31 December 2016
Winnipeg, Canada

It is a cold winter night, but the heat of the crowd is warming. Hrodwyn, Merethel, and Hygd stand among them in this park downtown, counting down the minutes to midnight. It’s the family’s first time celebrating New Year’s outside of their home. Hygd chatters away with Hrodwyn, both their breaths misting the air as they take in the people, the laughter, and the dreams. But Merethel, nervous, looks down at his phone, then up, then down again.

It takes him a while, but he finally spots her — the transfer student from France, the star of theatre class, his brunette girlfriend. She’s looking around — it seems like she’s looking for him, too; her eyes scan the crowd for his figure.

She tries calling out. “Merethel?”

“Steora? Steora!” Merethel tiptoes and waves his hand high above.

Hygd gasps. “STEORAAAA!!!!”

Smiling, Hrodwyn bends down and hoists Hygd up on their shoulders. Hygd’s head of orange hair pokes out of the crowd like a flag. She waves both her hands wildly. “STEORAAA!!! OVER HERE!!!”

Finally, Steora Rochefort sees her the family, and the brightness of her smile matches her namesake.

“Hygd!” she says with a wave back, matching the youngest’s, and trots over to the three siblings. When she arrives, she immediately greets Merethel with a hug. “Hrodwyn.” Her gaze drifts from Hrodwyn’s a little as she shuffles slightly closer to Merethel, but she offers the eldest a greeting smile.

Then, of course,

“Hi, Merethel.”

Her smile and the stars in her eyes takes on a softer quality as she pecks her boyfriend’s cheek and wraps him in a hug.

“Hiiiii!” Hygd grins.

Hrodwyn smiles politely and nods. “Hello.”

Merethel wraps his arms around her, happy to feel her weight against him. He sighs, content. “Hello, Steora.” Gently, he returns the peck with one atop her hand, dusting her cheeks with colour. “I hope this is not so busy for you. I was hoping that a random park wouldn’t be so crowded, but here we are…”

She responds by lacing her fingers with his. “Mm. It’s okay. It’s not like I don’t deal with a lot of people for work, you know that,” she laughs a little.

Despite the dark, Steora can see Merethel’s smile grow. He tightens his hand in hers and asks, “How are you feeling? How was work?”

“Work is as work always is~” she hums and swings their joined hands a little. “How have you been?” The question is addressed to all three siblings, this time, as she casts a glance at all of them.

Merethel opens his mouth—

“I don’t wanna go back to schoooool........” Hygd wails.

Merethel glares at Hygd. She ignores him, flopping on top of Hrodwyn’s head. Meanwhile, Hrodwyn responds to Steora with a simple nod and a thumbs-up. Steora gives them a little grin and a thumbs-up back with her free hand. It takes her a while still to get used to Hrodwyn, but she’s warming up to the eldest now. Her thumb gently runs across Merethel’s hand in a soothing gesture.

“And why not, Hygd?” she asks the youngest with a lilt of amusement and curiosity in her tone.

Hygd giggles, then sighs dramatically. “C’mon. Who wants to go back to school? Two weeks is noooot enooooough........” Hygd straightens and points at her brother. “Also, vosha doesn’t let me play Animal Jam on his laptop.”

“I—what!” Merethel gawks.

Hrodwyn sputters. In front of his girlfriend? Foul.

“I do!” Merethel reddens. “It’s just that every time I let you, you always play for two hours. No less! I have homework to do, you know.”

Steora looks at him with her eyebrows knitted. She pokes his cheek gently. “Merethel, you do most of your work with me anyway. Let her play Animal Jam, will you.”

He sighs and rests his hand on the small of her back. “I guess…”

Steora smiles as she leans on Merethel’s shoulder. Then to Hygd, in an attempt to soothe ruffled feathers, “Well, if you go to school, then you won’t have to fight Merethel for the laptop. If you go early enough the computer lab might even still be open?”

“Yeah, exactly!” Hygd nods wildly. “That’s the only thing I’m looking forward to… and seeing my other friends there too!” She gestures her hands everywhere with a smile, throwing her weight around to and fro. Hrodwyn sways wide-eyed like a skyscraper during an earthquake. Hygd doesn’t notice and continues. “What about you, Steora? Do you wanna go back to school?”

“Hmm,” she hums, still with that smile on her lips as she tucks herself perfectly into Merethel’s arms. “Yep. I can’t wait to go back, really.”

She looks at Merethel and thinks of coming home. “I get to see him more.”

And less of the woman who birthed me.

“And I get to see you more, and you can tell me about Animal Jam!”

She seeks shelter in the brightness of Hygd’s smile and counts on it to chase away the shadows of her thoughts.

Merethel chuckles. “I think you just opened Pandora’s box.”

“Yeah, you just did,” Hygd grins. “But anyway! So Animal Jam is this game…”

More people begin to fill in the park. Merriment is in the air: friends bet on New Year resolutions, families take pictures together, kids run amok and squeal with laughter, and couples lovingly hold each other. There are some people who look about Hrodwyn’s age but speak in their own familiar tongues — international university students perhaps, those who did not go home to their families this winter break. A lot of them live downtown after all, just like the Canadian students from out of town. Some of them are even neighbours. Hrodwyn watches them and imagines themselves in their shoes, but only for a while.

Someone starts passing out sparklers. People clear out for the small flowers of ember sizzling and burning bright against the temperature in the negatives. Phones are pulled out to capture their temporary, iridescent bloom. When Hygd finishes her yapping, Hrodwyn puts Hygd on the ground, raises a finger, and points to the distribution of sparklers.

“Ah… do you guys want sparklers?”

Steora looks in the direction Hrodwyn is pointing, and her eyes begin to reflect the tiny pinpricks of light dotting the place.

“May we?” she says, voice dyed with wonder as she turns her glittering eyes to Merethel.

He gazes at her with his blue eye and smiles. “Of course! Hygd? Hrodwyn?”

“YAY! Let’s go!!” Hygd takes off running.

“Hygd, wait up!” Hrodwyn runs after her.

A woman hands out the sparklers. Hrodwyn collects three unlit stalks and one lit stalk from her. With the singular lit sparkler, Hrodwyn lights Hygd’s and Steora’s, and Steora turns to Merethel. He gazes at her by the light of her sparkler’s embers. They cast a soft glow on her face like tiny stars. His smile melts at his girlfriend, and he raises his unlit sparkler to her.

“A toast of stars for the new year?”

The responding giggle that carries through the little space between them is the quality of feather-down as she gently nudges their sparklers together.

“A toast of stars for the new year,” she repeats after him. “For many more of these, with you.”

His sparkler blooms into life, and his smile is made all the brighter with all the stars wrapped around them — but his eyes remain only on his one star in front of him.