Wife of Vladimir ||Book One||

Her Children

"As you all know, time passed by for Rosetta and our growing family. We were beyond happy with the way things were turning out. Eight years of excitement and delight passed by.

They were the best years of my life.

Alistair grew to be a quiet little boy. He kept silent more often than not, but he was smarter than any other child I had met before. Whenever we couldn't find him, which happened a lot more often than I'd like to admit, we would head into the library and find him there. Rosetta often tried to get him to read the children books there, but he didn't want to. He had read them all before and was interested in the more mature books. She was hesitant, but soon allowed him to do so. Some books were off limits until he was older, as he was only five when he first started this habit, and he respected that rule.

He hadn't started talking until he was nearly two. We had been concerned at first, as most children began at least babbling before their first birthday but he never did. Our concern vanished, in a complete surprise to us, when he spoke his first sentence; not his first word, his first sentence.

'Mother, might I sleep with you and father today? I've had a nightmare and I am scared.'

Rosetta and I had never woken faster. We had thought it was our minds playing tricks on us when our toddler opened the door, standing in the doorway with his stuffed rabbit and spoke a sentence grander than ones most adults used.

While he was smart, we never treated him more than a child. We had both agreed that we hadn't wanted him growing up feeling as if he were better than his age group. We wanted him to have a normal childhood instead of one that was more mature than most. We played with him outside of the library and it seemed to almost do the trick.

Alistair enjoyed staying with me when I was working on paperwork. I'd give him blank pieces of paper that he could work on beside me, leaving him perfectly content to scribble as he pleased upon them.

Most times, he tried to mimic what my own paperwork looked like. All the servants called him my shadow, as he never left my side.

When Alistair was three years old, we welcomed our second son. We named him Leonardo Elias. I had picked the first name while Rosetta chose the second. It was more difficult to name him than it had been to name Alistair. It took us until he was born to discover his name. We never used his full name, unless he was in trouble. We called him Leo for short, and Alistair caught on shortly after. He looked awfully similar to his older brother when he had been a newborn, but quickly grew into his own person as he grew up.

Leo was the drastic opposite of Alistair. He was talking before he was one and walked shortly after that. His personality began to develop into a loud and happy child. He was certainly more attached to Rosetta than me, but that was alright. We spent enough time together so it never bothered me. I always thought it was cute.

In the late afternoon, we would wake to Leo crawling into bed with us to cuddle with Rosetta. From that moment until morning, he was attached to her at the hip. There was never one without the other.

He enjoyed laughing at small things and making others laugh. He adopted Rosetta's love for the stairs, much to her delight. She had tried to get Alistair into them, but he was more interested in reading books than star-gazing. On special occasions, Rosetta would take Leo to the roof and teach him about the constellations. He took in all the information, focused on every word she spoke. Once he was old enough, he would go to the roof by himself and spend hours sketching out the nighttime sky. He fell in love with the moon.

With Rosetta's assistance, they created a mural in his bedroom that was a replica of the nighttime sky. They ensured all his favorite constellations were featured upon the walls. We filled his room with books about the sky, eager to help him learn about the things he loved so much.