It all comes down to a single moment,



Lady and boy venture to the Threshold, Rikyn leading the way, his small rear quarter bobbing ahead of her with his tail curiously bending with each step as if it is an extension of his joy and youth. She watches him carefully, having decided that, today, her son would do most of the talking; an assuagement of his skills, truly, she wanted to see if her work with the child in so far as teaching him the art of words had paid off, or if he showed any aptitude at all for the work of gathering the lost to her bosom.

She has her doubts; he is, after all, Ulrik’s son, and while it seems he has inherited much of his mother’s flash and shine, there is a chance that the social situation of gathering strangers who may soon become family will be too much for the boy. She has never seen her Engineer in this forest of welcome, and she must assume that there is a chance her child is the same man, deep beneath his desires to appease her.

But he’d been very happy to oblige her when she asked, enthused even that he had an actual job to do at only a few months old, his coat still downy and edged with pale guards, tiny cloven hooves pit patting against the Tallsun dried earth as he takes note of those wearing crowns, and those without; he understands very little of the laws of his home, but respects them.

Mostly because she has threatened him if he makes adopting lost hybrids a habit, and he wants to show her that Aithniel was merely a fluke of naivety, that he is a son both she and his sire could smile over proudly; he wants to prove to her that his Thistle Sister is worth more than his mother wants to see, and the only path he can see aside from the little snow and gold child proving her worth on her own, is through acts of his invention.

In his tiny, premature mind, he feels that being good at this will make mother forgive Aithniel her wings, the sins of her ancestors who had bred with birds and lost their rights to any earthly kingdom. It is not her fault, after all, that her family had made mistakes, and he, for all his pondering and headaches over the matter, cannot see why his mother hates her for that which she had no control over.

Illynx, of course, sees none of his thoughts, feels none of his hidden drive and motivation as they trot along through the wood; she only watches him watch the world go by him, continuing on past the figures that had acquired a gathering already even if it seemed the prospect was suitable, finding that Tallsun has brought, as usual, an influx of faces to the land.

Unlike Rikyn, who does not know enough to wonder such things, she gives each a glance that questions how long they will stay, to where they will go, if they, someday, may die in this land she has lived in for most of her life.

They’ve come almost to the very border of the wood that signifies the entrance into Helovia, and the Lady ponders telling her son to loop back around as she takes note of his notice of something, following his trajectory (slightly increased, for there! There is his first prize!) to a dark figure standing quite nonchalantly along the borders of one of the open areas that dapple the ancient wood.

”Helloooo,” calls her boy, drawing a smile to her lips that heightens the one already blooming upon recognition of a mare she had thought long gone and never to return. Her name, so long since its last use, evades her, but she does know that this is a face she had seen many times while the herd had been under the keep of her darling Empress. This is a kindred soul, one that is desperately needed in the snow, and her grin is predatory as she idles in after her child who has come to a bouncy halt before the black mare, his words flowing even as she stops as he hungrily runs his eyes up her savage horn in honest wonder at the variety between one unicorn family to another. ”I’m Rikyn, and this is my momma, the Gilded Blade. We live in the Aurora Basin up in those big mountains back over there,” he blabbers on cheerfully, golden eyes burning with his enthusiasm as he prattles on and points with his partially grown, gold tipped horn towards home, ”did you just get here?”