Lam stood in the front doorway of the Liari manor, waving happily at the artist who was practically skipping down the path and out the front gate. His two assistants circled him, looking slightly dazed and just as happy. Considering the generous bag of gold the artist had just taken possession of, it was no surprise the man was quite ecstatic, but he had worked very hard for his reward. Her arm lowered when he left the property, coming to rest upon her enormous, rounded belly, rubbing it in a familiar manner as she stepped back and closed the front door.
With a sigh, Lady Liari then looked down at the floor around her feet and marvelled at the stacks of framed paintings there. All six of them featured the same subject matter - her wedding to Kysis, four moons before - but they were all different sizes and only two showed just the two of them. The artist had been invited to the wedding and had sketched the whole thing, so that afterwards the newlyweds could visit his studio and pick out the sketches they liked the best, to have them turned into proper, full-colour paintings.
Of course, they\'d also posed in his studio - in their wedding outfits - for three days after they were married, just so that a very formal portrait of them could be completed faster than all the others and sent to Kreos for Kysis\' parents. Whether they liked the gift or not had yet to be confirmed; it had been sent off with a letter from both Lam and Kysis talking about the day and her pregnancy almost two moons after the actual wedding. Lam didn\'t expect a reply to arrive for another two moons - at about the same time her baby would, according to the physician she\'d seen.
That day couldn\'t come soon enough for Lam, and not just because she was excited to see whether they\'d have a Pandora or a Gwilym to raise. Whichever sex was contained in her belly, it kicked like a mule - generally in the middle of the night when she was trying to sleep - and had the uncanny knack of wedging itself as high under her ribs as it could go. The heartburn was unbearable, her meals necessarily small (and frequent) and her trips to the outhouse constant, even though the pressure on her bladder was basically baby, not fullness. As joyous as it was having a life that was her and Kysis growing inside her, the discomfort level only increased as the baby\'s girth did and she was keen to have it finished with.
The child was in none of the paintings, of course. Lam\'s wedding dress had boasted a high waist and long, elegant folds of skirt that had trailed for a metre or so behind her when she\'d walked, but they hadn\'t been necessary to conceal anything, she hadn\'t begun to show until a few weeks after the wedding. She inspected the paintings now, lips curling into a fond smile as she gazed upon the painted images of she and Kysis sharing their first kiss before Adora\'s altar, flanked by Susannah and Ryanna on Lam\'s side, and Rico and Freddy on Kysis\'.
It had taken quite a lot of discussing before the wedding to decide who would attend them; Lam\'s choices were Susannah and Freddy, of course, but there was no way she could ask such a man to be her bridesmaid, so Kysis had bitten the bullet and asked for her. Ryanna was asked as a favour to both Kysis and Freddy (for the Captain rather liked the young redhead and Lam sensed that there was something brewing between the two of them, judging by teh way they\'d looked at each other over the celebration feast at the reception) and Rico... well, Lam had had to harangue Kysis into asking him (though she suspected he really did want his retainer as his best man).
The ceremony had contained a mix of Greek traditions as well as those bestowed by Adora, the guests had been fairly few in number but the day had stretched into a very festive and fabulous night. Her favourite painting was a small one, only the size of her chest, that was just she and Kysis standing beneath a garlanded arch outside the Sanctuary, the setting sun behind them bathing them in multitudes of pink and orange while they stared adoringly into one another\'s eyes. Off to the side, she remembered that her Uncle Donald had just announced them as Lord and Lady Liari for the first time and so they\'d shared that look of triumph, wonder and bliss.
The day hadn\'t gone without its hitches, of course. Not long after that beautiful moment, the applause had died down and her father had emerged from the shadows, drunk and hurling abuse at Lam for being a murderer who didn\'t have the decency to worship the God that took her mother from him - because of her - and telling all assembled how she was a disappointment and a traitor.
Thankfully, her uncle had intervened and bustled her father home; he hadn\'t arrived at the reception on time, but Lam had been extremely grateful for what he did anyway; she\'d begged her father to attend her wedding and give her away, but he\'d refused when he\'d found out the ceremony wouldn\'t be held under Talon\'s watchful eye. Hannah had cited the same reasons for not attending, yet her very noble, Talon-worshipping husband had found time to come and sit in the Sanctuary for the ceremony and even give Kysis and she a wedding present. Who the well-dressed man that accompanied him was she didn\'t know for sure, and she didn\'t ask, but she was glad they\'d come, even if they didn\'t make it to the reception (because Hannah would\'ve noticed him missing that long, he\'d laughed). Her Uncle Donald had given her away and he was more father to her han the biological stain that constantly abused her was, anyway.
Deciding she had better do something with the six paintings other than just leave them in the entranceway - two of them were almost as tall as she was, the first detailed every person present at the wedding, posed outside the Sanctuary for the artist\'s sketch, and the second showed the candlelit outdoor feasting area where they\'d held their reception, the bridal party at the top of the frame eating and laughing happily. It made her smile looking at Freddy\'s dear grin; she\'d been so relieved and grateful that he\'d agreed to not only come to the wedding, but be part of it. If anything, the complete removal of the possibility they\'d ever be a couple again had only made them closer friends (not just because he was her only way of finding out what was going on with Prince Mayhew and his lovely French bride).
"A little help from someone, please!" she called into the grand house, figuring someone would be around to assist her carrying the beautiful artworks into the manor so that they could find places to hang them (she already had a good idea where they\'d go). It was only after she bravely - or stupidly, really - picked up the two largest frames that she recalled that she was likely alone in the house. Still, she took a few steps through the open doorway into the dining room, determined to get the surprisingly-heavy pictures at least to a leaning position against the table.
Of course, her baby decided that that exact moment was the one it should choose to give her kidney a swift whallop. She cried out involuntarily and staggered, which caused one of the paintings in her vice-like grip to shift. It slipped out of her left hand entirely and dropped at an angle - she stuck her foot out so that it landed on her soft shoe instead of the hard floor, not wanting the frame to be jarred. That was the point at which she realised how bloody heavy these paintings really were, because she didn\'t get her whole foot out in time and it mostly landed on her toes. She cried out again - which quickly became a shriek as the painting she\'d dropped (the one farthest from her body) began to swing outward.
Any second now, it would swing out of the pinched control of her right hand and more than likely crash onto one of the dining chairs before her, which would go straight through the canvas itself and completely ruin the beautiful artwork. Kysis was at the shop, she was pretty sure, and Matthew was at the market searching for some cinnamon for the baby... her only hope was that Rico was still around or that one of the guards was about to pass through - and that either of them had responded to her first call for help, because she was seconds away from losing her grip... and the painting she\'d only just taken possession of.
