Moving Day

It felt like the end of an era. After nearly three decades together, Nel had bidden Khemma a teary farewell. Khemma was off to change the world by putting her forgery skills to use in creating fake papers to smuggle enslaved people in other nations to freedom. It was difficult, dangerous, and important work, and Nel couldn't prouder of her sister for doing it -- and for breaking with the Syndicate -- even if her own heart broke at her leaving.
 
The small flat felt empty, even with Nel and the four youngest children still in it, without Khemma's quick laugh and sharp humor. It felt haunted by the things that weren't there anymore -- how she would make the most perfect cups of tea, the way she told the children exciting stories that Nel always worried were too scary for them (they never were), her understated care and kindness. Nel made a tiny shrine to Eosphorus beside Khemma's sleeping spot on the floor -- she always let the kids use her bed -- where she prayed after waking and before going to sleep at night that the Breaker of Chains would watching over her sister and she did his good work.
 
A challenge had popped up on Nel's first fight night after Khemma left. During the day she paid Mrs. Becker downstairs to watch the children while she worked. But Mrs. Becker was a respectable sort who slept at night. So she'd asked Grandfather Sidorov, the wry and kindly old Rus human from the Warrens to spend the night at her flat.
 
Watching him with them, she had realized how much they all needed each other. Grandfather Sidorov's life had been marked with sorrow and hardship and being with the children gave him a chance to find gentleness and joy. The children needed a caregiver who could be there when Nel had to work. And Nel needed help caring for them. So she asked her old friend if he would consider moving in with them. It would likely have been too much for him when the flat was full of over a dozen children and two adults, but not, with most of the children at Lady Mara's until more arrived who needed a place to stay, it wasn't too noisy or crowded for him.
 
She worried about the nearly 90-year-old man climbing the stairs to her second floor apartment until mentioned the situation to her neighbor directly below her who was overjoyed at the thought of not living below many noisy children and immediately offered to trade.
 
So today was moving day. Nel and the children moved downstairs and Mrs. and Mrs. Einstein moved upstairs. The two flats were remarkably similar to each other. Nel moved the large furniture for both households and the Mrs. Einstein's and the children moved the small things. Before the day was over, each family was in a flat that was eerily similar, yet different in some strange ways, to the home they'd woken up to in the morning. But with the all important difference -- Grandfather Sidorov could easily get into and out of his new home.
 
Nel insisted that he take one of the beds. The children took turns sharing the other one and sleeping on the straw mattresses from Lady Mara on the floor.
 
Grandfather Sidorov brought dried flowers, a beautiful blanket, and a delicately painted plate to hang on the wall that he'd carried with him when he fled Ruskovich. He moved about the flat, tying strings and ribbons here and there, ringing a bell in other places, rituals to the gods and spirits for the protection of the home they all shared.
 
Nel set up a second small shrine to Fodla. Each day, in addition to praying to Eosphorus for Khemma's safety and success, she also thanked Fodla for bringing Grandfather Sidorov and the children into her life.