He came (like she knew he would) in a thunder of hoof-beats, her personal champion, her own hero, for better or worse. What a silly world this was, where rain girls took on reapers as paramours and she, of all the creatures on this green earth, had relinquished her virtues, ceded all her inhibitions to him, but what is the world if not mad? They had consummated their tension, surrendered to their desires and he had planted life into her womb, something the blue lady had never thought possible for someone so jaded as she.
There was exigency on his expression, no doubt in response to the urgent tone of her cry, but there was also bewilderment, a perplexity that ran through his jaw and glittered in his eyes; she saw as he began to comprehend her state, the unusual condition. Gentleness flushed through his features, softened the puzzlement into understanding. With what she thought as infinite tenderness, the general inclined his noble head, softly running his nose over her skin in the easiest of caresses, this time not out of need or desire, but of acceptance, adoration; a gesture that said so many things in a tender stroke. Lips played into a mild smile, an exquisite portrait of fondness. A warmth sat on her breast, spread through her chest and over her belly, and she felt absolutely sublime; it seemed impossible that anything had gone wrong, that sadness and pain and sorrow had ever existed. Blue eyes gazed at him affectionately from beneath a brim of dark lashes, and she felt a yearning deep inside of her—not sensual, but for another sort of intimacy, a sensation she had only experienced for one other, but he was gone, lost into the waves like some ship sunken into the sea, and Huyana knew that this murder, this god of death would be her only, the king of her heart.

Ours? he wondered, as if it were even thinkable that she would let her sides swell for another. Her smile broadened into a beam only an expectant mother could bear without irony. "Of course," the rain mare responded softly, sounding more relieved than she meant to—in the pit of her stomach, she knew Deimos would never forsake her for something as significant as this, but perhaps a young girl left to her own devices and a mare flushed with a cocktail of hormones and a wandering mind gave her silly doubts, but they were relinquished the moment he rushed toward her, bright eyes wide with worry.

"New life," she murmured in less than a whisper, more to herself than anyone else, "a family." This would be a chance to redeem a lost childhood, to atone for absent parents and too many years fraught with wanderlust and distraction. She fixed him with a curious gaze, the beam diminished to a steady curve of her lips, longing and contentment in every facet of her countenance.

& it's peaceful in the deep,

cathedral where you cannot breathe