Accidentally On Purpose

"Explain this to me again," Thayet said, and picked up a swathe of fabric to run her fingers along the monstrous stitches and the gaping, heavy weave. "And... and try to make it sound believable, for pity's sake. This happened... how?"

Numair looked sidelong at the woman. He wasn't fooled for a moment by her placid expression; the odd note in her voice told him that she was fighting back laughter. He flushed and kicked at mores of the fabric with a scuffed boot.

"It was an accident." He muttered, and then more strongly: "And really, it was Daine's fault."

Thayet did laugh at that, shoving a swathe from a chair so she could sit down. It didn't surprise her that the chair was covered in books under all the cotton, but she made a show of moving them to the table before sitting down.

"Daine's fault." She repeated, and raised an eyebrow. "You're blaming this magical accident on your ungifted, very pregnant, and noticably absent wife. And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"It's indirectly Daine's fault," he amended, and folded his arms. "But still..."

"Still, she isn't here." Thayet smiled encouragingly at him. "Perhaps she went on a training exercise or for a hike through the forest after she used your magic."

"Perhaps." Numair shrugged, "But it's more likely she's complaining about me to Cloud."

"Ah! Some truth at last! And that's the first thing you've said that I believe. You had a fight?"

The man relented and spread his hands in surrender. "Well, you know how Daine is right now. She can't get comfortable or sleep properly, and it's made her... in her words, Thayet: she's fair fractious. The smallest things set her off."

"Ah, so the fight was her fault, too!" The queen chipped in brightly. "Really, Numair, you're not selling this story. I thought you used to be a player!"

"I've had no sleep either. That's why..." The man's voice trailed off, and he gestured to the chaos lying to his right with an embarrassed hand. Thayet's amused expression faded, and she nodded.

This was why she was here, and she was here as the queen - not as the mage's friend. She raised herself to his feet and looked at where he was pointing.

She knew some of it. It was, as the man from the apartments below had shouted furiously, a hole. Splintered floorboards jutted up at sharp angles between more heaps of the blue fabric, and the sad remains of a smothered rug hung pathetically down the gap. Scraps of wood had fallen to the room below, and the remains of the nobleman's lunch was impaled neatly on the unfortunately inedible kind of stake.

The rest of the floor, Thayet had been assured, was not going to collapse. That had nothing to do with the fabric, of course. When the weight of it had made the floor shriek and warp Numair had panicked and cast a flood of his gift into the ground beneath his feet. It had been too late to save the damaged part. The crashing sound of falling timber had brought guards and maids and pages running. But the rest of the floor was sturdy underfoot. No - not under foot. Under fabric. Numair had warped the floorboards into the one material he knew he could trust to hold strong, and it gleamed beneath the blue cotton.

The man in the apartment below could probably see the enormous stitches of the cotton too, and the occassional embroidered flower. The floor had turned into thick, greenish glass.

"Thinking about it, it probably was due to the lack of sleep." Numair mused behind her. Thayet shook her head in open disbelief.

"You know the rules about casting strong spells in the living quarters," She scolded him. Numair scratched his nose awkwardly.

"It didn't seem like such a strong..." He nudged at the fabric with his toe and jumped when it wriggled away from him. "I wasn't trying to make it... gods, it's still growing! Do you think the damn stuff is sentient?"

"For your sake, I hope not." The woman's lips curved irresistably. "Unless you have a few baby names going spare."

The man groaned loudly and threw himself down onto a pile of fabric. Something clinked under it, and he winced and dug out a few pieces of crockery. "I wish I had done this in the magic workshops. At least then I wouldn't be digging around for everything I own. I can't even find my spell notes."

"Just go downstairs and look up." Thayet managed, and dissolved into helpless giggles. It was a long time before she could catch her breath, and then she caught sight of a giant button slowly inching along one wall, dragging stitches like a trail of pitiful ducklings, and laughed even harder.

"Daine woke up early this morning." Numair said when she had quietened. He watched the fabric with a warning look in his eye, but it seemed to have slowed down. He relaxed a little and continued his explanation. "She's never been too worried about her looks - well, you know that. If you think it was difficult getting her to those dress fittings for Carthak, you should try talking to her before court! She always tells me off: animals don't care if it's lace or linen, they'll still mess it up the same. Usually I get around her by saying that even if the animals don't care, I do. Then I get told off." his voice took on a gentle mocking tone as he imitated the woman's mischevous words: "Oh, I didn't realise I was being an embarrassment!"

"She knows what you mean," Thayet smiled gently and then scratched at her wrist, where a scrap of cloth had been tickling her. "What does this have to do with you destroying my castle?"

Numair winced, and tried to explain...

... Daine woke up earlier and earlier each morning, and had gotten used to slipping out of bed silently and keeping herself busy until Kitten or the dawn chorus distracted her. Numair was equally accustomed to waking up alone, although he disliked it. He was just as used to dragging his feet into the main room and finding his best friend fast asleep at the table, her head resting on a book or a pile of tack. He had even gotten into the habit of bringing the blanket out of the bedroom to wrap around her shoulders, and the animals were used to being silently chased away by tiny stinging sparks of his gift. That morning, though, he had carried the blanket into the main room to find that Daine was wide awake, looking in the mirror and frowning at her reflection.

"It's like the metal is all warped, or something." she commented after wishing him good morning. "I 'spose if I looked in a spoon I'd be a normal shape again."

"Depends which side of the spoon it is." Her husband yawned. "If it was convex you'd look like you were carrying twins."

Daine pulled a face at him and then tugged her shirt up, looking woefully at her distended stomach and the way it filled the rectangle of glass. "This could be twins. I'm bigger than a house."

"Baird said it wasn't." Numair said. He walked over and gently smoothed her shirt back down, then wrapped his arms around her and met her eyes in the mirror. She looked back, smiling when he kissed her ear, but the expression faded quite quickly. "Daine, what's wrong?"

"I'm... I'm tired. Not like I need sleep," she added quickly when he started to answer. He closed his mouth, still watching her expression in the mirror, and she sighed and brushed her knuckles along his wrist. "It probably sounds fair terrible, but honestly... I'm tired of being pregnant."

"There's just a few more weeks," Numair stroked her hair gently, and she made a bitter noise.

"A few more weeks of… of feeling grouchy and hungry and bloated and hot and aching and having sore feet and..." She gestured at the mirror, "...and stretch marks and no sleep, and looking like I'm stuck-shifted between a human and a hippo..."

What could he say to that? Numair found himself struggling for words, because (as he tried to explain to Thayet) it was so unlike Daine to talk about her looks, and even stranger for her to raise the subject, that he wasn't at all sure what she needed to hear. He settled for telling the truth.

"You know I think you're beautiful." He murmured, and she shrugged."Honestly, magelet, you look like you're pregnant, not like some... anthropromorphic creature. You don't have the ears to pass as a hippo hybrid, for a start."

That startled a laugh from her, and he felt some of the tension ebb from her shoulders. "I might feel better if my clothes fit," she admitted. "I've been wearing your shirts for nearly a month, now."

"When I offered to buy you something you said no," he reminded her, and the woman clicked her tongue against her teeth.

"It seems like a waste of money when it'll be over soon."

In some ways, Numair thought, Daine had never left her childhood behind. It came out in the strangest ways - one of which was this obstinate refusal to spend money when it wasn't absolutely necessary. He sometimes saw her looking worriedly at the nice things he had collected in his tower over the years, or the clothes they wore to court. It didn't seem to register with her that her friends were nobles of the realm, and that they didn't feel guilty dressing well. There had to be a small voice lurking in her thoughts: if you waste money, how will we survive the lean months?

Once when she was about fifteen she had worn her work clothes into rags before replacing them. Numair, torn between amusement and concern, had finally grown irritated and pointed out that they could spend every copper they earned for a year and they would still have enough food and fuel stored in the basement to survive the longest winter imaginable. Daine nodded slowly, and then asked in a serious voice: but what about the winter after that?

This was the same conversation, and they both knew by now that the other one's mind would never be changed.

"I'd still like to buy you something, though." Numair rested his chin against her head, looking thoughtfully at the reflected image of his shirt on a girl who was much too small and wide to wear it. "It'll make you feel more comfortable, love, and you could wear it again."

"Again?" She looked up sharply. "Are you already so set on planning the next one?"

"You're the one who's so practical." He shrugged and grinned, trying to pass it off as a joke. "It's not such bad economy if you get pregnant again."

"I'm not going through all this again to earn a dress." She almost laughed, and then her mood changed and she added in a fiercer tone: "I'm not going through this again, full stop. I hate it."

..."Oh dear." Thayet muttered, and then: "So that's how your fight started, is it?"

"Started?" The man hid a laugh. "We haven't stopped fighting in weeks. I told you, we're both tired, and she's got a good excuse and I've got a short fuse, and sometimes we stop shouting for long enough to apologise to each other."

"That sounds familiar." Thayet remembered her own confinements with a shake of her head. "But you should know better than to talk about putting her through this again, even if you were just joking."

"I know." He looked shamefaced. "After she stormed out I felt terrible for it, and that'a when I decided..."