Chapter Text
It stood as a nigh unchanging monolith, even as the room around it shifted with the passing years. Fashions came and went after all, but this piece of furniture did not.
It stood on four solid legs, which bore a bassinet made of the finest black pine wood available. It was shaped like a ka’rta beskar, the Heart of a Mando’ad. Each corner and facet was embellished with metal. The upper portion that curled over the bed protectively was adorned with a mythosaur made of beskar.
After all, this was the first bed that each member of the main Wren Clan had rested in. The records were murky on who had built it in the first place, but it had become tradition to lay babies to sleep in it for centuries, and for each parent to add to the beskar.
Ursa herself had lain in its protection. And now she stared at it as her sister put new sheets on the new mattress.
* * *
Night had fallen and the moon shone silver on the fresh snow. Divots and rills showed off where spars had happened earlier in the day. The lake was iced over and it shimmered, reflecting the grand house behind it.
The house was asleep. It was the sort of peace that was almost fragile, like a glass sculpture that seemed sturdy until one found the right place to hit it so that it would shatter.
Only one soul was awake. The new mother, who probably should have been sleeping, but was instead standing just inside a room she rarely thought of in the past. She had never had need of it before, after all.
But now there was a child sleeping in the bassinet of her forbears. And she slept soundly, even if Ursa knew that it would not last.
And Ursa turned, walked out of the nursery, closed the door, and made her way to her ship.
There was a war on, after all, and she didn’t want to miss it.
Alrich woke to the crying of his daughter. But he knew that there was no mother to soothe her. Ursa had told him that she would leave in the night and leave in the night she did. All that she left him was a note, a simple painting, and their daughter.
Their daughter who needed a mother still, even if Ursa did not want to fulfill that particular duty. He had known who he was marrying.
And he only regretted it a little as he hauled himself up to go start Sabine’s day.
* * *
The bassinet still stood in the room. Ursa could only identify the feather she had made for Sabine because it was slightly shinier than the rest of the adornments. Well, except for the meticulously carved paintbrush that had been added a few months ago.
Ursa had left Death Watch to be Countess some time ago and found herself to be a stranger in her own home. Sabine didn’t recognize or trust her at the start, and only barely seemed to now. Even if she had fallen asleep in her arms during the tour of the forge.
Tristan had been a difficult baby thus far and was still proving it tonight. He squirmed in Ursa’s arms even as she tried to put him down in the bassinet. He clearly didn’t want to go to bed, even if it was time for it.
Sabine’s bedroom was next door, and she could hear as Alrich offered her different storybooks and she rejected each one, until he came to the one about the firebird.
Ursa had heard that particular story many times, and read it a few as well. It was Sabine’s favorite, and Ursa could swear that all of them, save Tristan, had the tale nigh memorized.
Sighing, she gave up on putting Tristan down for the moment and swayed over to the rocking chair in the room that had been a gift from… someone, at the time of Sabine’s birth. She settled into it, adding the light creaking to the sound of her husband’s voice as he read aloud.
Long after the story was done and Alrich had sung a lullaby, Ursa was finally able to set Tristan down in the solid protection of the bassinet.
She rolled her shoulders, left the room, and went to find a sparring partner.