Fairytale?

Chapter 11- Expectations Died, After All

But if each shall have his day,
I shall swing and I shall sway
In the same old weary way
As before.
-

"Edmund!" Sanya yelled, running ahead to the front gate. "You're back!"

"Moonshine!" Edmund just had time to say, before his wife reached him and threw her arms around him. "Hi. I love you."

"I love you, too." She laughed, kissing him quickly. "Did you just get back?"

"Yes- sorry, I'm a bit late- we won yesterday's match, and Mr. Carmichael decided to take us to a pub."

Her arms still around him, she tilted her head, "Don't you have to be eighteen to go into a pub?"
A public house was not actually that public, if that was the case.

"A few of us are. And those who aren't- well, we look close to it." Edmund shrugged. Sixteen was only two years away from eighteen, and he'd been drinking since he was fifteen, in the Golden Age. Not much, of course- he didn't want to let himself be intoxicated and under anyone or anything's influence ever again. "I didn't drink, though, just had some fish and chips. How was your day and a half without me?"
She looked- was it just a trick of the light, or did she look rather peaky?
"Wait- here." He pulled his rugby jacket off, and handed it to her. "It's cold."

Her look to him was half-fond and half-disapproving, "You need it more than I do."

"Probably, but you look better in it." He waggled the jacket in front of her- and she accepted it with a small giggle, putting it on.
It was slightly big for her, since he was taller, and a bit snug around her torso, and she probably wouldn't be able to do it up all the way- but he couldn't help gazing at her wearing it.
He always felt a hidden sense of pride whenever she wore his rugby jackets. When she wore any of his clothes, actually.
"Beautiful."

She blushed.

"How was your day, then?"
He'd not failed to notice that she had not answered it immediately, when he had first asked. He knew she hated being sick, and letting people know she was sick, but if she was so, she best tell him.

"Great."
Her eyes went to the St. Finbar's emblem on the building- she hated the place so much, and even more so now, because she knew that the people inside it could easily reveal that her day and a half had not been 'great'.
She forced herself to smile, "I was dragged into the sanatorium."

She didn't want to tell him anything at all- but the whole rumour had already spread around the school like wildlife.

The 'Indian' girl having almost bled to death because of the flu!

It was better for him to hear what had happened- a falsified version of it- from her, instead of drivel from the gossip-mongers at school.

"What?" He looked concerned- he'd been right, she did look a little ill. "Why?"

"Um- er- moonblood. Really heavy. Dorm-mates panicked, thought it was a symptom of the flu." She shrugged. "I was just let out- well, actually, Matron wanted to shoo me out a couple of hours ago, but I did not want to have lunch with the others, so I pretended to be unconscious."

Edmund blinked and gave a low chuckle, "Never cease to astonish me, Moonshine. Are you feeling alright?"

Sanya was quiet for a long time, after those five words.
"I know what that is." She finally whispered. "I- my- my aunt- she had- she- she lost her baby-"
It was a true story. That was how she'd learnt what was a miscarriage was, years before she'd even been pregnant. Years before she'd been a mother, or a wife, or a Queen.
She'd been so sorry for her aunt. No one deserved that to happen to them. To lose a life being created in them- to lose, essentially, a child- it was awful.