Rules of Marriage (PG-17)

Writers: Heather, Miriah
Date Posted: 27th April 2019
Series: The Hallmaster's New Wife

Characters: Enamra, Thayde
Description: Enamra and Thayde try to sort through some rules about marriage.
Location: Dolphin Hall
Date: month 10, day 24 of Turn 9
Notes: Mentioned: Jylanya
PG-17 for descriptions of brief sexual activity
Rating: PG-17

Enamra

Thayde

***********

Enamra came back into the quarters, dumbfounded. After a mostly silent
and awkward breakfast with her new husband, she had put on her sturdy
shoes and prepared to return to the main Hall to work. Before she
could even ask Jylanya what her chores for the day would be, she had
been quietly taken aside. Overnight, it seemed, her position had
changed; her sole duty now was to provide for Master Thayde's needs.
Jylanya would continue to teach her to cook things other than seafood,
but not to work in the kitchens. It sunk in completely when she
walked out of the office and the drudges curtsied to her. She had to
admit to herself though, that seeing Hista's and Hatilda's sour faces
as they curtsied had been a bit satisfying, especially when she
realized that she no longer had to fear them.

But now, looking around at her new home, she didn't know what to do
with herself. The packet of recipes that Jylanya had given her were
laid down on the table; she couldn't read them, but hoped to
eventually. She'd never been one to be idle, so she decided to do what
she knew best; she cleaned. Master Thayde was apparently a neat man,
but there was still dusting to be done, laundry to be washed, and
floors to scrub, so she set to it with a flurry of activity. By
lunchtime, she was sweaty and a bit tired, but the quarters were
sparkling clean, smelled fresh and there was not a spot of dust or
dirt to be seen.

She sat down for a moment, looked around and then got back up. There
had to be something else she could do. She would have to prepare
dinner. She could start on that. An idea came to her and she smiled to
herself, hurrying to her small chest. Digging out the bathing suit,
she changed, then noticed that she had filled out more than she
realized. The small suit had once been loose, but now it seemed, she
might need to get another; it fit like a second skin. Flushing, she
grabbed a towel, wrapped around herself, and picked up a bucket on the
way out.

By dinner time, Enamra was clean and changed, though she still smelled
of the ocean she had spent her afternoon in. There was also platter of
steamed clams and mussels set on the table along with broiled
fingerroots and legumes that she had found in the cold storage of the
kitchen.

Thayde had felt relieved to slip out of his quarters that morning and
go to work in the infirmary. He'd slept on pins and needles the entire
night, unused to having another body with him in his bed. A part of
him dreaded going home because he knew that Enamra would be there and
he still wasn't sure what to do with her yet. She was his wife, yes,
but she was also a child still in his eyes.

Pushing open the door, a pleasing aroma met him immediately, and he
turned into his quarters with surprise. A little smile quirked his
lips as he caught sight of Enamra. "What's this? It smells great."

Enamra turned at his entrance and glanced at the table. "Thank you,
Master Thayde. It's dinner. Steamed mussels and clams. I gathered them
myself this afternoon after I tidied up. And some vegetables. I didn't
know what you liked, so I hope it's okay. Jylanya's going to teach me
other things to cook besides fish and such, but I thought it would be
okay to just cook what I knew how tonight."

"I love fish, so you can never go wrong there," Thayde said as he set
the books aside he'd been carrying. "I noticed you cleaned around here
too. It looks great. You must have been very busy today."

She glanced around at the clean quarters and nodded, "Yes, sir. I
thought I was going to go back to chores at the Hall, but...I guess
I'm just supposed to take care of you now and I didn't know what else
to do." She shifted from foot to foot, then hurried to set the table.
"It's hot now, and cold clams aren't very good, so I suppose you'd
better eat. I mean, if you're hungry."

Thayde crossed around the table to where she stood, put his hands on
her shoulders, and guided her to a chair. "First things first, Enamra.
One, my name is Thayde, and as my wife, that's what you should call
me, not 'sir.' And second," he pulled out the chair beside of his own
and gestured for her to sit, "we'll eat together."

Her cheeks colored as she was guided to the chair beside him.
"Oh...I'm sorry. I'm just used to calling you that..." She tucked a
stray strand of hair behind her ear. She was about to protest that
drudges didn't eat with Masters, but remembered that she was no longer
a drudge. She shifted in her seat and then, uncertain as to what to
do, offered him the serving fork. "Thank you."

Thayde grabbed another plate and set of silverware and set them in
front of Enamra. "Did you say you gathered these yourself?" he asked
as he took his seat and put a helping of both clams and mussles on his
plate. He then offered the fork to Enamra.

"Yes. I used to do it all the time at home. Our garden didn't grow
much and we had to use what we could. I've been digging for them since
I was child." She dished only a couple of each on her plate.
"Sometimes you have to dive for the big ones though."

He eyed her plate, and then put another couple of clams and mussles on
it. "No need to worry about running out," he shot her a little grin.
Thayde put some vegetables on his plate, and without offering the fork
to Enamra, put a generous helping of them on her plate too. "If you
want to dive for the larger ones we have goggles and such that you
could use."

She stared at the generous helping on her plate and then back up at
him. "Uhm...thank you, but I won't be able to eat this much. I don't
want to waste it." She looked at her plate and with ease, parted a
clam. "I'm really not a big eater, M...Thayde." She caught herself and
flushed as she carefully picked out the meat within the shell. "I can
dive without goggles. I can hold my breath pretty good and I know what
they feel like. Haven't you ever dove for clams?" She nibbled her
food, eating slowly, but smiled at the familiar taste.

"Yes, I used to go clamming with my older brothers. My dad is a
seacrafter and my mom is a dolphineer, so we were always out in the
water growing up." Thayde hadn't even had a chance to send a letter
North to his family to tell them about his rushed marriage.

The mention of his family made her falter. She'd never considered his
family; of course he had to have one. "My father wasn't a seacrafter,
he was just a fisherman." She hurriedly open another clam to avoid
thinking about him. "How many siblings do you have?"

"I have five siblings, three older brothers, and two younger sisters.
My youngest sister isn't much older than you. Sixteen." He wondered
how well Thayrisa and Enamra would get along.

"Where are they?" She offered a smile and couldn't help but think
similar thoughts to his own. Would they like her? What would they
think of their marriage? She ate another bite and felt lost for what
to ask next. She remembered the previous night, flushed bright
crimson, then quickly returned to eating.

"They live up North. My brother, H'riv, is a dragonrider, though, so
he could take us to see them, or bring them here." Thayde hadn't seen
his family in over a Turn in person, even though there had been
letters from his mother asking for him to visit.

Her eyes widened and she looked up at him. "A dragonrider? Oh..." The
thought of riding on a dragon was an exciting thought, but the thought
of meeting his parents, of trying to explain why they had gotten
married, that was nerve wracking. All thoughts of appetite left. "What
are you going to tell them about me?"

Thayde put his fork down for a moment and looked at her. "The truth is
my parents will understand better than you think. My mom was fifteen
when she had my eldest brother. Her pregnancy was the reason she and
my father married. It's not _quite_ the same as our situation, but
their marriage didn't start out much differently."

"She was my age." Enamra felt a little better about that, but at least
Thayde's father hadn't done what Doroon had. She picked at her food,
then pushed the plate away, no longer hungry. Instead, she waited for
Thayde to finish so she could clean up.

He glanced at her plate and then back at her. "Are you done already?" he asked.

She nodded. "I guess I"m just not that hungry." She shrugged with a
hitch of her shoulders. "I'll clean up." She gathered her plate and
carefully scraped her left overs away to dispose of.

Thayde decided not to make an issue on it, it was their first dinner
together, after all. "Thank you for cooking, and gathering the clams,
Enamra."

She blinked, tilting her head to look at him. "You're welcome, but
it's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it?" She smiled quickly, laid the
dishes in the sink and put a pot of water over the small fire to heat.
"A wife is supposed to take of her husband."

"In some ways," he admitted. "But a wife is not a drudge," Thayde
clarified as he stood, collected the placemats, and brought them into
the kitchen.

She thought about that. "I guess not." Her brow knit. " But my papa
told me that a good wife obeys her husband in all things, keeps the
home clean, makes dinner, and...uh..." Her face flushed as she hurried
to gather the remainder of the meal and hurried through the next
words, "gives her husband as many children as she can and never
refuses him."

"And my mother, who is a dolphineer by the way, would have punched my
father in the nose if he'd ever said something to that effect." Thayde
couldn't even imagine it, his headstrong, independent mother being
told she'd have to "obey" his father.

Her mouth parted in shock. "She would have hit him? But..." She had to
blink several times, the thought of her own, quiet, demure mother
striking her father wasn't something she could ever imagine. Her
mother had always obeyed her father. She frowned, trying to wrap her
mind around what he said. "Well, I thought that that's how it was.
That's why I..." She swallowed. "Wait, it's not like that for
everyone?"

"No, it's more like that here in the South, but up North. For example,
here in the South, women can only craft if they're at the Weyr,
mostly, but up North... My mother is a Master Dolphineer." Thayde
shrugged a little. "I'm not saying we have to be like my family
either, just that... Maybe not everything your father taught you is
true."

She studied him for a moment before asking very quietly. "What are we
going to be like?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. If he were twenty Turns younger, or
if she was ten Turns older, it would be much easier, he thought.

She nibbled at her thumbnail. There were so many questions she wanted
to ask, but simply didn't know how or if she should. But there was one
she had to know. "What do you expect from me? I mean you didn't
uhm...I guess I just don't know what you want me to do or be for you."

"Let's sit?" Thayde said moving from the kitchen to the living area.
"Last night, uhm, when you pulled up your skirts... Why did you do
that?" He had an inkling of why, but he wanted to make sure.

Enamra immediately paled, then a bright red blossomed on her cheeks,
but she sat beside Thayde, hands wound in her skirts. "Because that's
how a man knows that you'll be a good wife. If you do that." She
looked down and shifted uncomfortably, her voice very quiet. "Doroon,
he said he couldn't marry me unless I showed him I'd be a good wife.
He pushed me over a crate and told me to do that and I did." Her
shoulders hunched as though expecting a blow. "He said I was too
small, so he lifted my leg up and then...then it just hurt. " She had
tried to move away from the pain and remembered crying out, but Doroon
had pressed a hand on her back and told her to hold still, so she had.
"Then he was done and he patted me, told me I was good and that he
liked it and..." She shrugged. "They left the next day. He laughed at
me." She scrubbed at her eyes quickly. "I was really stupid."

"Doroon took advantage of your innocence." Thayde felt anger flare up
in the pit of his stomach. What sort of man could look at Enamra, at
her big sweet eyes, and intentionally harm her? "What Doroon told you
isn't true. That's not the way it is between men and women, at least,
it's not supposed to be." Now he had an even larger problem, he
thought. Not only was his wife a child, but the sum of her sexual
experience was being ridden roughshod by a jerk.

Enamra hugged herself tighter. "It's my fault. I let him. He said he'd
take me away on adventures and that I was really pretty and he wanted
to marry me. I believed it." She didn't look at Thayde, but rubbed her
arms. "I know you really didn't want to marry me, Thayde, but I do
want to be a good wife for you. I just don't know how."

"Why don't we just try becoming closer friends first? That's what I
would like. We can get to be more comfortable living together and now
that you don't have to do Hall chores during the day you can focus
more on your reading. And then, when the time comes," if it comes, he
thought, "we will worry about the sex part."

She finally looked at him, studying his face with eyes that were red
rimmed from the memories. Finally, she nodded. "Okay."

"Good," he smiled. "So don't worry about that any more." Now maybe
they could be a little more relaxed around one another, he thought.

Last updated on the May 3rd 2019

[Prev: Wedding Night Fumblings] Series: The Hallmaster's New Wife [Next: A Thoughtful Gift]

Welcome to Triad Weyrs!

Rules of Marriage (PG-17)