Gwyn is with me, and the path to the Threshold has never been so beautiful in Orangemoon; I can’t help but think it’s her who makes it so, considering that it’s so cold, and the sky is gray and hard with winter’s promise. Still, with the last above freezing afternoons on the verge of vanishing, I’ve brought my young daughter out with me for an all day adventure outside the Basin, on one of the last days until Birdsong I might be able to do so. It is, perhaps, a bold strategy, but there is something inside me that almost insists that today is the day…

And so, here we are.

The frost which has lined the branches in the early morning has begun to thaw, trickling wet, dark lines down the trees, and saturates the earth beneath our hooves, making it cold, and damp. She moves alongside me with playful scampers and inquisitive, distant stares into the trees, and down the open hollows we slip past, and the golden hints upon her rump glimmer with faintly blue sparks that leap harmlessly into the cold air. While it had been startling at first, to be sure, it had quickly grown on me.

It reminded me, with some pangs of sorrow that I quickly tried to push away, of my parents, and their magic.

My brain is trying to lure me into that dark pit I’ve covered over with sticks and leaves when a completely different voice of my youth sounds out in the forest. Stopping, I tilt my ears towards the sound of the voices, but I lower my head to touch Gwyn in an attempt to get her to stop.

Thranduil? I think with a wary snort (I certainly hope not), stepping towards the conversing, unseen individuals to settle my curiosity once and for all.

When it actually is him, however, I can’t help but stare for a moment. The same hardness I always feel when I lay eyes on him flares to life, but it’s born out of wariness of an older hurt, more deeply embedded beneath metaphorical sticks and leaves than the death of my father. He probably is unaware that he goads me nearer that forbidden ground with the questions he asks, but I still dislike him for it, regardless.

Hotaru, however, is a different story; when I’d been very small, I’d had a giant crush on her, mostly because she was so pretty. She still is, to be sure, but I’m also older, and I’ve done more than sweetly pine after the right to compose poems to a woman, after all (cue Gwyn, pausing alongside me). Besides, with a glance from Thranduil to her and the obvious breadth of her belly, I put two and two together… or in this case, one and one.

"Long time no see, Laurelin," I say, with a nod; in fact, the last I’d seen him had been during a meeting that had been infiltrated, scattering the small gathering there to the wind, and when it came to Hotaru, I wasn’t sure when the last I’d seen her was. A lot had happened between then and now, I guess. "And miss Hotaru, as well. Gwyn, these people were once Lord and Lady of the Basin, and knew all your grandparents. This is Gwyn, and I don't think you've met Duir, either."

I gesture to her with my muzzle and a proud smile, and Duir introduces himself with a nod of his ivy-laden crown, but he makes the most attempts to meet eyes with Haldir. Having never met another cerndyr before, he is quite eager to do so.

"Its good to see you back," I admit, because I guess it sort of is; its been awfully boring, after all, and Thranduil is masterful at causing a good scene. Put Albrecht, Thranduil, and I in a room together, and someone is bound to get offended, one of us included. "Assuming you are, of course?"