#AND bc ezran is Sarai's Son too as much as he's harrow's legacy wise is

[raayllum]

"My mom used to do that." for claudiez 👀

as always they're in their 20s... Plus send me a number with a ship and i'll write it <3 accepted ships are tdp canon ships + rarepairs (claudiez, sopreli, corvus/terry, sorvus)

There's very little that Ezran remembers about Sarai.

He remembers the warmth of her smile, he thinks. The softness of her hair in his chubby little hands. But beyond that, there's not much else—too recently weaned before her death for more than stories he's heard to take hold, and even then, it feels like every year Harrow (until he couldn't) and Callum, or even Aunt Amaya, would bring up something new, something small, that they remembered, and he was learning it for the first time.

Mom always wore little gold beads in her hair.

Those were her favourite pair of earrings.

She planned out the castle gardens, with those hedges over there.

Soren, even, citing that she was his first sword-fighting teacher back when she'd been captain of the guard, before she and Ez's dad had fallen in love.

Her birthday is always hard, an added winter chill growing throughout the castle. Ezran ensures more fires are lit, and Claudia enchants little glass jars of orange light with her Sun primal, for people to carry in their pockets to keep them warm. He dons his more heavily furred royal cape and keeps Bait close while he writes letters to his brother and Rayla in Xadia, climbing the cold steps up to the rookery to send them.

Claudia joins him more often than not in his study, to save on candles, she says, as they do their work long into the night, but Ezran thinks she just likes his company, his heart doing a hopeful little dance in his chest. He steals glances at her atop the rim of candlelight dancing in her green eyes, now with that spark of light in them that'd been gone for so long during the war. After the war, too.

"You know," he begins, when they're heading to the study after lunch, "we could go to the library. The fireplace there is warmer. There's more comfortable chairs."

We used to always sit up in the library when it got cold, his dad had said, and Callum would play on the floor with you in your mom's lap.

Claudia thinks for a moment, then grins adorably. "Why not?" she says.

They settle in with tea and jelly tarts as an extra bonus, Claudia easing off her prosthetic and letting her stump be close to the fire; Ezran knows the cold makes the phantom pains worse this time of year. (Terry still sends over a herbal remedy that helps with it from where he's set up an apothecary on the border of Del Bar and Katolis with Corvus.)

More of her dyed black hair falls in front of her ears while she works, making notes on charts for what magical goods will be imported once the ice melts, and Claudia pushes it back impatiently until she sits back and begins braiding it. It's still shorter than it was in their teens, no longer all the way down her back, but long enough to braid as she starts the process, fingers jolting.

Dark magic took a lot from her, but one of the things it left was permanent nerve damage in her hands. (The cold makes that worse, too.)

"My mom used to do that," Ez half-remembers, half-recalls. Another story about the differences from their royal portrait—the one real non-Callum produced picture of their mother he has, the way he pictures her in his mind's eye—and how she'd worn her hair in a braid just as often loose or in a bun.

Claudia smiles then, softly. "She did. She's actually the one who taught me, after..." Lissa, another woman Ezran has never really met, isn't a wound anymore, but it's still hard during this time of year. "After my mom left and I grew my hair out."

Ezran sets aside his letter to an Evenerean diplomat, rising when she struggles again. "I can do that for you, if you like."

"Oh. You don't—"

He steps around easily to stand behind her armchair. "Let me?"

Claudia turns to the front fully, exhaling. "Alright."

He gathers her hair gently, hands confident due to the way his father had shown him him growing up, but styled a bit more the way Moonshadows do their braids, like how Rayla had demonstrated. For love and affection, she'd said, having small, long ones tucked away behind thicker locks for each of them—Callum and Ez and Soren, her boys, and then for each of her parents.

"There," Ezran says, finishing. He takes off his cape too for good measure, and drapes it across her shoulders. Claudia is looking at him wide-eyed when he walks back around to face her, and he passes a hand self-consciously over the patch of hair he's growing on his chin.

"Thank you," she says at least, tugging his cape further over her shoulder. The royal red brings out the green of her eyes and black of her hair. It suits her.

"Don't mention it," Ezran says, sitting again. They catch each other's eye, briefly, and share a smile, before she blushes a bit and looks away.

He feels warm for the first time all day.