Well Close My Eyes
by EstiRose
After everything had settled down a little and rebuilding was underway, Maria took the opportunity to return to Mysidia. As a mage herself, she held a fascination with magic and hoped maybe that she could learn more from the mages there. Maybe something that would help rebuild the rest of the world, too. Plus, it was a vacation, urged by everyone in order that she didn’t stress the baby.
She hired out a room – she’d be there a few weeks, just enough to maybe learn about better reconstruction through magic. After all, magic had nearly destroyed the world, why shouldn’t it help fix it?
“Lady Maria?” the innkeeper asked as she returned to the inn’s front room. “There’s people to see you.”
She indicated a couple, maybe in their fifties or sixties, with greying hair. They were dressed as mages – both in white, which usually meant healers like Minwu. For a moment, she was confused – she could cast a decent healing spell, but her specialty was damage-dealing spells, not healing.
Maybe they’d heard of the reconstruction and wanted to help.
The woman bowed a little, the man also. “I hear that you’re Maria.” No title, but that was okay. Maria wanted to be just another mage for a while. “Minwu wrote to us about you.”
Maria blinked. She knew that he’d gone to Mysidia, but not that he’d written to someone about her. She hoped that they were offering some late assistance – she didn’t know if she could talk to anyone about Minwu yet.
“We are his parents, Aldin and I,” the woman said. “My name is Nerisa. He wanted us to get to know you, but we were not in the town at the time you visited….”
“Oh,” Maria said finally. “I’m honored he spoke of us.” There wasn’t much else she could say. It was nice of Minwu to talk about them, after all.
Nerisa smiled. “He more than spoke of you. He bound you and your team to him as family. Did he speak of it to you?”
Maria shook her head. “No,” she said. “I knew he came from here, but… he never spoke of marriage or family otherwise.”
The woman sighed. “He was probably afraid you’d reject him.”
It dawned upon Maria that Minwu would have asked her to marry him, had he lived. And she had to admit, her love for Firion hadn’t been obvious at the time. “I was in love with Firion. I loved Minwu too, but not above Firion.”
“It would not have been unseemly for him to marry both of you,” Nerisa said. “He said he was going to consummate the relationship….”
Marie found her cheeks reddening. “Um….”
This wasn’t a conversation that she had ever been intending to have with Minwu’s parents, ever.
“And it’s rather obvious that you’re expecting,” Nerisa added.
“I don’t know who the father is,” Maria said.
“Is the father in the team?” Aldin asked. He seemed a little more morose than his wife. Or at least quieter.
“…Yes.”
“That’s all that matters, then.” Aldin shook his head.
“MInwu told us that the three of you were his family, and that he was going to ask you when he had a chance,” Nerisa said. “I believe that he knew his fate.”
“Um, yes.” She was one of the most powerful mages in the world. She had saved the world. Why was she tongue-tied with Minwu’s folks?
“What my wife is trying to say,” Aldin told Maria, “Is that we intend to accompany you back to Fynn. We want to talk about making it official.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Nerisa said. “We will always welcome the three of you as family even if no formal vow ever happened.”
“Um.” Guy hadn’t been there when the three of them had ended up in bed. But she wasn’t going to point that out to Minwu’s parents. “Thank you.”
If Minwu’s family considered her family, considered her team to be family, then she couldn’t argue. It would be nice to have a family again. A family for the baby. Grandparents.
Aldin and Nerisa smiled.