Dead and Buryd

Chapter 7: Love and Loss

Braedon was sprawled on Georgianna’s lap asleep by the time his father returned home from work. Splattered with paint, Halden flopped straight onto the floor next to his sister and son. He rolled to the side, kissed Georgianna’s cheek in greeting, and immediately slumped onto his back again. Georgianna didn’t blame him.While she had spent a relatively relaxed afternoon with Braedon and her father, Halden had been working for the Adveni, probably ordered to work faster and harder every step of the way.

Georgianna carefully prised herself out from underneath Braedon, adjusting the boy to sleep on his father before she slipped out to the kitchen and ladled Halden a generous portion of stew. It was a little cold, her father having put out the fire beneath it an hour or so before, but Halden was grateful when Georgianna handed it to him and he took his first mouthful. As Georgianna curled up at her father’s side, Halden told them that he’d been working on one of the new buildings.

The older Lennox continued to whittle, refusing to tell them what he was making.

“Wood is a living thing, my little Gianna,” he used to tell her. “And like all living things, you can’t tell them what they should be. You can only help them find what suits them best.”

She had never really known what he had meant when she was a child, but it sounded very profound, so she’d never questioned him. Now, she thought she understood a little better. Just as she had decided for herself that she wanted to be a medic, and her parents had used their skills to help her along, Halden had decided that he wanted to work with horses. It had also been their parents’ acceptance of not forcing other living beings into what they might want that had stopped them from questioning the news that their eldest son would not join with a woman. Instead, at the age of nineteen, Halden Lennox had claimed that he was in love. Nobody had even known he had dated before.

His name was Nequiel. He was a nomad who had come to the Kahle to sell a foal. As Halden was working with the tribe’s horses, it had been Halden who had to look over the foal to see whether it was bred well enough to bring into the Kahle stock.

It had been Georgianna who first knew of Halden’s infatuation with the nomad, who had stuck around longer than had probably been considered necessary after the foal had been given the clearance to be bought. Halden told his younger sister while travelling south towards Nyvalau. Georgianna, admittedly, didn’t understand. She knew there were men who joined with other men, but at the age of thirteen, she wasn’t entirely sure why. Watching her brother with Nequiel, however, she quickly learned that it wasn’t about finding someone suitable to join with, someone you could live with. It was about joining with the person you couldn’t live without.

Watching Halden with Braedon now, Georgianna knew that this was why she hadn’t joined, why she couldn’t see herself joining any time soon, because she had not found that person she could not bear to be parted from. There was a sadness every time Halden looked at his son because, by blood, Braedon wasn’t actually his, and looked far more like his biological father. The boy’s mop of brown hair was blacker than Halden’s, the olive hue of his skin darker than her brother’s, and his eyes were the bright reddish brown that had been so distinctive in his father. The boy, almost five years old, was actually Nequiel’s son by blood. Nequiel had been asked to father a child when he officially joined the Kahle. The Adveni had wiped out a lot of the Kahle, and the elders wanted to ensure that their blood continued.

A woman named Heather, widowed by the war, begged the elders to let her be the one chosen. Her husband had always wanted children, and they’d simply never had the good fortune to conceive a child. It had been decided that, should the coupling be successful, the child would remain predominantly with their mother, but both Nequiel, and Halden, who by this time was joined with Nequiel for all under the sun and moon, would also be parents to the child.