers, but that's really far away if it happens at all. I want Ira and Penny only to pop up enough to get Nellie on her feet, not the run the show for her, so who knows how often they show up.
