Hear people say 'I've got a confession to make' Who: Kajsa and Linnea Where: Home When: Afternoon
When Linnea did not want to deal with the heat, which was practically every time that the heat decided to show itself, she took to the water. Sometimes that meant the river outside and other times it meant lazing beside or in the pool. Today she had chosen the pool for reasons she was not even sure of. Perhaps it was because she did not feel like submitting herself to the heat during the walk down to the river or maybe it was because she just wanted to be closer to the house so that when she wanted a refill on her iced lemonade she would be able to get it without having to go that far. She may not have been that far along in her pregnancy, but there were some things that Linnea could just be lazy about when she allowed herself reason. She was counting being in about week nine, or was it ten? - she was not keeping the best of track this time around, allowing her doctor to do that for her along with Satu and her ever persistent line of questioning - as a good reason to be such. She always remembered this as the point when she just wanted to laze and do absolutely nothing. For a water elemental the best place to accomplish absolutely nothing was by a source of water. This was better than when they had still been living in Detroit and her best place to lay had been near to the large fountain she had managed to get installed but could not quite fit herself in. Here, in this house she had picked out on her own, she had the pool, the river, the little streams, the fountains, the entire house really. 'Enough water for a dozen water elementals,' Strike commented lazily from his position on the tiles where the sun was shining through. Days when his elemental was at least mellow because she was near water and he could sun himself were the best ones. No matter how long he was with Linnea he suspected that he would never be able to like rainy days even a fraction as much as she seemed to.
Sighing for no reason in particular, Linnea reached over and picked up her glass. The ice had melted awhile ago and the lemonade had warmed, but she fixed the problem by creating a thin stick of ice inside the liquid that quickly cooled it. Smiling again, she took a long drink and shifted, free hand drifting down to her swimsuit covered stomach. Yes, she was still perfectly able to fit into all of her clothes. Well... almost perfectly. It had been a little harder that morning and would only get worse, but she would be damned if she was not stretching it out as long as she could. But why? She did not need to impress Bradley, although he seemed to be impressed with the way her top had filled out just a few weeks ago, nor anyone else. For myself then. Jokull had always loved to sneer as she grew larger, seeming displeased even though he was the one who usually got her that way. Four out of six times now, that was a fair success rate when one considered the marriage and how often they had slept together. It was like he had just known how to time it. And of course he did, he could read my mind and was too intelligent. He always had questions for the doctor when she was pregnant with Leif and it seemed that he had retained all of the knowledge that had been given. Too bad for him he only got the one son. Dagmar and Satu had not been what he wanted and Linnea thought, sometimes, that maybe she cherished them just that bit more for that. Which meant that Leif-
'Is still a bad egg. Ah, no, we're not having this discussion again. Just enjoy your water and don't think about the bad egg.' Strike would not be swayed on this matter for anything. Not even one of those tiny mice that he enjoyed so much would get him to speak a pleasant word about Linnea's eldest. She thought that was rather unfair of him, but he was his own being after all and could make his own decisions as he saw fit. Just as her children could. Children who she actually had not seen much of today. Ah yes, Valterri would be back in school since they had gone back to session - and that had been an awful business, a girl getting stabbed for being a witch, she hoped they addressed it in the next PTA - and Satu was in as well. Strike was about to make a remark on how perhaps that was for the better, but Linnea shushed him before he could get the words out and wondered what Dagmar and Kajsa were getting up to. Certainly the former would be more comfortable out here than anywhere in the house. 'I'll see if I can find her,' Strike offered as he unwound and slithered in through the open door leading back to the house. Linnea saw nothing wrong with air conditioning the pool house instead of heating it. Over half the household were water elementals and appreciated it.