Life After Death

Mikaela: tiny freaky wings

{Mikaela}

Raising seven boys was trouble enough to last me a lifetime. Part of me was glad, because not one of them would be forced into government or politics since I had no other family to shuffle that inheritance to. Out of seven, surely someone wanted to be a part of Parliament.

Gawain, my eldest, had no other interest besides his magic. He and Corryn were almost exclusively locked away, summoning or enchanting or performing experiments. I worried about him sometimes; he didn't have any other friends and rarely left his room.

Lionel and Parsifal were turning twelve at the end of the week, and that meant Parsifal would be staying with Juliet after school. Lionel wanted to get out more, but Quinn was here, so he didn't have to. I was a little bit relieved, because Lionel always struck me as the kind of boy who was going to run off in the night and be found in some cave on the other side of the continent, not encouraging thoughts.

Dagonet had some friends in Donlin, but he was also running experiments on his own. Eldreial said that my son loved to learn, and it didn't really matter what he was learning. They would go to see art, museums, mountains, and all sorts of interesting things. Trying to get Dagonet to talk about their outings, however, was impossible.

Dinadan stayed the weekends with us, which he liked because he got four days off rather than just two. It was almost impossible to tell his age, and my mother told me he was bigger than a lot of the kids in his grade.

The twins were identical, and without hesitating, I had named them Arthur and Lancelot, much to Juliet and Corryn's amusement. But they were identical, and constantly shape shifting so it didn't matter. As a joke, Parsifal had started calling them Arthalot. It didn't help that they referred to themselves in the plural, though I tried to pretend they were separate faeries.

When we had first started out, I had got it into my head that I should make a scrapbook or something, documenting my children's childhood. Now, I had all these facts about them and no pictures or anything. We were too busy to go anywhere often, the boys had school and Quinn had work. I had mainly worked from home to watch the twins or Dinadan when he was around, and even now that Arthur and Lancelot were at school, I liked working in the Torninc. It was quieter and I didn't have to rush to Vercyne every day.

"Mom!"

I rolled my eyes and set the dishes down on the counter. Ryon winked at me. Children always had inconvenient timing.

"What?" I yelled upstairs, trying to discern the direction of the plea of help.

"Come here!" the voice yelled.

I thought that was Lionel and Parsifal's part of the house, but I wasn't sure. I trudged upstairs and saw Parsifal grinning ear to ear, heading downstairs. I sighed. I couldn't stop my sons from fighting, but I wished they would stop dragging me into it.

"What did you do?" I asked.

He looked at me with innocent baby blue eyes. "I didn't do anything, Mom."

"Parsifal?" I glared at him.

He held a hand over his heart.

"If I touched Lionel may I drop down dead," he said solemnly. But he ruined the moment when his grin came back and he hurried down to the dining room before I could interrogate him.

"Mom!" Lionel called from his bedroom.

"Coming!" I yelled back. I opened the door and put my hands on my hips.

"What is so wrong that it couldn't wait for a couple minutes?" I asked.

He looked at me with a horrified expression and I noticed that his eyes were red and shining, as if he was just about to cry. That was very unlike him.