5th Floor Common Room, Saturday Morning

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was a zombie this morning.

No, really. After staying out far too late in Baltimore last night, she'd come home with the sun well on its way to being up and flopped down on her bed to catch a few blissful hours of sleep. But apparently something had taken her 'few' at face value and decided that a few was all she needed before being woken up by a phone call informing her that she had a kid.

With Ezra.

Oh god.

A weekend of childcare was not something she could deal as sleep deprived as she was, so after a trip downstairs to make sure she hadn't just dreamed that whole conversation, she'd come back up here to try to make herself functional. Which meant coffee. So much coffee. Ridiculous amounts of coffee to be consumed as quickly as possible. And then also food, because she was starving and there were kids and they'd probably be starving and at least Fandom had had the decency to stock the fridge before inflicting small people on the island?

With a second pot of coffee brewing (she hadn't been kidding about needing her caffeine, okay?), Kathy set to work making a decent amount of breakfast for anyone who'd be interested. Omelettes with various kinds of filling, bacon, and toast would make for a decent breakfast for kids, right? And some hoddeok for dessert because she needed some delicious comfort food that reminded her of home right now.

Home, where she didn't have children.

[Open to kids and students!]

Comments

[not_every_mage]

"Not that little," Anders protested with a laugh. (His 30-year-old self might disagree.) "Anyhow, this might sound a little funny, but this is then. Your mother is 17 and I'm 16. So we get to meet you early."

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

And thirty-year-old Kathy would just laugh and laugh and possibly cry.

Carys looked up at him with wide-eyed wonder. "So you're kids?" she asked. "...Does that mean I still gotta listen?"

Important potential loop-hole here!

[not_every_mage]

"It depends," Anders said, trying to work out what his own mother would have said and getting stuck on how this kind of thing wouldn't happen to her. "Do you think your mom and dad would want you to listen to us?"

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

"Not if you told me to do something bad or dangerous?" Carys said hopefully. "Like how I don't always have to listen to Auntie Isabela or Auntie Merrill or even Auntie Marian sometimes."

But she always had to listen to Aunt Aveline and Bodahn. And usually Uncle Varric. And Mommy and Daddy argued about her listening to Uncle Fenris.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Well, that's true," Kathy said. "And if we ask you to do something dangerous or bad, then you can ask us why we want you to do that and explain why you think it's unsafe. But otherwise, I think that it's good for you to listen, so we can take care of you until it's time for you to go back home."

[not_every_mage]

Anders, meanwhile, was filing away the names for later reference. Maybe he'd be able to casually bring them up with Cassandra sometime ...

No, that was a terrible idea. He smiled instead.

"Kath- you're mother's right," he said, nodding vigorously. (It was strange to call Kathy anybody's mother.) "All we really want is for you to stay safe while you're here. But we don't know everything quite yet. We might tell you to do something silly."

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, Anders, it was weird to hear her get called that, too.

"Like what kinda things?" Carys asked, delighted by the idea of her parents telling her to do silly things. "Like stand on my head or sing a song?"

[not_every_mage]

"Like stand on your head and sing a song," Anders said seriously. "But of course that'd be too silly for you."

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

"No sir no sir!" Carys said, hastily doing a headstand. "I can do it! I can do it, Daddy, see?"

And then she started singing one of her favorite songs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWGO9CwouN0), the one about a butterfly.

Kathy was going to go out on a limb and guess she'd been the one to teach Carys that song, yes.

[not_every_mage]

Anders laughed and applauded and, in an aside to Kathy, added, "I have no idea what she's singing, but if we run short on money we could be traveling minstrels."

[spin_kick_snap]

"It's a very complex song," Kathy assured him, trying very hard to keep a straight face. "Filled with complicated metaphors about life and sophisticated imagery."

Yeah, that attempt didn't last long. "Hey butterfly, Hey butterfly / come fly over here / yellow butterfly white butterfly / Dance while you come / in the spring wind the flower petals as well / smiling, smiling while laughing / the sparrows also chirp chirp chirp / singing as they dance."

[not_every_mage]

"I'm going to need to think about that one for a while," Anders said, after a snicker. "Just to make sure I understand the true meaning."

Idly, he added, "I wonder if I learn Korean in her world. I'd want to at least try."

[spin_kick_snap]

"If only there were some way we could know," Kathy teased, beckoning Carys over. "Hey sweetie. Does your daddy talk to you in Korean? Or is it just between you and your mommy?"

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

Carys turned an enthusiastic smile onto Anders. "Well, Daddy...you try! Even though it makes Mommy laugh sometimes."

Much like Kathy was snickering now. Out of the mouths of babes...

"You know how to say I love you best, cause it's your very favorite! That's what you said!"

[not_every_mage]

And Anders' heart melted at that just a little.

"Tell me how to say it now?" Anders requested. "I'll probably get it wrong at first, but you can be patient."

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

"Sarang-hae (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flQ1jN__MIk&t=0m15s)!" Carys announced proudly. "That's how you say it to me and Mommy. But I say sarang-haeyo cause you're my Daddy and a grown up!"

[Link leads to youtube]

[not_every_mage]

"Sarong-hay," Anders repeated carefully, vowels only a little off. He wished he remembered the Anders for it; all he retained of his parents' native tongue were rude words, commands and a fragment of the Chant.

(He wondered if Carys was being raised Andrastian. He wondered if Leo was. He suspected it had been the topic of lively debate in both cases.)

He smiled at the girl to chase away those thoughts. "That is a nice thing to know how to say."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy would have serious reservations raising her child in a religion that condemned her and her father for things beyond their control, just saying. You know who had a great religion? The Dalish.

"Sarang-hae," Kathy corrected gently, stressing the right vowels. "But pretty close."

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

"It's our special language," Carys confided. "We're the only three people inna whole world that know it. But Mommy's learning Tevinter, too, cause she says that she oughta know more than just how to swear in it, thanks to Uncle Fenris. An' Auntie Isabela says she'd love to teach Mommy about her tongue, too!"

...She totally meant Rivaini. Sure.

[not_every_mage]

Oh, sure. The Dalish. Aside from the fact neither Anders nor Kathy was a bloody elf, their gods weren't even real.

(As we said, 'lively debate.')

"Auntie Isabela sounds ... interesting," Anders said, because he knew a double entendre when he heard one. "Wait, we know someone from Tevinter? How did that happen?"

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

"He's a 'scaped slave," Carys explained. "He doesn't like you, cause you're a mage, but he likes me and Mommy. But everybody likes Mommy. Mr. Zevran says that if he was allowed back in Antiva, he'd steal Mommy away and turn her into the best crow Thedas ever saw! But that's silly! People can't become animals!"

Kathy, meanwhile, was giving Anders some serious 'WTF' eyebrows. His world also had slavery? And they were raising Carys there?

They were going to have to have a serious talk about this future that was almost certainly not going to happen.

[not_every_mage]

"They can't -- usually -- but why are we friendly with someone who doesn't like me because I'm a mage?" Anders wondered aloud. "I have better things to do with my time. Like pulling my beard out hair by hair with rusty tweezers."

He'd missed the cause of Kathy's 'WTF' eyebrows. It wasn't that he supported the slavery in Tevinter, but the Imperium was so different from the rest of Thedas that he scarcely gave it much thought.

[spin-kick-mage.livejournal.com]

"Cause he's friends with Auntie Marian and we all do what she says," Carys said solemnly. "Cause she's the Champion. And besides, you like beating him at Wicked Grace in the Hanged Man. It makes you happy when he has to give you money, even though sometimes it's still covered in spider guts and Mommy yells at you about how it smells when you get home."

She pondered that. "You know, Mommy, you never are mad about it when you win."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm sure I wash the spider-guts off before we get back to the house," Kathy assured Carys, a sentence which might top the weirdest ones she'd ever said. "...But can we get back to the bit where Daddy is more concerned about how much he's disliked by someone than the bit where that someone is an escaped slave?"

[not_every_mage]

"Well, the slavery's only in Tevinter," Anders shrugged, still not quite grasping Kathy's concern. "It's been outlawed in the rest of Thedas for nearly a thousand years, since Andrase brought down the Imperium. I'm not a fan of it either, but it doesn't give whoever this Fen- person is the right to be an anti-mage bigot. It's not as though she said he doesn't like me because I'm better at cards than he is."

He wanted to hear more about the part where he was hanging around with a Champion.