Morningstar Manor

It was an absolutely beautiful day, and the two little groups - one comprising Bethan, Chandika, Rahul and Hanu, and the other just Sasha and little Morgan had found themselves in the garden. Chandika had prepared a snack tea for her little make-shift family, and Sasha had a book and a flask of iced tea for herself and sippy cup of juice for Morgan.

When the women had seen each other, Sasha had offered a bright wave to the little group, beckoning them over to the blanket she had set out in a patch of sun.

They had been to some function, quite formal, with speeches and some flawlessly boring meal; but now, Manny and Sasha merely wanted their kid and their own couch and a little bit of family time before it was bed-time, and the new week started again.

They were very elegant as they came down the steps to the crèche, where despite the day and the time, several children were playing in perfect harmony, pushing little wooden cars on little wooden slats representing streets and making brrwm-brrwm noises with it. Morgan's car was red.

A whole year! Sasha couldn't quite believe that it had been so long since Morgan had been born. The time had flown past. She was a married woman with an adorable child - it almost didn't seem real.

Luckikly, there were the Temmincks, who were much more practical at times. Maude had prepared an enormous birthday breakfast -- why wait until teatime? -- and Manny had splurged on a few colourfully wrapped boxes for mother and daughter, so when they woke up and came from their rooms, they'd get horribly spoiled.

( Birthday breakfast with happy Temmincks )

Saturday at 11 am, and the Mocha was really busy. Among them were:

• Andras, who had visitors. One of them was his brother Lajos, in the City again for lawyerly business, even though he no longer kept a flat here; the other was a bloke he brought along to sleep on the sofa, some researcher from Cambridge whose cousin apparently was Ilona's best and most high-strung graphics designer, here to briefly consult something arcane that was kept at Rutherford. Andras had no hope of even understanding what it was, except that it was Historical; so the bloke was most likely a historian, right? Funnily, though, he was from the same area of Old Blighty originally where Charlie had that farm Andras visited once; so there was something to talk about, at least.
• Charlotte James, who had just been to an early morning visit to the new spa, and was discussing the relative merits of that versus the Michael's Brothers spa with Maude Temminck (whose character had much improved, Charlotte thought, since she was widowed, dried out, and had a grandkid) while her son Manny was sitting peacefully by, as if the chatter of women was no more meaningful than the waves of the ocean, and just as calming. On his lap, little Morgan Temminck was fast asleep. Theoretically, he was waiting for his wife, but Charlotte got the impression that he was content to just sit there.
• Cindy was sitting a few tables on (having said hello to Charlotte and her lot, but still uneasy about the Temmincks, so she hadn't joined them), talking to the Indian woman, Chandika, and her adorable kid whose dog Hanu was most likely the illegitimate son of Axminster, but nobody minded any more, not even the owner of the mother, because Hanu was such a great dog, and while not pedigree, still an indubitable lurcher. They were talking about spas as well -- in particular, the one where Chandika worked. Cindy was very cautiously trying to work out whether it would be all right for her to go there, and Chandika was doing her best to gently reassure her that of course it was. The dogs were both under the table in classic Axminster pose, fast asleep.
  
• Ricky had his earbuds in, surfing MySpace on his netbook; he was sharing his table with some tall stranger with lanky hair and a large nose who was also working away at his notebook -- a rather larger and posher one. They were both drinking chai latte, and any attentive observer might have realised that they were each drinking distractedly from both cups and totally not noticing. Unless one of them had the swine flu, it probably didn't matter.
• By the door to the conservatory, two ghosts were lurking, mostly unseen by the rest of the Mocha. "Just listen to them!" Marek was saying. "They're totally superficial! All they ever talk about are spas." Manny shrugged. "I've spent my life talking about business; spas are a nice break. And I don't like women for their conversation, you know. More for their curves." Marek laughed.

[[OOC: Brief visit of Lajos Toth and Edgar Cobham to justify the icon and make sure that all twelve are really there!]]

Charlie was at work in the room that would soon be the creche and Deacon was doing something to his car. This meant that Bella had the pleasure to looking after Nia and the possibility of calling on a friend.

Holding Nia by the hand and with a sizeable package under her arm, Bella banged on the door of the Temminck residence and wondered who, if anyone, was in.

Sasha was sitting in the Mocha, drinking an idea coffee and also trying to protect it from a very interested baby. Morgan was trying to get into everything at the moment! Every time she made a grab for the cup, Sasha would catch her hands, and pretend to eat the chubby little fists, making the little girl giggle and squirm delightedly. In between coffee rescue missions, Sasdha was trying to read the latest copy of Psychology Today, but she really wasn't getting very far.

It was a lovely day, just warm enough without being too sunny, so Sasha had taken her reading and her small daughter out into the garden, and was sprawled out on a large, soft blanket. She was absorbed in her book, but not so much that she didn't reach out every few minutes to remove something fascinating from Morgan's mouth, retrieve the wriggly baby from disappearing into the flower beds, and generally protect the baby from the garden - or should that be the garden from the baby?

Bethan could never quite decide which sort of Monday morning she hates the most - the ones where she has to get up early, or the ones when she's been on-call all night, and is coming back to bed at nine am. This particular morning was one of the latter, and she had stopped in the Mocha for a cup of caffeine-free tea before heading up to bed.

***

Cambion doesn't hate Mondays any more or less than any other day, as Mondays are no different to someone who doesn't work for a living. Indolent bastard that he is. Still, he does get up reasonably early, and usually finds himself people-watching in the Mocha around the sort of time that most people are heading for work. He was there today, drinking hot chocolate and eating a piece of fudge cake. Who said breakfast had to be healthy?

***

Sasha had decided that it was time that little Morgan was introduced to some of the tenants, so she and the baby were tucked away on a sofa at the back of the Mocha. Morgan was snuggled up in a white crocheted blanket, only the top of her fluffy dark head showing, and occasionally one waving fist.

The next afternoon, Sasha and Manny anxiously awaited the results of the tests. Manny, of course, was convinced that nothing was wrong. Sasha was not so sure - she wanted their baby to be perfectly fine - but something (she knew all too well what) told her that was not to be.

Manny was chatting, talking about people, and how happy his mother was, utterly denying the possibility that anything could be wrong, when the door opened, and a nurse pushed in the baby. Dr. Sandberg followed, with a clipboard, and the nurse left.

"Good afternoon," the doctor said, apprehension in her voice.

( and so it begins. . . )