Guarded Love (COMPLETED)

Garden Party

When a pop reverberated through the gardens Alistair cried out, "Okay, that's it. Daddy's done." Spud's impenetrable lip stuck further and further out, like a drawbridge to release the horde, but he was unmoved by her plight. He also couldn't move due to his knee seizing up. Groaning, Alistair tipped over to his side which invited a toddler to hop onto his back like a crazed deepstalker. She began to coat him in the grass she'd yanked out in tufts because of reasons that made sense in her mind.

"Spud," Alistair warned, trying to get her to stop while he gritted his teeth and stretched out his knee. A thousand curses erupted behind his eyes but he bit them all down while the renegade joint gave in to his commands. He couldn't remember exactly what caused this part of his body to fall apart, but he suspected there was something stupid he did in his twenties that was finally enacting its revenge. Aging was best left to the young.

Unaware of her father's struggles, Spud's pudgy hands beat erratically up and down his arm trying to get him to become the playful druffalo again. "I'm out, Tater Tot," he said, trying to rise to his feet. But the tyrant in short pants wasn't hearing any of that.

"No!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. A few of the nobles who just had to visit the gardens while the royals did perked up. Alistair had wanted this to be simple, a family thing, so of course Eamon used the moment to their political advantage. Nearly everyone who was certain either the Queen was about to keel over dead, was already dead for five years or more, believed the children -- as a ruse by the palace -- were secretly puppets, or were just general jerks stood around watching. He'd shrugged most of it off, wanting to for once ignore that damn crown shrinking him down year after year, but nothing in his life could ever be simple.

"Spudkins," Alistair warned. "What do we say?"

"No, I don't wanna!" she fumed, nearing stage five on the toddler breakdown scale. After this it was pounding her fists on the ground, crying giant crocodile tears, and refusing to do anything anyone asked of her. Which would go over swimmingly with so much of the Bannorn sticking their judgmental noses into it. He anticipated a swarm of "Well I nevers" from old dowagers who hadn't seen a filthy nappy since they named the damn Age.

Alistair reached over to swoop up his daughter into a hug, which she deftly dodged, the tears beginning, when a calmer voice spoke out, "Little Lady." While her father meant nothing, her mum's softer but more direct condemnation stifled those waterworks in an instant. "We behave when in public."

"Fine," Spud groaned, before flailing out her skirt and plopping onto the ground.

Cordell slipped over to the grumbling princess and hovered above her. "Shall I play with you instead?"

She jabbed her finger into a small hole in the dirt, sifting it back and forth with the full anger at her reach before turning to the man and shrugging, "Okay."

Clearly out of his element, Cordell wasn't prepared for the princess to lob a clump of dirt at him. It splattered against his not so pristine white robes before flopping onto the ground. Spud gave him the same look the advisors often did to Alistair after explaining something blisteringly simple. "You catch it." Then the three year old mimicked catching her dirt clod to the man, certain that he didn't understand the mechanics.

"Yes, of course," he gasped. "Do you not have a ball we could use or...?"

"She's always puncturing the bladders, they never last," Alistair explained.

Those startled blue eyes met his a moment, Cordell gasping with uncertainty in how to address the man. "Ah, yes, I understand."

Spud reached over and tugged on the hem of his robes, "Chase me!" Before he had time to respond, the girl ran off down the rocky path, her shoes long since abandoned. Nodding to his King, Cordell ran stiff legged after her. He was so far out of his element it was almost adorable. Spud was going to run rings around him.