The Ryman LegacyChapter 8B

By Mzyra

Birthdays Galore

Mia

Rick

Allen

Unusual are the days when there are no birthdays in the whole extended Ryman family, but this time it was a particularly significant one as the first child born in the legacy became an elder, along with her husband. Naturally there was a large turnout, including all five of their children, as well as some random townies who had been brought home from work and school.

And so the family had a set of elders once again, even if they weren’t grandparents just yet, but it was still a marking point in the family, starting to turn things over to generation 3.

And the beginning of a relaxing and peaceful life for Marina and Nery.

Elsewhere there was a different turning point as the final (intended) member of generation 3 was born in the main household – Mia and Rick were saved the disturbance by being at school, but Calvin came home at just the right (or possibly wrong) time.

N: “AAAARRGGHH!

C: “Oh my god, okay Mum, just um, relax and breathe deeply? Please?”

N: “OHHHH!”

But after a number of severely disturbing moments, Nicola was holding the new baby – a little girl with Alvin’s brown hair (again) and light blue eyes and a skin tone between either of her parents’ but closer to that of Alvin. Little baby Gina.

N: “Ah, there we go. Would you mind putting her down to sleep, Calvin? I’m hungry, think I’ll make myself some lunch.”

[Hooray for genetic diversity T_T ]

Nicola was apparently unaware of the inherent perils of cooking after labour, however, and managed to catch herself on fire without causing any damage to the cooker itself, which would have been impressive if what was happening to her hadn’t been so horrifying. It turned out that labour wasn’t so painful after all.

Grim Reaper: *Another one?! Whose legacy is this…? Mzyra… Not traditionally such a careless or homicidal simmer, guess she’s gone crazy. Such a shame when that happens…*

C: “Nooo… Mummy…”

[Me: O_O … ]

Of course there were only three (four, counting Gina who was completely oblivious) people home at the time and Alvin and Rick had been in bed at the time, but Alvin and Calvin were understandably devastated, while Allen didn’t fully understand what had happened, but knew that it was something bad.

“Mummy gone, Mistew Bunny Wabbit. Dunno why ow when she coming back. Miss Mummy. She thmell nice and pwetty. And gave me thweeties. Want Mummy back.” *Sniff*

A new wall and flowers were quickly arranged for Nicola and, one day, Alvin to rest alongside her parents, though there had never been time when Nicola wasn’t pregnant to paint a full portrait as they had, but just so long as there was some memorial picture, that didn’t matter so much.

And once again somebody had died on Mia’s birthday, though it didn’t coincide quite as much as it had last time. Without Nicola and her family connections it had been a close call on being able to throw a family birthday at all, but luckily Calvin’s connections to his cousins meant that Mia’s birthday wasn’t completely miserable, and possibly more age appropriate than any other party had been in the house lately.

And so Mia became a young woman, without any role model do guide her, though she did have an aunt and several cousins, but it was never going to be quite the same…

Family may not have been a concrete foundation for Mia, but she had to hope that maybe a group of friends would be more stable.

Alvin may not have really felt up to it, but unless he wanted to mope around the house for the rest of his life, he felt he should continue to go to work, keep up a routine and wait for some pain to fade… So he plastered on a fake smile that even a child could see through and went about his life as if nothing had happened.

Leaving the two teenagers to look after their youngest siblings, which wasn’t so bad and also served to distract them from their recent experiences, but couldn’t help but feel that somehow, as teenagers, they ought to be out having some kind of fun with their evenings…

Regardless, their little siblings needed them, so they just wouldn’t be having fun for a while.

They didn’t have to do everything though, Calvin was home while they were out at school, so Allen could still be taught what remained of his toddler skills and Gina could be looked after. It was a little disappointing for Alvin that he hadn’t even managed to perfect a hovering ability with his robots, but looking after his kids and watching them develop had its own achievements in it too.

Of course, you can’t have a close family member burn to death in the kitchen without it raising some questions among the younger members of the family, especially when being forced to critique pieces of art.

R: “Mia? Why did Mum have to die?”

M: “Erm, because… Er… How do you think they created this easel so small? Do you think it has the same dimensions as a regular easel?”

R: “Mia!”

M: *Sigh* “I don’t know, ask Dad… I’m sure she’s happy wherever she is now though…”

Life wasn’t all misery and difficult questions for Mia though, she found herself rather popular amongst the guys at school and quickly started dating Juan Harris, much to everybody else’s disappointment.

Liz: *Sigh* “I could have had some babies of my own by now…”

C: “That’s sad for you and I’m sorry and all Liz, but you’re blocking my way to the fridge and Gina needs feeding.”

L: *Sigh* “Baaaabieees…”

C: “Grrr…”

And then it was birthday time once again with both Allen and Gina growing up a little.

Allen went first in a house full of relatives as per usual…

And remained as cute as all of his practically identical siblings before him had done.

“Yes, I can finally get to the fridge by myself!”

The party was somewhat ruined half way through as Gina refused to grow up for a bit and one of Alvin’s contraptions went haywire, leaving piles of rubbish all over the floor, but Alvin had had to leave for work, meaning Mia had to deal with practically all of it herself.

M: “Turn off, you stupid thing! What’s wrong with this remote?! Why isn’t it working?!”

Eventually the machine was stopped and Gina was ready to really grow up before the police showed up as they inevitably would.

And Gina became the only child to clearly inherit some of their mother’s facial features, which made it even more of a shame that Nicola and Gina had barely met before Nicola died. Gina still had Alvin’s mouth and possibly some of his other features, but the nose and eye shape was definitely her mother’s.

[Me: Hallelujah! :D ]

Mia may not have had a mother figure herself any more, but that just meant that she wanted to provide one for little Gina, who seemed to be as sweet as most of her siblings had been, if not as extreme in other areas as some of the others were.

And of course, looking after her little sister would give Mia invaluable parenting experience for when she could start having her own children.

So she started with teaching Gina how to talk while their father was still busy out at work.

They’d never owned a highchair before, but Mia wanted to stick with age-appropriate words and Gina seemed to like it regardless, trying to make her big sister happy and get more attention.

Other siblings were pretty happy too – Rick had been too young to properly play with Calvin and it wasn’t the same trying to play with a girl, but a brother pretty close to his age provided a built-in best friend for both Rick and Allen and they got on very well.

Mia had proudly just finished doing her homework for school the next day when, as she stood up again, she suddenly felt really sick and dizzy; the room spun and her eyes rolled back into her head-

And she fell to the floor, passing out before she even hit it.

In a feverish dream, all in shades of orange, she saw her father kneeling in front of a big dark pit, as if he were praying or pleading with someone…

And then it all disappeared as she regained consciousness. And she realised that she was lying on the floor. And her head hurt quite a lot.

“You okay, Mia?” Alvin asked as he walked past.

“Um, yeah. Yeah, I think so…”

She’d had a dream… But she couldn’t remember what it was about. Something about her Dad… And orange. Lots of orange. Weird.

Mia didn’t bother to tell her father she’d had a weird dream about him – after all, why bother when she couldn’t even remember the point of it? – especially since he was so busy teaching the boys how to study and looking after Gina.

And he had enough on his mind; Calvin was just getting a few more skills before he’d finally leave for college. Alvin’s children were growing up so fast…

And acting strangely too. Gina, so sweet and gentle only the day before, had become surprisingly violent when playing. Her family figured it was just the way kids played with toys – she was far from the first toddler to try to smash the rabbit head to death.

But she was off with her family as well, even Mia who she probably liked best of all, just crawling off rather then indulge their attempts to teach her.

M: *grits teeth* “Fine, don’t learn to walk. See how far that gets you…”

Rick and Allen stayed the same as ever they were though, playing like children should and defending their fortress from their mortal enemy – the girl.

R: “All clear on this side, Allen! How’s your side?”

A: “Um, it’s clear too, but that’s kind of because it’s just fields. Can’t we swap sides or both watch the path?”

R: “No! You never know, they might be plotting a daring attempt to charge across the fields to infiltrate us!”

A: “Okay…”

Allen did get the good things sometimes though, even if his older brother felt that he should get everything first.

R: “… You know, that teddy is mine.”

Allen wisely just ignored him – Rick couldn’t do anything about it with their father so nearby anyway.

Allen tended to be better with people than Rick did in any case. Intrigued by the old lemonade stand out front, Allen had continued the family tradition of child labour and proved quite popular with passersby, convincing many of the tastiness of Ryman brand lemonade, even while knowing nothing of cooking or making drinks.

But Rick would soon have an upper hand over his brother by becoming more than a foot taller than him.

The brothers did love each other, of course, they just also happened to be very competitive.

Calvin had even come back from university to watch it all and it was just as well he had, since Rick turned out even more like him; Rick too wanted to experience all of the fun in life, though his emphasis wasn’t so much on the quality of the dates he would go on, but the number of people who could date. He also had a similar fashion sense to the one Calvin had had as a teenager.

Calvin and Alvin also took the opportunity to catch up on each others’ lives since they were both so busy normally.

[You have NO idea how confusing it gets when these two are in the same place at the same time… Why aren’t there more good hairstyles for guys?]

It was also Gina’s birthday, though she refused to be brought to any kind of cake and tried to grow up on her own. Naturally she failed as somebody would always notice and call over everybody else, but she still made a valiant effort.

Regardless of who was or was not watching her, Gina seemed to like her new child form with its height and freedom.

Logically Allen assumed that Gina would now be his new best friend to replace Rick, but found his assumption to be very much wrong.

A: “Happy birthday, sis!”

G: “Uh, what are you doing?!”

A: “Giving you a birthday hug!”

G: “Why would I want to hug some smelly, ugly boy?”

A: “Bu- … I’m your big brother!”

G: “Ewww, I’m related to you?! Yeah, whatever!”

It all ended in Allen’s tears, but Gina didn’t seem to care.

Rick felt sorry for his little brother, who was still his best friend really regardless of age gap, and made him feel better by reading him to sleep.

Nobody would upset Rick’s best friend.

Mia tried talking to Gina about her attitude, but she was having none of it.

M: “You really upset Allen earlier, why do you have to be so mean? He wanted to make you feel happy, that’s why he tried to hug you.”

G: “I don’t want to be hugged by some weirdo and he shouldn’t be such a little cry-baby!”

M: “Ugh, what is wrong with you? You used to be sweet, I remember that…”

G: “You’re probably just going senile.”

Mia knew that Gina had been nice once upon a time, but even she was beginning to doubt her memories with the way Gina was acting.

G: *Grumble* “Stupid homework… Just because the teacher is too slow to fit everything in at school… has to ruin the rest of my day… She’s fat and ugly too anyway…”

Mia had to take breaks from trying to keep her family together sometimes and of course found a long line of guys willing to help her relax, including, this time, old friend Chandler Platz.

M: “You’re not very good at this game are you? You’re meant to move your hands so I can’t slap them!”

C: “Huh? Oh, right, yeah…”

To be honest, Chandler was struggling to remember to breathe as he was so close to actually holding hands with Mia Ryman… Wait until the kids at the townie orphanage heard about this!

Allen may have been rejected once, but he’d never found anyone he couldn’t make like him and so he was determined to persevere with Gina. She would like him! He’d just have to learn to ignore her insults until she did.

G: “I mean, I’m clearly the best looking child in this family by far, I guess Mia would come second, but only because all you boys are so ugly all the time, it’s not like you could ever compete.”

A: “…Uh-huh…”

Mia watched exchanges like this on a daily basis and she was tired of it. There must be some way to solve their problems… Force them to bond…

T: “I like your make-up, Allen’s sister! Does it take ages to do? Or do all girls just know how to apply make-up when they’re born?”

Mia wouldn’t have meant to be rude had she noticed anyone speaking, but she was distracted – she’d had an idea.

A: “A holiday, huh?”

M: “Yeah! I mean, it’d be nice enough on its own and we can easily afford it, but all the forced family time – we’ll make Gina be nice and bring all of us closer; Calvin can come too and get to know the younger ones who don’t know him so well.”

A: “… Yeah, sounds good. Great idea Mia, I’ll get it booked. Where shall we go though?”

M: “Oooh! We have to go to somewhere with beaches! Please Daddy? The kids will be able to build sandcastles and stuff…”

A: “Yeah, alright. It should be a nice break.”

~~~~~End of Chapter 8B~~~~~

Sean and Opal have also aged into just as sweet a couple as they were as adults, though we’re sad that they’re one step closer to death O_O :(

A: “Wow, you got them playing together! Well done, Mia!”

G: “This game is BOOOOORIIIING!”

Next time: Calvin at College Spares by the bucket-load! Infallibly good witches and atrociously evil warlocks!