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There had been yelling, that Saturday morning. Rae's mother had come home from an early grocery-shopping trip to find a vegetarian version of Charlie's sausage-hashbrown pie cooking in the oven, and a ten-year old alone in the kitchen, reading while she waited for it to finish. Charlie had gone to open the coffeehouse hours before Rae woke up, leaving Rae alone in the house, as happened often enough. And, it being a cold, dreary, January day, Rae had wanted something heartier and more warming than cereal with milk for breakfast.

Rae had shown her irate mother that everything was all right, that she had been extra-careful and safe while chopping onions and shredding potatoes, chopping up kale and cooking everything (which hadn't phased her mother a bit), and explained that she'd cooked for herself when left home alone loads of times before and had been just fine (which actually made things worse).

It's just as well that the door to Milliways appeared in the door to Rae's room, where she had been sent. The girl was still hungry, and still smarting - from the assumption that she couldn't do it on her own just as much as from being grounded.

And there was a kitchen, easily within reach now. She wasn't technically leaving her room, since her room didn't deign to show up when she had opened her bedroom door. That isn't her fault at all.

So there is a young girl in the Milliways kitchen, this morning, shredding potatoes using a large cheese-grater and generally illustrating her opinion that adult supervision is something that happens to other people.

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His smile grows warmer.
"For those mornings, I have always preferred hot porridge," he says. "With dried fruit. And honey."

"We sometimes have oatmeal," Rae nods with a smile, understanding that they are in the same family-type of breakfast foods. "And it's good with homemade blackberry jam mixed in, and a splash of milk. But I wanted breakfast pie today."

"In any case, Mom wouldn't have been any less upset with me for using the stove to make oatmeal by myself than she was for me using the oven," Rae adds, wryly, explaining why she's cooking in Milliways and not at home.

He looks puzzled.

"Your mother - did not want you to help?"
That sounds quite strange to him.

Rae's mouth twists slightly, a smaller echo of one of the adult Sunshine's signs of frustration, as she moves the successfully shredded and dried potatoes into a large mixing bowl.

"She doesn't want me using them alone. Thinks I'll end up burning the place down, or something dramatic like that, even though I've already been using them from time to time for years," the girl says, moving to carefully begin dicing a large, white onion. "She just doesn't trust me, I guess."

Elrond's eyes soften a little.
"She wants you to be safe," he says. Of course, that is what she wants. She is her mother.

"I am safe," protests the girl. "Especially when at home, in our own kitchen. I've grown up helping out in there. Just because she's not hovering over my every move doesn't mean suddenly I'll forget how to be careful."

"I have full grown children" Elrond replies, serenely.
"I still worry."

And not just now, when his sons ride out, when his daughter has made the choice she has made. But every day from they were born till now. Wanting them to be safe. And happy.

The frustrated twist to the girl's mouth is very similar to the look her adult self gets when frustrated.

"Bet you don't yell at them for doing something they've done loads of times."

Well, helped do loads of times.

"I strive to not yell at anyone," Elrond replies.

"Good," she says, still faintly upset as she moves the dry shredded potatoes into a mixing bowl and sets to carefully chopping the leafy green kale into tiny bits.

"It's not a nice feeling, being yelled at for doing what you've been taught how to do."

And it is increasingly difficult not to yell back.

"It is not," he agrees. Quietly.

He's been a child once.

The girl presses her lips together, chopping the rest of the kale and dumping it into the bowl with the potatoes.

"I know she worries, what with the new baby and the wars going on. But I'd rather she not yell when I try to do something so she doesn't have to worry so much." It smarts, and she resents it. It makes her want not even to try.

And it will only get worse.

Edited 2014-12-09 17:14 (UTC)

"Does she know that is why you did it?" he asks.
Perhaps, the mother only sees disobedience instead of the reasoning behind it.

"I don't think so," Rae murmurs, cutting off the top and bottom of the round, white onion, and beginning to dice. "But I don't know that my intentions would matter, if she doesn't believe I could do it on my own."

"Perhaps it should bear place to start?" Elrond suggests. Gently.
"When everyone has had a chance to let go of their anger."

"I'm grounded for a week, so... after that?" the girl says, unable to keep the faint trace of bitterness from her wry tone.

"Grounded?"
It is clearly an unfamiliar term.

The girl looks at him, surprised. He said he had kids - didn't he ever ground them?

"It's punishment. No going over to friends' houses, no friends coming over to ours, no trips to the library or bookstore, no new books, no watching television, and I have to stay in my room while I'm home, except for meals."

Edited 2014-12-09 20:51 (UTC)

"You cannot go outside?"

He will not gainsay her parents.
But - not being allowed outside?

"Well," the girl shrugs a little, blinking hard to keep from giving in to the urge to wipe at her eyes - the main danger of chopping onions. "It's winter, so it's nearly dark by the time I get home from school anyway, and there's curfews after sundown. So it's not that big a deal, I guess."

That would be a 'yes.'

Though it still feels like an injustice, to have tried to do something so her mother wouldn't have to worry about it, just to get in trouble for making her mother worry.

He still finds that very hard to understand.
,
Maybe it shows. Just a little.

Elves do not lock their children up inside.
In the case of his brother and him, well, captivity as bargaining chips is somewhat different.