“Gerry and I could run beneath you, howling you on,” Hamish added enthusiastically but Catalina shook her head.
“No. You should ride on me,” she said, her cheeks colouring as she voiced the idea.
“Upon the back of a Dragon?” Hamish gasped. “My lady, what a scandal we shall cause.”
“Lionel will roll in his grave,” Catalina replied wickedly, and we all laughed hopefully at the idea of him being dead.
“What else?” I asked excitedly, my grin widening at the thought of taking part in some huge family Christmas like that.
“We could grow our own tree and garlands,” Catalina added, her excitement clear too.
“And deck the halls with all the festive fangles!” Geraldine added. “Bake flamberbam cookies, hang naffly mistletoe, build gingerbread igloos, lay traps for elves, pickle a gherkin, wash some homeless fellows, dance upon a gooseberry, do the naked jive, place a prickly pinecone between our fanny cheeks in a Christmas Pine Cleansing, befriend a bad-tempered owl, tie bows in the shoelaces of Fae who have forgotten how and-”
“Take it down a notch, poppet, you’re losing your noggin again,” Hamish interrupted as Geraldine kept going without drawing breath, her face reddening more and more as she went on. “You don’t want me to tell Santa’s elves you got too exuberant again now, do you?”
“No Papa,” she agreed, slapping a hand to her mouth and sagging back in the water.
Ohmagod, she still believes in Santa.
“That all sounds great,” Tory said, breathing a laugh. “It would be really nice to be able to just enjoy a Christmas like the ones we might have had if Lionel hadn’t stolen our family from us.”
“I would be honoured if you considered me a part of your family,” Catalina said, tears shining in her eyes and my heart swelled at the thought of that. Of how much we might all be able to claim with one another once we were done fighting this war.
“I would love that,” I murmured and Tory took my hand beneath the water, letting me know that she agreed with that too.
“You deserved to know your sweet mother and your gallant father,” Hamish said brusquely, rage colouring his cheeks. “Oh what I would give to see them again. Your father and I studied together at Zodiac Academy, you know? He was a pioneer of a man, always shooting for the moon. I was a senior when he started, but good golly, he wowed me like a candy to a crow. We bonded when we were on the Pitball team together, see?”
“You were friends?” I breathed, latching onto the connection to my flesh and blood keenly.
“Indeed we were,” Hamish confirmed, smiling at some memory I wish I could pluck from his head and see for myself.
“What was he like?” Tory asked, shifting closer to me and Hamish rested his arms back on the sides of the tub.
“Oh he was a cad of course, every Lilith and June swooned at his feet. But he had the mark of a true king even then. His power was unlike anything I had ever seen, his casts so beautiful, it often brought a tear to my eye. And though his popularity was faultless, he was always humble. He liked his private time, he liked to draw too. His art was more wonderful than a lambent moon on a hillside.”
My breath caught at that fact. I hadn’t drawn in a long time now, but it was something I used to love, and hearing that my father had loved it too made me want to start another piece. It was something I’d always done in the past to escape reality, but since coming to Solaria, I hadn’t exactly needed that outlet when the whole world was constantly exciting.
“What else?” Tory pushed and Hamish started regaling us with stories of our dad on the Pitball team, the Earthbacker, which made Geraldine squeal as that was her position. I got lost in the sea of stories that painted a picture of the man I’d never know in my mind, my longing to meet him so fierce, it opened an old wound in my chest.
I had always wondered what it would be like to have a father, the concept so alien to me it was hard to even picture Hail as being that to me. And as I laid my head back against the side and new images were built up in my mind of him, I felt a little closer to the man I’d never really know. And hoped one day when I walked beyond the Veil, he’d be waiting there for me with the same passion and love in his heart that Hamish described him to have. I just wished death didn’t have to be the first time we’d meet.
After a while, Hamish and Catalina left and Angelica headed off to go and see her boyfriend, a heavy sort of silence falling over the rest of us.
Geraldine dabbed at her eyes. “Your dear father would have been blazing with pride like the sun in the height of summer for you, my queens.”