First Words

Calypso’s introduction into motherhood is sudden. It is the fifth of Afterglow, just as the green begins to push through the soil after weeks of rain when she is summoned to her brother’s hut in the early hours of the morning.

Mori was never one for pleasant words, and was even less pleasant to be around. She is hot faced and weary by the time of arrival, a rag pressed against her eyes as incessant wailing greets Calypso. Mori doesn’t even look at her.

She is weeks early, unexpected, unannounced.

She arrived smaller than her siblings. As time passed as she drew breath her skin began to darken to a familiar tan, a small bit of reddish brown fuzz atop her head.

“Hiraeth. Her name is Hiraeth,” Juro murmurs. Hiraeth was freshly swaddled in a clean blanket. Calypso’s heart fell to her knees as the midwife urged Mori to hold her, but screamed till her throat went raw for the child to leave. She’s grown quiet away from Mori’s yells to get her out of here, as if her newly born daughter had driven her mad.

Calypso holds her against her chest, skin to skin.

—

The Lying Eyes took good care of their children. But the lower hands of the pyramid could only keep eyes and hands on so many while juggling their daily duties of cleaning, cooking, and washing.

So newborns are kept swaddled tight. They slept like angels until they grew fussy at expected times of the day to be fed and changed. The blankets mimicry of arms around them kept them quiet, not nuisance or disturbance.

Hiraeth was a disturbance.

She wails to the point her face is bright red as if in pain. She wriths out of her blankets, rocking the bassinet in her unexplainable rage. Her cries echo across the compound, pulling even the most peaceful of babies out of their deep slumbers. She is inconsolable, loud, a disturbance.

Mori can hardly stand her, ears folded and a lip curled in disgust seeing the wailing face of her daughter covered in snot. She held her once, but watching the dangerous flick of her ear and the slowing of a sway grow to a halt, in fear Calypso approaches her.

“I’ll get her,” she says loud enough over her niece’s crying.

She whisks her away from the compound, through greenwood thickets as far away from the others, to a place only she can hear her. Calypso’s ears rang as she walked but all she could think was how much worse Hiraeth must feel.

No ounce of soothing would ease her sobs, no sway or song could quiet her. Calypso could only purse her lips and hold her tight, wipe the tears from her face and brush the hair in her eyes. She held her against her chest — skin to skin — a tender warmth.

Warm, Calypso felt warm.

It may have been hours before returning home, greeted with laughter and jests to have let her cry to tucker herself out, to have left her in an empty hut and shut the door. That had the arms of her hair raised up, looking down at her sleeping niece, eyelids red stained from the shedding of tears.

They may not have the patience for her but she does.

—

Words go around quickly in a small place like this.

As winter approaches quickly, Juro grows busier by the day with every new task handed to him and the fellow members of The Eclipse. Mori grows strict overseeing Abulia, he is coming of age after all.

That leaves little Hiraeth, only a few months old in the arms of Calypso.

They return from gathering roots from the east, basket and sickle in hands coated in the dull brown dirt. The elders bark at her, waving their walking sticks as she walks past. “She will only grow soft like that, quit babying her.”

“She’s a baby,” Calypso reminds them, Hiraeth had only begun to crawl, her horns budding causing terrible pain. “And if left alone she will cry.” The graying Firbolgs looked upward with an expression of contempt. “You’ve also grown soft Calypso,” they gaze upon the newly procured cloth holding a carefully cradled baby against her back like a comforting weight. Calypso pushes past them. They say a child belongs not to one parent or home after all, they say one cannot favor a child.

Sparring them no breath, she moves towards the heart of the compound. She finds Mori looking at her son with only kindness in her eyes, her brother talking quietly to Lacuna with an encouraging smile after her spar. They say one cannot favor a child.

Something curdles her stomach.

She doesn’t mind being a little soft.

—

The winters are harsh on Stormridge Mountains. The days are short and quick, causing much to be rushed at the expense of saving the oil of their lamps. The newborns and toddlers gather in the fire hut, constantly feeding the flame. It is the warmest place in the compound, letting only the old and youngins harbor there in the coldest of days.

Hiraeth refuses to let her go.

One cannot underestimate the grip of tiny fingers. Even around one finger can be proven a struggle as she hears a pop and discomfort of her knuckles.

At least, that’s what Calypso tells herself.

But Hiraeth is gleeful in her stead, despite her barren room and thin floor boards, it also had her. Mori and Juro don’t question where their youngest has gone, busying themselves with something or someone else.

Not that Calypso minds.

She had learned every part of her, from the small mole on her chest to the ticklish spot on her back. Calypso noticed how the fur of her ears have slowly grown white or how her tail curls like a young fiddlehead fern whilst she slept. The way her eyebrows furrow when she’s hungry and the quiet whines signaling imminent tears. Calypso knows her like she’s her own.

And yet when Hiraeth is ten months old she learns to make words. She mumbles nonsense on her pallet of soft hay and grass but Calypso speaks back to her as if in agreement or understanding with an amused smile on her face as the tiny Firbolg clutches her finger in her hand, as if trying to get her point across.

She babbles four letters in quick succession — M-A-M-A — then kicks her feet as if gesticulating towards her.

Never did Calypso think something could feel such warmth rise in her chest. What a joy it would be to be a mother, how lucky it must be to bear a child, how undeserving some can be. They don’t deserve this, don’t deserve her.

An overwhelming feeling over her as eyes filled with tears, quiet yet ever present making there mark on the pale fabric of her pallet. How her finger curled around the small hand of Hiraeth and pales in comparison. How cruel the world had been, giving her a niece and not a daughter. The resemblance uncanny yet not of her own. She is not a mother but only an aunt. Only an aunt.

Yet Hiraeth clings to Calypso like her own — how her first words were of her.