Chapter 109 - Regrets

After Ieaun's rebirth, life began to settle into a steady routine in the household.  Elenie spent a lot of her spare time researching alchemy; she had found a number of partially legible recipes and was determined to find out what they were for and she spent hours poring over them to try and piece them together, comparing them to the recipes she already knew.

Of course, as well as testing out the recipes, and experimenting with the ones which were incomplete, she also spent time brewing up batches of elixirs she already knew which she could sell on.

She and her mother still hadn't talked about all the issues which lay between them, indeed they both continued to try and avoid each other as much as possible.

Dory's affinity for animals was one thing which remained unchanged about her, and so, while Elenie pored over musty ancient tomes, she would go out into the barn and play with the cats and Ffion.  Although she didn't feel ready to talk to her daughter, she did constantly think about what had happened and while they played she would talk, half to herself and half to them.

"How could I have been so blind?  Why did I not see him for what he was?  All those years growing up, why was I never suspicious that he was so insistent I never tell anyone about him?  Why did I never think that was a bad thing?"

As she voiced her regrets, her mind wandered;

"If only I had told someone about him, surely the fact he didn't want anyone to know meant he was vulnerable, if only I had said something maybe he could have been driven out before he killed Pete... We could have had a long happy life together if I'd only told someone..." 

Her mind jumping back to the present, she dropped the rope she had been playing with Ffion with and bent down to fuss her.  "Oh, Ffion, I loved Pete so much, how could I have spent all those years with his murderer and never even realised it?  That monster must have been behind all those things that went wrong before he finally succeeded in killing Pete... And I turned to him for support!  Why was I so blind?"

"I should have done something, said something to someone else.  The ******* could have been driven off and we could have moved away and had a new happy life together; Elenie would have known her father and been loved all her life not abused and mistreated, we could have had more children..."

Picking up the rope again, she went outside with Ffion and began playing with her again.

Upstairs, Elenie continued to brew elixirs, unaware of her mother's mental turmoil.  Getting the mixtures right and blending them in the right order took a great deal of concentration and she welcomed the respite from her own conflicted thoughts.

She wanted to forgive her mother, but every time she thought about it, the spectre of all those years when Dory had blindly watched Nicodur treat her like dirt would rise up and she would feel a tears sting her eyes.  Was it too much to think that her mother should have been able to see what was going on?  To be able to fight his evil spells when it was her own child being harmed?

Soon enough, it was time for Dory's birthday, in truth Elenie had been surprised to find that her mother hadn't aged during her captivity, but it seemed that time had passed differently in the realm where she had been imprisoned.  

She decided that even if she wasn't yet ready to forgive her mother properly, or indeed even talk to her about what had happened, she was going to at least pretend for now that they were a normal family celebrating a birthday and spent the day preparing a feast.

When it came to time for Dory's birthday, she was caught by surprise.  She had just walked in the front door when she felt the first signs...

As the birthday sparkles gathered around her, she looked down at herself in concern, what would old age bring for her?  Could she ever put things right with Elenie?

As she aged up, she felt stiffness begin to creak in her back and put her hand there, almost welcoming the pain as a punishment for all her wrongdoings and failures.

The three of them had a relatively pleasant meal, all of them deliberately keeping to small talk and avoiding any mention of the memories which were so painful to both Elenie and Dory.

As Elenie took the dishes into the kitchen to clean them, she suddenly found herself feeling sick.  Her stomach churned as she hurriedly put the dirty dishes down and rushed to the toilet in one of the outhouses.

As she crouched over the toilet, she wondered if she had cooked the pizza properly, or if maybe she was coming down with something...

To keep her mind from that, and from her thoughts about her mother, she spent the rest of the evening in the greenhouse, tending the plants and using her fae powers to make them grow faster.

That night, she woke up abruptly, feeling ill again.

Climbing out of bed, she covered her mouth with her hand and, moving quietly so as not to wake Ieaun, headed for the bathroom as quickly as possible.