Blair
Blair watched as the shuttle set down in the royal complex of the palace. It was only mere days before she was to walk down the aisle with King Oswald.
Sector-lord Duncan walked down the heavy ramp. He was surrounded by his normal escort of guards, and staff. There was always someone speaking in his ear about some issue or another.
Blair rushed forward and gave her brother a hug. She had missed him, miss the whole family. She knew she would have to get use to that feeling. Bastion and Goldenfields might have been connected by the Fabian Gateway Network that crossed the Dralan Trade Route, but that still took three weeks of travel.
“Miss me already?” her brother asked with a hardy laugh from beneath his reddish brown beard.
Blair pulled back and let out a sigh. “Of course I did, always and forever,” she said.
Duncan smiled. “And what about them?” he asked her with a grin and an arm waved back and up the ramp to the shuttle.
Blair looked up the shuttle, and saw the large gathering making their own way down. A mix of old and young. Brothers, and sisters, nieces and nephews. There must have been ten of her thirteen surviving siblings with the young ones. All smiles and joy on their faces.
“That’s why you left,” Blair blurted out and rushed up the ramp as Duncan’s own children ran down to greet their aunt.
Blair dropped to her knees and hugged his two oldest. A boy of eleven named for his father, and the young Duncan looked every bit like his father. Young Roderick crashed into her, as the lad of four tried to keep up with his own brother.
“Oh I missed you both,” Blair told them as she embraced them both tightly in her arms.
“It’s not as fun without you at home,” young Duncan said.
Blair smiled as she watched the youngest try to watch with her mother. Sigrid, over a year old, she pulled on her mothers hand as she tried to catch her two brothers. She had grown so much in such a short time.
It didn’t take long before they were all there. Her Sister Gwyneth, High Bishop of Goldenfields, and System-lord of Lushfield, and Ormond. Meridith, the oldest of the bastards of her father, and strong supporter of their brother Duncan. He had made her System-lord of Weyburn, that powerful world that guarded the north east of the Furmann Sector and lead into the Dralan Trade Route. The last major world long the Fabian Gateways until Commonwealth Space.
Rodger, another bastard, and under-lord to Meridith came down the ramp with the other bastards and half siblings. Bishop Maegan, Piper, Velda, and Lambert. All that was missing was her brothers William, and Hunter who lived elsewhere in the Kingdom of the Slians as the spouses of System-lords, and Morgan who had married the Lord Oritz. The indenpent realm to the west of the Kingdom of the Salians.
They were all older than Blair. Much younger. The youngest of them, Lambert, was nine years her senior. She was the last of their father’s children, the last legalitiment child after the falling out between her father and mother that had lasted years, and seen the birth of the six bastards. See loved them all, and she could feel the tears running down her face.
“Don’t cry,” Roderick said concerned.
Blair smiled at her nephew. “This are tears of joy little one,” she teased and picked him up as she greeted her siblings one by one. “I am just so happy to see you all. I have missed you so much,” she told him and pked him in his small nose.
“Bastion doesn’t look like Goldenfields from orbit,” Duncan said as though it should.
“It is larger as well,” Blair told him with a smile. “We shall get you settled in, and than we shall explore the royal place together. Maybe check out some of the other sites the world has to offer.”
“Really? He asked, and looked to his father for permission. The Sector-lord nodded, and grabbed a big hand around Blair’s head and brought her in close to kiss the top of her head.
