The Weight of Legacy

If this ends up just being Matilda's party all over again, I'm going to hit something.

In her fancy dress that may or may not have been magical, Malwine pouted, remaining on the seat Hildegard had carried her up to before leaving without a word. Adelheid had been next to her—true to her sister, that had not remained the case for long. And Franziska was nowhere to be seen.

Malwine had to admit she didn't even like talking to the girl, but at least that would have been less desolate than being left on an—admittedly comfy—chair with literally no one around. At least I'm not that short anymore…

She was still far from able to reach the floor, but she was confident she could slide off the seat if it came to that, without any risk of suffering from an actual fall. She'd have had choice words ready about the dangers of just leaving a child like this had this not been about her and Adelheid—Malwine's perspective was probably a bit skewed there.

Still, her excitement had bubbled over by now. Sure, she was incredibly curious as to how a Grēdôcavan wedding was meant to play out. All she'd seen so far were those entries for her grandfather's marriages, and those from Bernie's family. Informational and interesting, certainly, but ultimately soulless—seeing words on a page couldn't compare to actually witnessing it happen.

For the first time in this life, Malwine was going to get to watch a vital event unfold before her eyes, and if she had to put up with just sitting down because no one wanted the younger children involved in the ceremony itself, she'd put up with it.

There was probably something to be said about just how much of her interest was directed at the ceremony itself and not at the fact that her literal aunt was about to get married, but Malwine carefully chose to ignore that little fact.

Had the wait not been dragging on, she would have had no complaints so far. This was fine. Mostly.

Ugh. Malwine leaned back on her chair. The fabric was cushioned, and she couldn't tell whether that was a property of it or if it had been stuffed. She'd examined the chair earlier—the first time she'd come to terms with her current levels of boredom—and found it seemed impossible to tell whether it was somehow a magical object made as a single piece, or just some seamless show of craftsmanship.

That had annoyed her way more than it should have.

As for this second attempt at dealing with the absolute nothing that was presently going on, Malwine chose to examine the area once more. A few elements reminded her of weddings from the widow's Earth—there were chairs for the audience, a path for the bride to walk down, and something that just vaguely resembled a wedding arch, though not quite.

They were holding the event on a side of the estate she'd never been to, where a small building stood. While she was tempted to call it dilapidated, that would have been inaccurate—it simply looked oddly plain, with its tan bricks and nonexistent paint or decorations. It was closer to the frame of a small building than anything remotely habitable.

Its doorless entrance was the arch that caught her eye, with a simple red curtain hanging from it. Malwine had seen enough of the rehearsals, even if she hadn't gotten to take part in them—the guy who came to officiate their marriage would perform the act itself there, and the symbolic house there was supposed to be what they got to start their life together.

They are going to move back into Thekla's room within a day, I bet. She couldn't help but chuckle at the thought—for all Malwine found the broad strokes of the tradition interesting, there was something deeply amusing about the idea of just shoving newlyweds into what amounted to stone shack and going 'okay, figure your shit out now!'.

At some point, she just decided Hildegard must have dropped them off way too early—not even the guests Veit had spent The Forgetting ferrying to the guest houses had gotten here yet, and those would probably be among the first to come to their seats. Everyone else—as in, those who chose to brave The Cold and arrive exactly on the date—would presumably start filing in later.

Or what do I know—I have no idea what's going on anymore. Malwine didn't even want to calculate just how much time she'd spent waiting already. She had her pebble right there, sitting in her inventory, and she would not be getting it out. Adelheid's probably having fun terrorizing the guests or something…

"Psst," Malwine absentmindedly called out. "Adelheid?"

The silence that greeted her had her pouting all over again—now would have been a great time for her little sister to reveal she'd been there all along.

With that option out, Malwine started to spiral. Adelheid was definitely out there somewhere, terrorizing the guests, and she wasn't getting to see any of it. Her kneejerk reaction would have been to send her double off… except her aunt's wedding wasn't the type of time and place where she wanted to risk an incident. She could pull off many an identity that wouldn't immediately raise any red flags—it'd been a while since Kunegunda got to go out for a walk, after all—but that would only be one step.

I'm starting to wish I could just make a double an ant or something… wait, could I? At that, Malwine gripped the edge of her seat. Oh, no. Now was not the time to experiment even more with [Earthless Glory], no matter how nice those recent levels to it had been. The same went for the idea of just putting more thought into a disguise and sneaking in as a fake guest—that would not only be more trouble than it was worth, but actually pulling it off would require doing what Veit had told her she shouldn't, unless she meant to have her real self nap through the ceremony.

Before she could do anything she'd come to regret, Malwine slid off the chair—as she'd predicted, while she landed with a dull thud, she was on her feet, and her legs didn't even sting. That 60 Endurance actually did something, huh.

…Now what?

The only thing she could think of was to walk closer to the house, following the path to its end. After that, Malwine would either think of something or find Hildegard to yell at her for just leaving her there.

For better or worse, her fledgling plans crumbled the moment she started hearing voices.

"How could you possibly lose track of an entire area?" Bernie was standing next to two staffers Malwine did not recall seeing before—either they'd been hired specifically for the event, or she would have to stop procrastinating her census update sooner than later. "This is madness!"

Before she could even begin to process her guardian's words, soft giggling to her right caught Malwine's attention. Immediately raising an eyebrow, Malwine turned to see Adelheid to her side. "I take it you did something?"

Malwine wasn't sure if she would be in the right to be proud.

"I'd never used [Hiddenness] on a place before," Adelheid said, beaming. It was easy to forget just how dangerous the eight-year-old could be when she wanted to—and Malwine sometimes still wondered if her little sister even knew that. "It worked."

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Honestly, I was going to yell at Hildegard," Malwine shook her head, intentionally pouting this time. "Your idea was better."

Adelheid blinked. "Want me to take you closer so you can yell at her anyway?"

"No, I think it's funnier this way."

Malwine couldn't even bring herself to be mad at Adelheid—while it wasn't hard to put two and two together and understand her boredom had technically been the girl's fault, Bernie had been out there trying to find a literal piece of the estate that had presumably vanished.

Oh, fuck. Is Thekla okay with this? Seeing her guardian inconvenienced was enough for her to momentarily overlook that greater concern, but with that realization came the fact that this was unlikely to go over well with the bride. "Where's Aunt Thekla?"

"In the kitchen," Adelheid said without looking. "I know this should be about her," the girl continued, presumably going off whatever {Implicit} was telling her. "She thinks it's funny, actually, even if she wouldn't say it."

At times, Malwine found she was ever so slightly apprehensive about her little sister's abilities, especially since she couldn't grasp just how they worked, despite the girl's efforts to explain it to her. It felt like her secrets could have been laid bare at any time, if she so much as slipped and neglected giving anything a proper response. "Oh, good. I was worried she might be bothered."

"She isn't."

"Good."

"I know."

"Yeah."

I think I might have been better off if she'd never explained… Malwine had to admit there was something headache-inducing about having to have the last word in any conversation with someone who simply didn't get just why she was doing it, for all she wouldn't fault the girl for it.

As amusing as watching Bernie lose her mind would have been, it wasn't a particularly novel experience—Malwine's walk to the kitchen was quicker than it had any right to be. Between spending so much of her time in lessons and being used to only being mobile as her double, she found she might have been severely underestimating her real body's capabilities, curse or not.

She doubted this was just part of growing up—even in her prime, the widow could probably not have walked over gravel paths this smoothly, or climbed the stairs without taking in a single deep breath. Granted, she— I wasn't exactly active back then. Lacking a frame of reference for this, she really couldn't tell just how normal any of this was meant to be—all she knew was that since she'd started moving around again, she certainly hadn't felt like a slow and weak eight-year-old.

"Auntie?" Malwine called out. At some point, she'd found herself thinking of Thekla as the aunt she had. Adelheid was more of a sister to her than anything else, Gertraud was a literal baby, and Matilda was just a kid, so it wasn't as if there was much competition there. She could acknowledge the actual relation between them, sure, but she couldn't bring herself to look up to anyone other than the grown woman as her actual aunt, silly as it might have been. "Are you okay?"

Thekla was sitting on a bench, her elbow on the island counter, propping up her head. At the very least, she'd been smiling even before she noticed her niece approaching—her expression had shifted slightly then, as if she'd just told herself to start acting like there was a child in the room. "Oh! Hello, Malwine."

Abelard was shaking something, and Malwine was more than a bit curious as to just what they had been up to, but that wasn't why she'd come here. Her concerns hadn't been performative, despite her track record. "Are you guys okay? I heard Bernie saying something got lost?"

Thekla outright snorted, then. It was quite the contrast to her more measured response. "Oh, that. We're fine, yes—you don't have to worry, dear. The estate is fairly big, and even the lady of the house can sometimes get confused."

The next noise Abelard made was a muffled sound as he rushed to keep the object in his hands from clattering to the floor, his entire body bending backwards as he only just barely caught it again.

Malwine narrowed her eyes. "Confused, huh," she shook her head before settling on a conspiratorial tone. "I'd say it would have been easier to find if she and Hildegard hadn't annoyed Adelheid."

At that, her aunt froze for a split second before beginning to laugh in earnest. By now, the basics of what Adelheid could do had gone from an open secret to common knowledge, even if some details went unsaid. There was nothing surprising about her aunt having known just what happened—the absurd part was Bernadette not reaching the same conclusion.

"I wonder if you would laugh, were you in your stepmother's position," Abelard frowned as he spoke, but his tone cracked the moment he started to pour himself a drink from the container he had nearly just introduced to kitchen floor tiles. "Losing track of what amounts to an entire venue would certainly trouble me."

Thekla just laughed again, running a hand through her hair. Her aunt's wedding gown had not been what Malwine expected—red and silver layers trailed behind her, the finery of it all visible even in their current setting. She'd donned a ruffled necklace—from which six black pearls hung—that didn't quite match the rest of it, but Malwine chose not to comment on that.

And speaking of things that don't match…

Malwine took a step forward, closing the distance between them. A hand went to her head, resting upon a certain hairpin. "Auntie?"

Thekla eyed her, watching where her hand had ended up all the while tipping her head. "Yes, Malwine?"

Malwine licked her lips. With how none save for Adelheid and Veit knew she wasn't really mortal, actually delivering her gift during the ceremony wasn't an option—she couldn't exactly insert herself into that part of the event, as things were. That had left her knowing she'd have to take whichever opportunity she got, even if it wasn't optimal.

On a similar vein, she'd thought of what she could say, even if she had not gone as far as to prepare a script for it. Her views on her family and the emotions she felt towards them were still matters she tried her best to avoid processing in full, but the moment she'd decided to make this for Thekla, a part of her had at least internalized that she cared.

Did she love her aunt? Was she even close enough to her for such a thing to be possible, when her interactions with such older family members were sporadic at most? It was hard to tell.

Yet when faced with the choice to either go out of her way to give her aunt her gift or dip and just keep it, Malwine found she couldn't not hand it off.

"When we went to pick out our dresses for today, Hildegard told Adelheid something about gifts," Malwine started. It was odd to describe 'today' so nonchalantly, even if Thekla herself seemed indifferent to the day's dubious start. "I… I know she's going to give you something, and I know I don't need to, but I want to give you something too."

With that, Malwine pulled the hairpin off, which sent a curl directly into her eye—she blinked repeatedly even after brushing it off, which was probably ruining the gravitas of this delivery.

It'd admittedly been a bit of a gamble—she'd already known the rules about giving the bride something to 'borrow' were beyond loose, if Adelheid could just buy something to give Thekla. The issue was how part about it returning upon the bride's death might as well have been irrelevant to Malwine, so it had simply been a matter of ensuring it had belonged to her for long enough to not just be a gift… technically.

"Oh, dear, you don't have to," Thekla leaned forward in a pacifying motion, her hands held up as if to keep the hairpin away. "That's yours, and I couldn't—"

"I've just been wearing it so no one asked why I had it," Malwine insisted. Sure, she could have hidden it in her inventory, but that wouldn't have helped with her concerns about it qualifying. "It was always meant to be what I lent you—if Adelheid gets you something, it was only fair that I do, too."

Gingerly, she raised her hands, letting the pin rest upon them as if she were presenting a precious artifact to her aunt. As far as Malwine was concerned, this was precious—it was the first thing she'd ever sort of made!—but a part of her still worried she might have been ever so slightly over-the-top about it.

What Malwine had not been ready for was how Thekla's eyes watered, her hands going to her mouth for a moment before she reached forward, carefully. She lifted the hairpin slowly and examined it, no judgment in her gaze.

Her aunt was smiling as she slipped it into her own braided hair—nevermind that it did not match her outfit's colors in the slightest—and reached forward, leaving the stool behind to hug her niece. "Thank you."

Malwine blinked, unable to keep herself from being pulled in. A distant part of her was somewhat annoyed at how her budding joy over her effective attributes starting to matter had been crushed by how easily her mortal aunt manhandled her, but being bothered by the hug felt impossible.

As with all displays of affection from her family, this was just about enough for Malwine to short-circuit—all she could do was awkwardly pat her aunt's back as the hug went on for far longer than she expected it to, her gift being received with a surprising degree of gratitude.

Maybe the big day had been off to a good start, after all.