Charlotte, the new matriarch

"I'm going to miss you," Charlotte said. "We're going to miss you." She looked in the mirror at Tanith's reflection as they sat nude together at Charlotte's antique vanity in the pale morning light.

"Fudge, dear," Tanith replied. She brushed her greying red-gold hair until it shone. "You're thrilled you'll be running your own household. You're mooning about the house, contemplating new linens and window coverings. You'll salve your neo-Puritan conscience by telling yourself you're just redecorating to fill the void I'm leaving, or restoring this old heap to a period look. Well, of course you shall. But try and tear yourself away to visit us in the big city once in a while. Now there it is, darling, sign and make it official."

Charlotte looked over the paper one more time. It was a simple document that every ambitious woman of family both feared and longed for -- her emancipation from the matriarch's household and formal recognition as head of household in her own right. Tanith had signed and affixed her seal. Charlotte's newly cut seal sat on the corner of the vanity.

Charlotte curled her fingers around the cold alabaster seal, smeared it with ink and rolled it onto the paper. Her new initials "C B" nestled in a chain of daisies. The design stood out sharply and clearly next to Tanith's "T R" within Inanna's eight-armed cross. She signed, the first time in many years, "Charlotte Beechcombe." Till this morning it had long been "Charlotte Rue-Beechcombe", subordinating her mother's family name to Tanith's.

"I must say you're taking this very calmly," Tanith said. "Good breeding, I expect. I recall weeping half the day and the other half, rutting with the lovers I was leaving behind, with three or four hot bubble baths in between. Speaking of which, where are my manners, Charlotte?" Tanith turned her head and shoulders to face the younger woman and smiled. "Kiss-kiss?"

Charlotte tilted up her head to meet Tanith's kiss. Tanith's lips were dry, warm, and firm, and energetically alive, almost twitchy on hers. Charlotte gave herself to the kiss, her soft lips accepting Tanith's lip-caresses.

Tanith broke the kiss and slid her lips teasingly along Charlotte's cheek to where her ear was half-covered by soft brown curls. "I made you a woman, Charlotte, and now you are your own woman, yours to make for yourself. Let me take you one more time as your mistress, before my boys wake up and remember they're leaving their dear Aunt Charlotte today."

Charlotte laughed. "I always did love being the center of a puppy-pile," she said. "I'll miss your boys."

It was going to be a complex re-alignment. Tanith was leaving her deanship at the college and going to Washington to join the new administration. Her three grown sons were coming along, of course, along with Sahara and Shasta, the most junior women of the household, and Tanith's male consorts Peter and Michael. Charlotte would be staying, with her son Leo. Ezbet, the woman just junior to Charlotte, would be staying, along with her son Ben. Still, it would be a big, empty house with only a third of them left.

"You should recruit Ellen Tomkins from Forestry. Her son's of age, and her nephew lives with them. They're both such lovely boys and I had a wonderful time with them after the Dean's tea," Tanith said. "Lovely pricks on them both. And I've had Ellen in my office. The tongue on that woman. Divine."

"I heard she does it with them," Charlotte said. "I haven't seen her, well, around much like the other professors."

"Pure malice," Tanith said. "I've seen her take plenty of log and lily from her graduate students, she just isn't the political whore that most professors are. Don't give me that look, Charlotte, you're as much of a political fucker as I am. I taught you to be. Probably that vile rumor came from Evans in her department, he hates her for making professor before him. You'll have to learn to see through these things if you're going to rise any higher at Artemis College."

"Or rise out, Madam Secretary-designate?" Charlotte said.

"Or rise out," Tanith said. "Fiddlesticks on that 'Secretary-designate'," she said. "What do you call me, Little Shar?"

"Mama Ta-ta," Charlotte said.

"What do you do for me?" Tanith asked.

"Suck you, Mama," Charlotte said, her voice catching a little.

"Suck me, Little Shar," Tanith said. "Suck my toes, baby, and work your way up."

The two went back toward the bed in Tanith's "private" bedroom, and Charlotte parted her lips to take in the big toe of her Mama Ta-ta, maybe for the last time.

On the lower floors, the household was stirring. Most of the packing was done, and the moving van had come and gone, but it would be a busy day, from the goodbyes as much as anything.