He quivered like an earthquake beneath her wings, tender and alive, so alive it took her breath away. She didn't want it back. She would give him everything, every possible minute part of her existence. However he deigned to handle those gifts was beyond her control and reason. Because she trusted him, for some reason. Implicitly. As much as she trusted Leliel. If not more, because of her abandonment issues, no matter the truthful reasoning behind her childhood love's most recent disappearances. She immersed herself in him, soaked him in as if she could make a home for him in her pores, keep him there forever so that she may never lose him even when he was not near. But Muriel was not going to let him out of her sight, not again. She would make things work between Gull and Leliel, she would. Muriel would move mountains if it meant they could all finally be happy together. Couldn't she be selfish for a singular moment in her life? She'd given so much. Wasn't she deserving of it?

Teeth grazed her withers, pleasurable and familiar in turn. And she shuddered and preened, arching into his touch like a cat seeking further affection. His touch was like sunlight and purity, and not even the overwhelming heat (which only intensified with their embrace) nor the smoke from the fire could ruin the moment. It was still a physical euphoria. And her heart lifts to hear his words, to feel his face in her mane, and she cradles him shamelessly as a lover would. Her tears stream but her smile is glowing with a brilliance she never thought she'd feel in her entire life. It seems to go through her entire body, reworking her, molding her into the best form she could have ever achieved when the Gods drew her molecules from the galaxies and crafted her. She was whole at last.

"I flew," is all she could offer, voice choked with emotion to hear that he had looked for her as valiantly as she had for him. "I was on the boat, at the bottom with-" and she choked on her son's - their son's - name as it almost came to her tongue. There was no way that Gull would recognize the name, but it meant something to her. To them.

But then he's touching her, a kiss swept across her forelock, brushing it from lavender eyes. And she smiled at him, full of love and adoration that threatened to spill over as effectively as her slowing tears. She turned to try and brush her muzzle against his as he retreated, needing every touch, greedy for it. It would never be enough. He could touch her forever until the day she died and she'd never grow sick of it. And she feels her insides wilt with fear at what she has to say, what she has to answer. Would he run? It would kill her, if he did. She would live on for Brigand and Leliel, but it wouldn't be the same.

But Gull had taught her how to trust again. And so she opened her mouth and the words came tumbling nervously out. "I've been...Oh Gull, please don't freak out, but...we uhm...when we met, well..." she shuffled nervously, her wings finally reluctantly retreating to her sides no matter how badly she wanted to embrace him. She couldn't chain him to her, not when she didn't know how he'd react. Finally she simply blurted it out, tactless and panicked on a rush of breath. "We have a son." The stillness that followed almost suffocated her, but Brigand's face flashed in her mind and she forced herself onward. "He's beautiful," she breathed, a little tearfully. "His name is Brigand. A-And I know you may not want him, but he's ours. I was taking care of him all this time..." and soon she was wordless, no longer sure how to proceed, standing bare and defenseless before Gull. He could either shatter her or build her up into something not even the Gods could take back down.