((This is just a fairly boring thread explaining some backstory))

Vienda hadn’t looked like she’d expected it to. All her life she’d been told amazing things about the great city but her dad had never taken her there. He said that everything from the Stacks to Old Rose was a den of sin that built up speed the closer you got to water. She’d wanted to make it to Old Rose and hitch a boat somewhere but she was already almost out of money. She’d wasted some in that first week looking for Lachlan. Ever since she’d been trying to eat well for her baby, their baby, but paying to get out of Brunnhold had sapped her finances. She was 16, painfully lonely and it was a week’s end night. She wasn’t going to get a job at 27 o’clock and she had no idea where to start in the morrow. She wouldn’t be able to tend bar and earn tips too well once her belly started to swell.

Drunken revelry was sounding in the distance, calling to her like a bird to its mate. She’d imagined that she could probably swipe a bed somewhere in a pub. The outside was enormous but once she was in she couldn’t immediately tell how to get to the upper levels. A fairly serious looking young man was tending the bar. Fion peaked around for something she could hustle at, a pool table, anything. She spotted a darts board and some drunken wicks trying to avoid stabbing themselves. She thought about how hungry she was but that the wicks didn’t look like bad guys. Her rumbling stomach solved the moral dilemma.

“Hello, my fine kovs.” Fion said arms twisted behind her back, mouth upturned coquettishly. “Mind if I play too?”

She spent one round carefully aiming her misses and soon after they were suggesting a friendly bet. Her next bullseye was difficult because it had to look like a fluke. She’d had to sell it after by joyously clapping and pointing but they’d let her go with the pot and a friendly pat on the back.

The barman had looked at her pointedly as she’d left, shaking his head slightly.

Busted.

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The next night Fion was back, still jobless but less hungry. She’d managed to find lodgings in a room above an old Spinster’s house. She’d even been given biscuits as a moving in present. She sat at the bar, rubbing one of her arms and feeling very sheepish. She waited for the bartender to come down her way again.

“Yes?” He said, one eyebrow cocked, mouth pursed in a moue of disapproval.

He was not impressed.

“Hi!” She blurted, mouth twisting upwards nervously, “I, uh, I’m sorry about last night... I’m kind of... P... I needed the money.”

Her hands clasped reflexively over her stomach. She wasn’t showing too much yet and he wasn’t to know that her boobs weren’t normally so enormous.

“Biscuit?” She said, pulling a small box from the bag hanging from her arm. “I’m Fion S-Smith.”

The look he gave her was a little bit red and very incredulous. “Stu.”

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The room didn’t cost much; thank the gods, so Fion managed to make ends meet. She took on as much sewing work as she could get, since there wasn’t a bar in the world that would take her now. People were nicer to her when she was out running errands, or at least nicer to her baby bump. Something to do with spirits and holiness but she’d never listened much in church. She didn’t feel spiritual, she felt like a river barge. She at least had a wedding ring, even if they’d never gotten around to actually sorting that part. She had to wear a lot of black but that was ok, she was in a mourning of sorts.

She really needed to stop getting lost in her thoughts. She was supposed to be looking for produce. Her hand brushed another’s as she reached for an apple.

“Oh, sorry about that!” She said, looking up with a smile on her face.

It was Stu. She hadn’t been into the B&B for weeks, not since it had become truly obvious that she was up the duff. She’d never drank alcohol there and surely that had been suspicious. Still, it wasn’t as though she’d actually told anyone.

Stu was looking at her swollen belly like it was a midget Seventen officer, come to beat him with a pink stick. Fion had never felt more uncomfortable in her life.

“Oh, wow!” She said, voice a little higher than usual and nervous laughter bubbling in her throat. “You turn your back one day and bang, you wake up fat, I mean pregnant. Ha ha ha! I have to go now.”

Fion ambled off with a speed that surprised even herself.

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It was so difficult to make friends in Vienda. Piran was almost two and she still didn’t have anybody she could really call on in a pinch. Her landlord was friendly enough and she hadn’t bothered moving yet, though soon she’d have to. There wasn’t enough room for a growing child. Piran wouldn’t fit in the bassinet forever.

She was still painfully lonely… She missed Lachlan. She kept hoping he’d come find her but he hadn’t. She didn’t bother to ask after him. It would be too obvious. Sometimes she could feel it, the beginnings of Piran’s field. It was like a static shock, almost. She hoped people would be nice to him. She hoped he would be happy.

Most of all she hoped that no one bloody figured it out. Oh yes, that would make her real popular at Bridge. My name is Fion, I like baking and sleeping with the enemy, fancy a brioche?

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Fion liked Stu. He was a bit stoic and a little red in the face but he was nice. She’d been dropping little hints for a while but he never seemed to take them.

“Hey, I heard the circus is in town, I love circuses! Are you planning on going?”

Stu gave Fion an inscrutable look, one she’d yet to interpret correctly.

“I don’t think so, it’s too hard to get someone to cover me.”

Fion smiled with all her teeth. “Awwww, that’s too bad.”

Was it because she was ugly? She didn’t want to just come out and ask. What if he said no? She was already sure she was the universe’s most pathetic loser, she didn’t want reminding. She felt a familiar field buzz up behind her. She wondered if Piran was going to buzz when he got older or if he’d just seem calm and fuzzy like his Dad had.

“Fion! Dear woman, have a puppy!” The wick pronounced, his name was Grue, he read palms for a living. “Take him as a token of my affection.”

Fion cupped the stripy, black and white puppy in her palms. The puppy yawned and snuggled into her palm.

“This is a bander!” Fion exclaimed, embarrassed but already pulling her hands closer because, well, puppy!

She turned to show Stu but he was already down the other end of the bar.

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Fion was secretly proud of the day she’d joined the Resistance, even after she reached the point of doubting why she was in it. That first day had been a good one. She’d seen a young man running down the lane behind her apartment. The beat of chroven paws had made a cacophony against the stone paving. She didn’t know why she’d done it. She’d just grabbed him by his lapels and dragged him inside. The seventeen had gone right past them, thundering down the tiny road. Fion had given him a shrewd look.

“What did you do to piss those tsuter bastards off?” She’d rested one hand on her hip and inclined her thumb with the other.

“How do you know I’m not a criminal?” He’d replied, disbelievingly.

“A criminal would be better organised, I imagine.” Fion said airily. “That and I stole your wallet… You’re poorer than I am.”

He gave her a dirty look. She grinned and waved his money purse at him.

“You ever heard of the party, smartass?”

She hadn’t at the time. It had sounded like her kind of thing though.