June 9th, 1893 - Darrow Household

The Season was starting, which meant that her calendar was filling up and the Sanditon was showing signs of life. Orion was taking his first toddling, clumsy steps in the sand by the beach. Children and debutantes were starting to sign up for Alfred's sailing classes. Zelda was just a wife, and wasn't sure how long she was going to keep that going.

The day had been uneventful, but the weekend was highly-scheduled. Zelda had put Orion to bed before retreating to relieve herself, with more items in hand than usual.

She was sitting on the tiled floor of the lavatory with her printed calendar in hand, counting the days. "Shite!" Zelda snapped, louder than she meant to. She covered her mouth with her hand, because it was late enough that if she wasn't careful she could wake Orion.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred still had not successfully put Orion down for bed yet (at least not since he'd been back, but getting Orion to sleep before didn't feel like the same task; babies just fell asleep on their own at all hours of the day and night, no matter what you did). It was starting to feel like a thing, and on a few occasions he'd thought about asking Zelda to just let him struggle it, however long it took... but it was hard to make the ask when Orion was clearly better off with her. He hadn't even made a feeble effort tonight, relieved that Zelda hadn't suggested it. Orion was asleep now, and Alfred was going to suggest he and Zelda go for a walk in the small woods at the far end of the terrace — perhaps technically something they shouldn't do, but nothing ever happened with Orion was asleep anyway — when he heard her voice from inside the bathroom.

He normally would never even considered intruding on his wife in such a personal area of the house, but normally she was not swearing in there. He furrowed his brow, paused, then knocked hesitantly on the door. "Everything alright?"

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Although she wouldn't admit it, sometimes Zelda forgot that she was no longer the only adult in the house. She scrambled up from the floor, rearranging her skirts into something more organized. She left the calendar askew on the floor. Zelda tugged the door open and smiled, vaguely frantic, at Alfred. "Everything's alright, sure," she agreed. They didn't have to talk about this in the lavatory. Anywhere else was probably better.

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AMAZING set by MJ

There was a bustle of activity behind the door before Zelda pulled it open. Her expression was a little harried. Things did not seem alright. This was, however, not something he felt inclined to argue — he didn't even know where he would have begun if he'd wanted to. Whatever she was doing in the lavatory was her business, and if something was actually the matter, she would tell him about it.

"...Okay," came his eventual response. His raised eyebrow and slight frown clearly said I doubt it but won't press.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

She was at a loss as to what to say now, but doubted that she could just leave it at this. "Orion's down for the night," Zelda added, with a genuine smile.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Had she not been smiling, he might have entertained the notion that this comment was meant as bit of passive aggressive. Orion was asleep, no thanks to his efforts... but she looked and sounded sincere, so there was no need to drag his parenting insecurities into the middle of it.

"Yeah, gathered that," he said, but the best tone he could manage was blandly neutral.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda pressed her lips into a line. She pushed past Alfred and out of the lavatory, leaving the calendar in a mess on the floor. "What should we do for his birthday?" she asked. What did you do for a one-year-old's birthday? Sometimes Zelda didn't understand these things, even though she'd been an aunt so many times — she was still new to motherhood, and this seemed like something that Alfred would be invested in. Besides — who knew if she'd be up for organizing things, by the time August rolled around.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred was a bit baffled when she left the lavatory and pushed past him. He'd had the distinct feeling when she'd opened the door that he'd been interrupting something — something she did not want to explain to him — but maybe he'd been misreading the situation. He couldn't help glancing back at the bathroom as she walked by, but only saw vaguely that something was out of place before he pulled his eyes back towards her, feeling a little guilty for having looked at all. That was silly, of course, because it was a shared room in their shared house and she had just left it, but for some reason it still felt as though he was intruding on something of a private moment.

"Uh — dunno," he said as he stepped quickly to catch up to her. The question seemed so out of the blue that it took him a minute to actually think through what they were talking about. Birthdays for babies — what did people do? "Orion's close enough to Lilly," he pointed out, referring to Evander's daughter. "We could probably plan something with Caroline. Only have to deal with the whole family once." Alfred loved his family and he knew Zelda loved hers, but the Darrows and the Fisks combined were certainly not a small group by any means. "Or do something no one could get away with but us," he continued thoughtfully. Sailing somewhere with a one-year-old was probably a bit ambitious even for him, but there was probably something adventurous they could accomplish. "Oh! D'you think he's old enough to start learning to swim?"

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

A party with Caroline would be easier, and would mean that they wouldn't have too much family time at once. Zelda hummed in consideration — but smiled with mirth at Alfred at his last thought.

"We might want him walking more first," Zelda pointed out. Orion had mastered crawling, but he had not yet escalated to taking steps. "But if he's taking steps by then — I don't see any reason we can't try." She wouldn't trust anyone else with teaching Orion how to swim, but Alfred was so familiar with the water that he'd probably master it. Besides — he'd taught Zelda. And if Alfred was teaching Orion that day, then it got her off the hook a bit.

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AMAZING set by MJ

"Yeah, steps, fine," he agreed, without so much as pausing to consider it. "But if he can get comfortable in the water we could get a bubble-head charm and go diving. See some of the stuff below the water," he said. "It's incredible. Though I suppose — England isn't really the best waters for it," he admitted. The chill was one thing, but that was safely combated by the weather charms around the Sanditon. The other issue was that the sea life here simply wasn't as colorful or diverse as it was in more tropical areas of the world. The best area to do it would have been the Carribean, but that — required a lot of sailing, which wasn't going to happen in the middle of the summer with a baby in tow.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda pursed her lips. "It'll probably be a while until he's able to see other waters," she said. Sailing with a baby seemed like a lot, and they wouldn't be able to get started on it for even longer if she was right. Zelda leaned against the hallways wall, and added, "And we're still far off from steps and a bubble head charm."

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AMAZING set by MJ

Zelda had paused in the middle of the hallway, which struck him as a little strange, but not enough to remark upon. (She must have been walking to somewhere when she left the bathroom, and presumably not just to a random spot in the hallway — or else she'd just been walking away from the lavatory, but that didn't make sense either). Alfred frowned and dropped his shoulder against the opposite wall. "I wasn't going to have him cast it himself," he retorted. He did not particularly see the problem with casting a bubble-head charm on a toddler and taking them to the bottom of the ocean, but presumably there was one, or she wouldn't have objected the way she had.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda frowned. "I know that," she said, "But he's still a baby." She didn't know how well babies did with bubble head charms. Sometimes Zelda wasn't sure how well babies did with anything, because none of this had come naturally to her, but wasn't she supposed to understand it right away?

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred could not argue that. Orion might have been twice the size as he was when Alfred had set to sea last winter, but he was still definitely a baby.

"How long d'you think until he can get out of England?" Alfred asked with a pensive look. "Five ought to do it, yeah?" He didn't have the keenest sense of how old children really were when they were three or five or seven, to be fair, since his most recent experience was just interactions with Charity and she had already been seven or eight by the time he'd met her, but five seemed plenty old enough to stay safely out of the way aboard a ship, particularly if Alfred was there to look after him. The mere suggestion would probably shock some people, he imagined, but his time living with the tribe in South America had left Alfred with the impression that young children were a good deal more capable than the English gave them credit for.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda drew her eyebrows together in an irritated expression, caught off guard. "There might be more by the time he's five, Alfred," she chided. They were making plans — tentative plans, but plans — and they had no way to know if they could come to fruition for years.

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AMAZING set by MJ

"Oh," Alfred said, with a tone that implied it had never before occurred to him that they might have more children. Of course he had considered it, but not in a very serious way — and he was not inclined to do so now, either. Orion was barely even one, so by the time he's five seemed like a whole lifetime away. "I mean, yeah. Sure. But I don't have to take them all at once."

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER