Eyre smelled the sea air and smiled. She glanced to her mother who was skipping stones along its surface. Eyre spun in a circle and skipped over to her mother. Enid shook her head gave her a side long glance and skipped another stone out to sea.

“What are you so happy about? It smells like dead fish and shit.”

“Is it always like this mother?”

“Always like what?”

“It’s like the world is more vibrant. I can hear the fish swimming under the surface. I can smell the fire and someone frying up fish down the beach. I can see the aura on the moon. My skin is alive!”

“Ya.”

“Ya? Ya? You’ve seen this every night for your entire fourteen hundred years? And your answer is Ya?”

Enid shrugged.

“What am I supposed to say? You get used to it.”

Eyre made a scoffing sound and did another spin.

“You should stop you’re embarrassing yourself, you’re Grandmother for Christ’s sake.”

“And you are a boring old maid.”

Enid’s lips narrowed.

“Happily.”

Eyre hooked her arm under her mothers.

“Mom, you are wasting your life.”

“Some of us have a job to do, we can’t all be freeloaders.”

“Mom, would you just take one moment to enjoy the gifts grandfather has given us?”

Enid’s voice was monotone when she spoke next.

“Yay, I can smell shit at three miles away.”

Eyre elbowed her mother gently.

“If I’d know it was like this, I would have let you turn me so much sooner.”

The pair walked along the beach and then up to the cobbled road past the low wall that ran along the sea. Eyre tugged Enid into the garden of an abandoned house. It was overgrown with roses. She inhaled again.

“Smell the Roses mother!”

“Yay, they are roses.”

Eyre elbowed her mother again.

“Do you take no joy in life?”

“I really enjoy the feeling of my sword catching purchase on troublemaker.”

“Pish.”

“Pish to you too.”

Eyre sat on one of the worn stone benches and looked up at her mother.

“Tell me about your life before me mom? And not those fairy tales you told Edward and I when we were children. I want to know what it was really like.”

“What brought this about?”

“You have been promising to tell me about where you are from for years. And Rome, you never talk about Rome. Now is as good a time as any.”

“That’s because I’d rather not wallow in the glory of Rome”

“Please mom? You danced around your past since I was born. It’s been a hundred years the least you can do is treat me like I’m an adult.”

Enid frowned.

“It’s not like it’s some glorious heroic journey kid.”

“Kid?”

“I’m fourteen-hundred years old you will always be a kid to me.”

Eyre sighed and leaned back on her palms. And looked at her mom. Enid frowned.

“Fine. I was born in the highlands of Scotland..."