How the fuck did Lucette's Mama get a silver dragon to marry her. 

Yeah Lucette comes by being a Complete Weirdo honestly <3

"...So, what are the words?" 

Lucette tells him the words! And their definitions. 

Wow what the fuck normal languages do not have single words for this shit. No wonder they tend to be used as swear words. Amazing. 

Now that Daeran has proven himself not to be an immovable object against the unstoppable force of Lucette's affectionate gregariousness, she visits more often. Not every day--not that she wouldn't be tempted, but she has lessons and so on--but certainly more often than once a week. 

A few months later, she finds him hiding in his room again. 

...Hm. 

Lucette has to pick the lock to get into his room again. That hasn't happened since her first visit. 

He isn't lying under the blankets, this time. He's sat up against the head of the bed, hugging his knees to his chest, looking more anxious than depressed. 

Well, that'll make it easier to hug him properly. 

"What's wrong?" 

"Nothing." 

...She pulls back just far enough that he can see the deeply skeptical look she's giving him.

Huff. "Nothing important." 

"You can lie to me if you wanna but if you want me to believe you you'll have to get better at it." 

...Soft snort. 

Sigh. 

"It's been four months and my cousin hasn't come to see me." 

"Oh." 

Snuggle. 

Lucette's parents have never gone as long as a month without seeing her, but...there have been months where the only time she saw them was when one or the other one had a couple of spell slots going spare before going to sleep, and stayed just long enough to tuck her in and tell her a bedtime story. 

Queen Galfrey is a very, very impressive paladin, but: paladins don't get teleports. 

"I'll ask Mama about it." Probably Mama isn't usually fighting in the same place as Queen Galfrey, but she might ever be, and she can certainly take a passenger when she teleports. Lucette is okay with seeing her Mama just a little bit less, if it means Daeran gets to see the only family he has left, ever. 

(She's asking specifically Mama and not Mummy because Terendelev repeatedly being off the battlefield at the same time as Queen Galfrey is proooobably a worse idea than Lavinia Wex being off the battlefield at the same time as Queen Galfrey.)

"I don't want my cousin to think I'm a whiny baby!" 

"But you do want her to come see you." 

"...Yeah." 

"Mama will know what to do. She's smart." 

...Well, he's now shifted from feeling bad because he wants his only living relative to care about him enough to show up to feeling bad because he really really misses his mom. Does that help? 

Well help is a pretty subjective thing, here, but it turns it from a problem to maybe try to solve to a problem to just be hugged about. So. You know. 

"Mama, the Queen hasn't come to see Daeran at all," she says, the next time her Mama is home. 

"...Sorry, what?" 

"They're cousins, and he doesn't have any other family left, and I don't think she does either, and she hasn't come visit him like you do with me! At all!" 

Lavinia's heart twinges, as it always does, at the reminder that the time she spends with her much-beloved child can only be considered a visit and not her life. 

"Sweetheart," she murmurs, "it took--time, for your Mummy and I to figure out how we were, going to balance fighting the war against having you. And we had that time--we had as much time as we needed, before we went ahead and made you. Queen Galfrey hasn't had that time--Daeran lost everything with no warning--she...didn't make the decision, to bring him into her life. It's not the same thing at all." 

"It's been months! Maybe she hasn't had as much time as you did, but she's had time, and he's hurting, and he needs her!"