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“Emil, kjære*, can you go see if Henrietta has laid any eggs yet?” Immediately his face lightened up, he loved going to get the eggs, I never really understood why, but he seemed very fond of the hens, especially Henrietta.
Henrietta wasn’t that old yet, I had gotten her for his birthday, it might seem like an odd thing to give a four-year-old, but he was so happy… She hadn’t laid any eggs yet, but Emil always wanted to check anyway. I knew that it would most likely be a few more weeks before she started laying eggs, she was only 6 months old after all, but I wouldn’t deny him whatever little happiness he could find around here.
“Yes, mamma.” He said before he ran out of the bedroom, storming outside, towards the small coop I, with some help from Alfred and Eduard, had set up for our, now, three chickens. I smiled to myself. When he had first started calling me that I had corrected him, telling him that I wasn’t his mother, I don’t know if he was just too young to really understand, or if it was too confusing for him when other people called him my son, but he kept calling me mamma. Eventually I started to actually like it, it made me feel like we were more of a family, so I stopped correcting him. By now, it felt like I really was his mother.
While he was out in the coop, I changed into a clean dress and tried to wake myself up. It was still early, I could tell, but today was Sunday, laundry day. Yekaterina and I had made an agreement a while back; she would take care of all of the kids for a couple of hours, and I would go down to the river and do the laundry for both of our families.
Just as I had finished collecting our laundry, Emil came back into the bedroom. “So, did Henrietta lay any eggs yet?” I asked, before turning around to face him.
“No, but Millie and Sasa did.” He said, holding out two fairly large eggs. I didn’t always let him get the eggs, since he sometimes accidentally dropped one, but usually I just let him do it, he was out there to check on Henrietta anyway.
“You know, it’s Sasha, not Sasa.” I told him with a smile as I had so many times before. For some reason, he just couldn’t pronounce that name correctly, not that the way he said it didn’t sound pretty adorable, but I still felt like I had to teach him how it was supposed to be pronounced. “Now, why don’t we go see if Raivis is awake yet?” Emil hurriedly handed me the eggs before he ran out of the room. “Don’t run inside, Emil!” I yelled after him, but he had already reached his destination.
“So, Kat, ‘got the laundry ready?”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” She asked me.
“Yes, I’m sure. You ask me that every Sunday. I don’t mind doing the laundry once in a while.”
“Okay, if you say so.” She quietly answered, as she handed me her family’s bundle of laundry, she had three kids and a husband, so it was significantly larger than mine. I didn’t really mind, though, this was the only alone time I had, and if I had to wash laundry doing that time, then so be it. However, while spending some time alone was nice sometimes, it was hard not to think about things that I shouldn’t be thinking about anymore. It had been difficult to explain to Emil why we couldn’t talk about Lukas anymore, or Arthur and Vlad for that matter. I still wasn’t sure he really understood, but he had stopped asking for Lukas after a while, which made it easier for me to not think about him. Not that I ever really stopped thinking about him, I kept thinking about how we never even got to say goodbye, how he would never know that Emil and I were okay. He didn’t even get a proper funeral, Arthur didn’t either. I tried to forget, I really did. I tried hard. However, often I found myself imagine what it would be like to meet him again. Somewhere down the road, I guess I just accepted that I would probably always have to carry this with me. Eventually Emil had made a few friends among the children in the village who were around his age, and I tried to tell myself that I could be happy here too; I just needed to give it time. I think I always knew that that maybe that wasn’t entirely true, it was just easier to pretend that it was.
Maybe it would always be like that, me pretending to be happy as I tried to keep Emil as safe as I could. I couldn’t do anything to change what had happened, I had nowhere else to go than here, and, if nothing else, it really did feel safe here, and sacrificing happiness for safety was something that I was perfectly able to do, for his sake.
“See you later, Kat.” I told her as I turned around.
“Bye, I’ll take good care of Emil.”
“You always do.”
“Oh, and (Y/N)?” She hurriedly said before I left the house. “Mathias is coming over to dinner tonight, just so you know.” Great… Then I’ll need to have a talk with Emil, we can’t have a repeat of last time…



“Skatt*, I know that you don’t like Mathias, but he-“ Emil stubbornly looked away the moment I mentioned Mathias’ name. “Look at me.” Emil kept his gaze fixed on the floor as he stood with his arms crossed, pouting. “Emil, look at me.” I demanded, refusing to finish my sentence before he did so. “Look. At. Me.” I tried again. I swear, this kid… He’ll be the death of me.
“But, Mamma…” He whined, as he threw his head back and sent me an irritated look.
“Yeah, yeah, I know…” I picked him up from the floor before I sat down on the bed with him in my lap. “Now, Emil, listen to what I have to say, okay?” It wasn’t actually a question, and I think he knew that from the tone that I was using. “Mathias is a very kind man, and I think you know that.”
“But-“ He protested, throwing his arms around my neck in some kind of desperate attempt to make me understand.
“No buts, Emil. You might not like him, but that does not mean that he isn’t a good person.” I said, maintaining eye-contact with him to make sure that he was listening to me. “In fact he is a good person, he’s very nice to the both of us.”
Emil let out some sort of frustrated sound before he buried his head in the fabric of my dress, and I couldn’t help but laugh a little. I wrapped my arms around him, and hugged him close to me before I continued to talk: “So when he comes over tonight,” Another dissatisfied sound sounded from him. “when he comes over tonight, then be nice to him. Will you promise me that?”
“No.”
I sighed. God dammit, Emil, how hard can it be?
“Yes, Emil, you have to be nice to him.” I argued, apparently reasoning with someone who did not want to be reasoned with, was not an option today, so I would just have to make him act at least somewhat decent some other way.
“Mamma, I don’t want to…” He hurriedly protested.
“Maybe not, but you still have to.”
He looked up from my dress and into my eyes. “Why?” I almost found it hard to believe how sincere his question sounded, how was this so difficult to understand for him?
“Because… You just have to, okay? Mathias is nice to you, so you have to be nice to him too.”
“But I don’t like him!” He practically yelled in his frustration.
“That’s not important, Emil. You have to be nice to other people, even if you don’t like them.” The things you have to explain to a four-year-old… ”That’s just the right thing to do.”
“Hmmm.”
“So you’ll be nice to Mathias?”
“Yeah… Fine…”



If it wasn’t because I knew you were really trying right now, Emil, I’d… I don’t even know what I’d do, I’ve tried everything already… Why is it so hard for you to act nice around him?
“So, (Y/N), how are you guys holding up?”
“Huh?” I intelligently said as I was pulled out of my thoughts by Mathias’ question. “Oh, we’re doing fine, just like always.” I answered with a pleasant smile, I could almost feel Emil rolling his eyes at me. “How about you? How are you doing, Mathias?”
“Awesome!” He loudly exclaimed. “Especially now that I’m here with you.” He said as he winked at me.
I could feel my cheeks heat up, and Yekaterina smirked at me from the other side of the table. What’s he saying that for? “It’s nice to see you too…” I mumbled, looking down on my dinner, trying to hide the fact that I was blushing. I could hear Emil dramatically sigh, and it was very hard not to laugh at his antics. He might be annoying, but I wouldn’t trade him for anything.
By the time I got the courage to look up from the potatoes that I was eating, Mathias was busy talking about something with Alfred. Yekaterina, however, was still looking at me with that weird smirk and odd look in her eyes. I raised my eyebrow at her, but she just giggled a little and ignored the implied question.
“I can’t believe it’s already been a year and a half…” Yekaterina suddenly said.
“Yeah, me neither.” I wistfully responded. “And I can’t believe you’ve actually let me live here for so long…”
“Oh don’t start that again.” She teased with a friendly smile. “It’s actually been very nice to have someone else to take care of the kids sometimes.”
“Mamma?” Emil asked after a while of being completely silent, I guessed that was his way of being nice, and looked at me with his best puppy eyes. “Can me and Raivis go play now?”
“Ehm…” Well, he has been unnaturally normal around Mathias, and he hasn’t said anything embarrassing either… But wouldn’t it be kind of impolite to just let him go?
As if she was sensing my conflicting feelings Yekaterina quickly told him that it was okay, and the two boys immediately left the table and went outside. “Toris, can you go watch them?” She asked her eleven-year-old son. “I don’t like them being outside all by themselves.” Toris immediately agreed; he had already been looking worriedly at them when they went out the door. He left the table and went after his younger brother and Emil. I got a weird feeling that she was trying to get rid of the kids when she suddenly told Eduard that he could go too.
“(Y/N),” Yekaterina said around ten minutes after Eduard had left. “why don’t you walk Mathias home while милий** and I clean up after dinner?”
I sent her a puzzled look. “But he lives 5 minutes away from here…” Alfred didn’t look too happy about the arrangement either.
“Yes, and you could use the fresh air, now go!” What are you up to, Kat? She sounded unusually demanding, and something about the way she said it made me think that she wouldn’t stop before I did as she told me to. I wonder if this is the tone she uses with her kids?

…do I use that tone with Emil?



“I’m really happy that you’re here.” Mathias told me out of the blue while we were walking to his house, for some reason I had a feeling that he was walking slower than usual.
“What do you mean?” I asked, curious about his sudden statement.
“Well, I just mean that I’m glad I met you, that’s all.”
I smiled a little at his comment, but didn’t say anything. There was an awkward tension around us, it was almost weird, usually Mathias was just loud and happy, I didn’t even know how to cope with his sudden silence.
It wasn’t long before we reached his small cottage, but Mathias didn’t immediately say goodbye and go inside like I thought he would. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
“No… I was just thinking.” He responded.
“About what?”
“You can’t live here with Al and Kat forever you know?” He said, a hint of his usual happy smile on his face.
I nodded. “Yeah, I know…” It was silent for a while, which in retrospect seemed very odd, but I didn’t think much about it at the time, I was too busy wondering about other things.
“(Y/N)?” Mathias scratched his neck and suddenly seemed very nervous.
“Hmm?”
He took my right hand into both of his and looked deep into my eyes. “You see… The thing is…” It seemed like he was struggling with the words, and to be completely honest, it was a little endearing. “I really like you… And, I was thinking that maybe you could come live with me… You know… Like… As my wife?” I looked at him with great surprise, never in a million years had I imagined him asking me something like that. “But only if you want to!” He hurriedly added, most likely sensing my distress. What answer could I possibly give to a question like that?



Three years earlier

“I have to tell you something, (Y/N).” Lukas said the minute I entered the house, I hadn’t even had enough time to close to door. He looked even more serious than usual, and a little nervous too?
I carefully closed the door, I was a little nervous now, was something wrong? “Yes, what is it Lukas?”
“You don’t have to sound so scared, (Y/N), it’s not anything bad…” So it was that obvious, huh? Either that, or I guess he just reads me well… “At least I hope you don’t think so…”
He walked over to where I was standing and placed his hand on my arm. “Somethings been on my mind lately.” It seemed like he was trying to avoid any form of eye-contact with me, and it was hard to not wonder why. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for a really long time now.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked.
For a second it almost seemed like he smiled, as if he thought that what I said was funny. “I do, very much.” He confessed. “Just promise me one thing, will you?”
Immediately I nodded. “Anything.” I wasn’t lying when I said that, I think I really would promise him anything… Just as long as it made him happy.
“Don’t ever let anything ruin our friendship, not even what I’m about to tell you.”
Puzzled by his words I once again tried to make eye-contact with him, but he seemed very intent to look at anything but my face. Even though it annoyed me that I couldn’t get him to look me in the eyes, I nodded. “Of course, I would never let that happen.”
“Good… Because, you see… This thing that I’ve been thinking so much about…” He started. “It’s you.” He finally looked at me, and it was easy to see from the look in his eyes that he was telling the truth. “I’ve fallen in love with you.”
I had no idea what to say, I had never thought that he would ever say that to me. How many times had I not imagined what it would be like if he did? None of those times had ended with me saying absolutely nothing while Lukas was looking at me as if he was afraid that I would hit him or something.
Finally he sighed, and looked down. “Never mind, forget I ever said anything…” He turned around and started to walk away from me. “I knew it was stupid to tell you about it…” His words pulled me back to reality, and I realised that I had to do something; I couldn’t just let him walk away now.
“Wait, Lukas!” I said, maybe a little too loudly, but it managed to get his attention. He stopped for a moment, and almost looked back at me, but didn’t. That moment, however, was enough for me to hurriedly walk up in front of him, stopping him from running away from the situation. “You didn’t even let me say anything.” He was avoiding eye-contact again, it always bothered me when he wouldn’t look me in the eyes, he had such beautiful eyes… Even though he had just told me that he was in love with me, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you too…” It didn’t take long for him to shift his gaze from somewhere on the wall to me. “Lukas…” I said, trying to come up with something to say, but I found it hard to do so when he was looking at me like that. There was a certain tenderness to his eyes, he was looking at me in a way he had never looked at me before, and I had a feeling that I was doing the same thing.
Slowly, almost as if he was afraid to startle me, he brought his hand up to my face, and I found myself leaning into the touch. He brought with him a feeling of safety wherever he went, or at least that’s what I had always thought, and it was that feeling of safety that made it even more wonderful when I felt his lips on mine. It was also that same feeling of safety, along with a completely new feeling, that made it so easy for me to return his affections.



“I… I don’t know what to say, Mathias…”
“You don’t have to say anything right now, (Y/N).” He said, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze. “Just promise me you’ll think about it, okay?” I nodded, looking into his clear blue eyes, trying to not think of another pair of blue eyes that I so dearly missed. Mathias was right, I couldn’t live here forever, it was Alfred and Kat’s home, not mine, but could I really be his wife? Could I be happy with him?
What am I going to do?

*Skatt and kjære are Norwegian terms of endearment, they each respectively mean treasure and dear
**милий is a Ukrainian term of endearment, as far as I know it means (my) dear, but I don’t speak Ukrainian, so I don’t actually know for sure…

And just in case you couldn’t guess, mamma is the Norwegian and Icelandic word for mom, the word for mother is a little different, but does anyone really walk around calling their moms ‘mother’?