Eira Meredydd
Eira Meredydd was born and raised in Aberaeron, a place where the horizon always seemed to tell the truth. She grew up in a family of women known not for magic, but for something quieter: a sharpened intuition, a knack for understanding people, an ability to notice what went unsaid.
This was yr Awydd as the Meredydd women knew it: not visions, not glimmers, not anything supernatural — just a generational tendency to “read” people with uncanny accuracy.
Eira’s childhood was filled with offhand comments like: “You always see right through me, Eira” or “Ask Eira; she’ll know what’s really going on.“
She didn’t control anything. She didn’t push anyone. But she noticed things, deeply, and the noticing shaped her. She grew into a woman with a calm presence and a startling ability to understand what others meant, even when they didn’t.
Eira knew from the beginning Seren would be different.
Not because she was special — all Meredydd daughters were special in their own thorny, luminous ways — but because she had that look in her eyes. Most Meredydds felt echoes of yr Awydd. But Seren… Seren radiated it.
By age four she could calm an argument without opening her mouth.
By five, her classmates followed her around the playground like ducklings even when she told them not to.
By six, she’d convinced a teacher to quit and become a painter — though Seren never knew her part in it.
And then, at seven, the glow.
No Meredydd had ever spoken of glowing.
Eira didn’t understand it. She had no name for it. No history. No guidance except the old family rules — rules made to keep ordinary intuition from turning into interference. But Seren’s ability wasn’t just intuition, it was something blossoming too fast for both of them. So Eira was protective in the way only Meredydd women could be: quietly, fiercely, like a hand over a candle flame. She knew that if the truth of her daughter was discovered, institutions would want to study her. Shape her. Use her.
No Meredydd tolerated that.
So she raised Seren with one unbreakable promise:
I will never let anyone claim you.
Not a school, not a government, not the world.
Your want is your own. And you will choose your life.
Eira did not fear Seren’s gift.
She feared the world’s reaction to it.
Affer Daniel left, Eira became a single mother with the determination of someone who refuses to let life harden her. Her yr Awydd didn’t make her mystical — it made her attentive. She noticed when Seren grew overwhelmed. She recognised when her daughter’s insight cut too close to someone’s heart. She sensed when Seren needed grounding, or silence, or space.
When Seren, at age seven, spoke of “the glow behind people,” Eira’s blood ran cold — but her voice stayed gentle. She didn’t call it magic. She didn’t name it. She only listened.
Not because she thought Seren was strange. But because she understood, instinctively, that this was beyond yr Awydd. Beyond intuition, beyond emotional acuity. This was something no Meredydd woman had held for centuries, if ever. Stronger, brighter. Unknown. And dangerous, if mishandled.
Seren wasn’t just perceptive. She was seeing truth the way others see colour.
Eira hid her fear behind careful tenderness. Her fear wasn’t mystical. It was practical. Intense children get noticed, and not always kindly. She began creating new rules she’d never had to articulate before:
Truth without cruelty.
Distance without abandonment.
Autonomy above all things.
But there were things she simply could not teach. How could she guide a girl who perceived others’ desire as vividly as sunlight? How could she explain boundaries when Seren could feel people’s longing before they spoke?
Still — she tried.
Every night, Eira would sit on the edge of Seren’s bed and ask about the glow. Not to interrogate, but to understand. Seren described people’s wants like tides, like lanterns, like constellations behind their ribs. Eira listened, heart clenching, knowing her daughter was something rare and vulnerable.
But she never said: You’re dangerous.
She never said: People will want to use you.
She never said: I worry they’ll see you as a tool, not a child.
She just said: “You are not here to fix others. Or fuel them. Or carry them. You are here to be yourself.”
It became her private litany.
Seren slammed her bedroom door so hard that dust shook from the rafters. Eira followed slowly, not because she was afraid, but because Meredydds never entered an emotional storm without taking stock of their own footing first.
“Mum,” Seren said, pacing, “you need to tell me what I am.”
Eira stood in the doorway, palms open. “You’re my daughter.”
“That’s not enough.” Seren’s voice cracked. “I can see things in people. Every crush, every secret, every lie. And the older I get the louder it gets — like everyone’s shouting their feelings at me even when they’re silent.”
Eira’s jaw clenched. “I know it’s hard.”
“You don’t!” Seren snapped. “Yr Awydd is just feelings and instincts. I don’t have feelings — I have fireworks. I have whole storms happening behind people’s ribs.”
Eira felt that like a bruise.
“Mum,” Seren whispered, suddenly small again, “why didn’t you tell me it would get worse?”
Because I didn’t know.
Because nothing in our line prepared me for you.
Because I’ve been terrified since you were seven.But Meredydds don’t lie, so Eira said: “Because I didn’t want to make you afraid before you had to be.”
Seren sank onto the bed. “I’m scared anyway.”
Eira crossed the room and sat beside her. “Then we face the fear together.”
“But you can’t see what I see.”
“No,” Eira admitted. “But I can remind you of who you are when the world feels too loud.”
Seren rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Will it ever stop?”
“I don’t know, cariad,” Eira whispered, her voice breaking. “But I promise—no one will ever use you. Not while I live.”
Seren closed her eyes. “That’s not the same as understanding me.”
“No,” Eira said, holding her tight. “But it is a beginning.”
Eira raised Seren with a vigilance that didn’t look like vigilance.
She didn’t forbid friendships — she watched them.
She didn’t stop Seren from exploring — she taught her how to retreat.
She didn’t tell her to hide — she taught her how to choose who deserved to see her fully.
When Seren came home from school drained by the intensity of others’ desires, Eira brewed strong tea and opened the windows to let the sea-wind “clear the air,” though they both knew the air wasn’t the problem. When Seren asked, “Why me?” Eira answered truthfully: “Because some gifts find the people strong enough to hold them.”
She never pretended to have all the answers. Meredydd women never lie.
But she made Seren one promise, spoken with the weight of generations behind it:
“No one will ever claim you. Not the world. Not a story. Not a man. Not an institution. If anyone tries, I’ll tear heaven open before I let them.”
She said it calmly, like a fact.
And Seren believed her.
After university and Elin, when Seren announced she was leaving Wales at nineteen to search for answers, Eira felt the world tilt. Not because she was surprised. But because she had always known this day would come.
You can’t cage a flame.
You can’t anchor a tide.
She packed Seren’s favourite jumper herself. She hid her fear behind quiet steadiness. And on the morning Seren left, Eira held her at arm’s length and said: “You are not leaving home. You are carrying it with you. And if anyone tries to turn your gift into a chain, you come home — or I’ll come fetch you.”
Seren laughed through tears. But Eira wasn’t joking.
After Seren boarded the bus, Eira stood at the station long after it vanished down the coastal road. Her hands trembled, but her face never did.
Meredydd women don’t break. They weather.
Eira Meredydd is a quiet storm in human form.
She works long hours at the clinic, walking home along the harbour wall every evening. She keeps her house immaculate, her opinions sharp, and her heart soft only for her daughter. To neighbours she is: calm, but uncompromising; private, but kind; gentle, but immovable; and someone you confess things to without knowing why.
To herself she is: a mother trying her best; a woman wary of institutions; and the last line of defence between her daughter and a world unprepared for her
She keeps a drawer full of Seren’s letters. She reads them twice. She never cries where anyone can see.
And every night, before she goes to sleep, Eira touches the lantern-embroidered cloth her grandmother gave her and whispers the same prayer:
“Let her want be her own.”
Eira’s greatest fear is that Seren will be misunderstood. Her greatest pride is that Seren left anyway.
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