VENISON STEW AND PANIC

Wren's POV

"I kissed a boy, Grandma."

The venison stew on the stove had been bubbling for twenty minutes and Grandma was supposed to be resting but she was sitting at the kitchen table in her house robe with her reading glasses on her head and her full attention on me instead. She was not resting as much as I would have wanted her to, but thank goodness she was on her feet today. 

I didn't get any reply from her. What is happening to my grandma?

“Grandma, I said I…”

“I heard you, Wren…” She put her cup down slowly and she cleared her throat.

“Oh, and I thought you had disappeared,” I chuckled nervously.

"Which boy," she said flatly.

"It doesn't matter which boy… I just kissed a boy,” I tapped the pot, as if to drown the thought that I might have made a bad decision telling her. 

"It absolutely matters which boy, Wren Reyes, sit down and tell me which boy,” now she was looking me dead in the eyes and I was tapping the pot faster. 

“Wren don't break my pot, it is ceramic!”

“Okay! Okay!” I yelled almost immediately in defence.

“Come over here,” she gestured, tapping the green wooden chair close to her. 

I walked up to her slowly and I sat down. Pulled my sleeves over my hands. I stared at the table.

"Cal Voss," I said.

There was silence. I didn’t need a seer to tell me Grandma was computing information and enjoying herself at the same time. I looked up. She had both hands pressed flat on the table and her eyes were wide and bright and she looked more awake than she had in weeks.

"The quiet one," she said.

"Yes."

"The one with the journal."

"Yes."

"The one betrothed to the Thorne girl."

"Grandma!" I growled in frustration. “They are all betrothed to the Thorne girls and I do not want to remember that”

"I am just making sure I have the right boy, Wren. There are three of them." She picked up her cup again. Took a slow sip. Her eyes dancing excitedly over the rim of it. "How was it?"

"I am not answering that."

"Was it good?"

"Grandma!"

"You brought it up!" She set the cup down and laughed, short and wheezy, it came from her chest and made her whole small frame shake. "You walked into my kitchen and said I kissed a boy Grandma and then you want me to just nod and go back to my soup? Who raised you?"

"You raised me," I said. "This is your fault."

She laughed harder.

I was smiling and I had not given myself permission to do that. I pulled my sleeves further over my hands.

"It was," I stopped. Started again. "It was fine."

"Fine," she repeated.

"Fine."

"Wren."

"It was good, okay? It was good. Are you happy? Can we move on?"

She looked extremely happy. She looked like someone had handed her a gift. She reached across the table and patted my hand. 

"What are you going to do?" she asked. "About the bond."

And just like that the laughing part was over.

I pulled my hand back. Looked at the table. The venison stew kept bubbling on the stove, steam rising slowly , the smell of it filling the whole kitchen the way it always had, the way it had my whole life in this house with her. I loved her. She was the only family I had. 

“Young lady…?” she called my attention with a small tap on the table. 

"I don't know," I said honestly.

"You have a few weeks left."

"I know."

"That is not a lot of time."

"I know."

She was quiet for a moment. Outside the window the night was doing its thing, crickets and wind and the distant sound of the neighbour's infant screaming. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. Nothing like the sounds of a school corridor and a wall at my back and Cal's hands at my jaw.

"I think I am starting to like him," I said quietly. I didn’t know what her reaction would be like. 

Grandma did not say anything immediately. That was how I knew she was taking it seriously.

"Cal," she said finally.

"Cal," I confirmed.

She nodded slowly. "You know," she said, carefully

"Grandma."

"I am just saying, Wren. The moon goddess gave you three."

"Do not finish that sentence."

"Why choose one," she spread her hands wide, eyes bright, "when eventually you can have them all? And they so fine,” she laughed

I stared at her.

She stared back completely unrepentant.

"You are a seventy one year old woman," I said.

"I am a seventy one year old woman who has been alive long enough to know that options are a blessing and not a burden. Boys are fun. Stop being such a boring person”

"That is insane."

"No… no… I won’t take that from you. I am giving you wisdom,” She was already laughing again, that wheezy chest laugh, and I was laughing too because I could not help it

I was mid laugh when she stopped.

Not slowed down. Stopped.

"Grandma?"

Her hand went to the table edge. Her cup tipped. Tea spread across the wood in a slow dark pool and she did not look at it, she was looking at something I could not see, her eyes gone somewhere far and wrong.

"Grandma!"

I was around the table before I finished saying it. Her body was shaking. A full body convulsion, her shoulders, her hands, her head, all of it moving in a rhythm that was scary. She foamed at the mouth. Her eye rolled back until there was nothing left hit white

"Grandma, look at me. Look at me!"

She couldn't.

Her glasses slid off her head and cracked on the floor and I had one hand on her shoulder and one reaching for my phone and my hands were completely steady because they had to be, because I was the only one here, because there was nobody else.

Moon goddess, please. Not again

I dialled the number. 

"This is Wren Reyes," I said, when the heale

r picked up. "My grandmother is convulsing. You need to come right now."