Rene felt…oddly conflicted when it came to Tara. On one hand, the girl trusted her—most of her learning and cooperation first came by Rene’s prompting. On the other, there was something that bothered her. She didn’t think it was Tara herself, but she couldn’t place it. Adelinde suggested it could just be because Rene was trusted by Tara so quickly, whereas Matteo regarded her as a kind of stranger for a month or so.
Ultimately, no one came to get Tara. They still waited a few extra days—up until the very end of September—but there wasn’t much excuse. In two months, you could go from Dakari to Sólstaður and back again—you could visit every major city in Dakari in that time, too. If she did have family that was looking for her, they weren’t doing it very thoroughly.
Adelinde talked about it both to Mark—since he could still be asked to watch Tara from time to time, if only because he would be the next adult Tara would probably see the most often—and Matteo—who had already been told he would get some little sibling later down the line, and while Tara didn’t fit exactly what he thought said little sibling would be, he still accepted it. Rene didn’t hesitate at all with signing those papers; Tara didn’t have anyone else to go to aside from them. For better or worse, they were already taking care of her—there wasn’t any place for orphans to go in general, even in San Asari.
By the time Tara was officially adopted, October had come and Matteo wanted to stay in San Asari for the arts festival. Tara got to a point where she would whimper when Rene left for work, or give a single syllable or sound if Adelinde, Rene, and Matteo were the only people nearby; she actually started sleeping on her own and in a bed as well, which Rene hoped would keep her from looking so betrayed some mornings. A look on the verge of tears was almost as bad as tears itself, if not a bit worse.
By the time Matteo’s demands of going to the arts festival were satisfied, the general temperature was too cold for them to travel; Adelinde gave a half-flirty comment that seeing Rene bond with Tara and talk with Matteo a bit more frequently as a result more than made up for it. Not that it stopped Rene from promising to just plan something for when the sakura were out instead.
December came before she quite realized it. Rene, Adelinde, and Tara were in the ‘music room’—so called because it was more like a very small ballroom of sorts, so its sole purpose wasn’t for instruments like in the palace—for different reasons. Rene had off work for the evening and noticed Adelinde was there, while Tara followed her without question. Adelinde simply played the piano while Rene sat on the floor next to it, idly playing a guitar, and Tara was next to Rene and drawing.
Matteo burst in with a wide smile, having been with Mark for the morning. Mark himself, from the sounds of it, was by the door.
“Mom! Rene!”
Adelinde looked up to show he had her attention, as usual, and Rene stopped playing to do the same.
Matteo pointed to the window behind the piano. “It’s snowing! Well, flurry-ing maybe, but snow!”
Both his mother and stepmother glanced back, and sure enough there were snowflakes falling from the sky. Rene looked down at Tara.
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“Hey, kid,” she said kindly. The girl gave her a curious look, and Rene gestured towards the window. “Look outside.”
Tara obeyed, letting out a little noise when she saw the snow herself. Briefly abandoning her drawing, she mostly-walked towards the window and sat in front of it, one hand pressing against the glass trying to catch a snowflake. Considering what they knew for sure—that she must not have had a lot of interaction with others, and she had a habit of staring out windows in general with fascination unless it was raining—Rene wouldn’t be surprised if it was her first time seeing it.
Mark poked his head into the music room, offering a wave.
“Matteo wanted to come back as soon as he saw the first snowflake,” Mark said. “I have the rest of the afternoon free, though. Mind if I stay?”
“I don’t mind,” Adelinde replied, glancing at Rene for her approval. Rene nodded, and Adelinde stood up. “I can make some hot chocolate for the occasion. First snowfall of the year deserves a warm drink.”
Mark murmured some agreement, and Rene got up to put the guitar away. She picked up the papers Tara had drawn on and the crayons she used, lightly guiding the girl with her other hand to the couches in the other portion of the room. The windows there were larger, so she didn’t seem to mind the relocation. Matteo sat next to her, even attempting some kind of conversation by pointing out particularly large snowflakes.
Adelinde slightly mentioned being fine with making the hot chocolate alone, so Rene just sat down on the couch closest to where the kids decided to be and Mark took a spot across from her.
Conversation came up within minutes, Mark initially asking after Tara before Adelinde returned with one cup for each adult and a half-filled one for Matteo. The boy sat next to his uncle, wary of the warm drink but encouraged after seeing how his mother drank hers. Tara continued to sit by the window, occasionally letting out a little noise if she saw something of interest.
A migraine came up after a few minutes, and despite the pleasant conversation it reminded Rene—however briefly—of how she got here. The initial warning of not falling in love like Aurik had, but while she did she decided to be with Adelinde instead of still trying to create a nation, and that night she bound her blood to the gravestone. That cut—a partially-healed scar by now—still hurt if she thought about it.
Rene only fell silent for a second before she recalled the better things about this, too. She had a family for basically the first time—she had a wife, a brother-in-law, a stepson, a daughter.
Oddly, just in that idle chatter, she made a choice—or maybe just solidified something she already believed in. She didn’t want anyone to get hurt—to see Adelinde realize that other people shared Aurik’s ideals, to watch Matteo go through the same binding process Rene did if he had the ability, to let anything happen to Tara if she happened to be able to bind things—and so, simply put, she decided that she wouldn’t.
She wouldn’t be able to find anything like this in some other nation, Sólstaður or the first island or whatever nation they would have created with her and someone else’s blood. She didn’t hesitate to decide that she would do what she could to keep things like this—simple, cheerful, ignorant to some extent but not unhappily so. There weren’t a lot of things she thought would be worth risking if it meant she could have just a little bit more time with them, flirting and laughing and actually managing to help kids grow.
Honestly, she would probably give up everything but the people themselves to keep this stability if she had to. Rene honestly couldn’t say that she felt that way about anything else in her life—it took her twenty something years to find somewhere that she genuinely enjoyed being no matter the circumstances. She would keep them safe the best she could, if they ever ran into trouble.
If she had a say in it, they would never even know the full truth of her time with the Dazuz family.