Brigand was growing like a weed. Muriel loved him so intensely it hurt, and as she watched him find his legs, find his soul and grow into it, pride blossomed ever stronger. He had been the product of what she'd once considered a mistake. Oh, she had been endeared by Gull. She even thought that perhaps, somewhere in her tentative heart, she loved him. He had been so broken and disoriented when she had happened upon him, and they had comforted each other in carnal, whimsical ways. But she had stayed with him for weeks, had traveled with him until the island had exploded in war and ruin and they'd been separated. Her wings had carried her safe and far, as she had always trusted them to. But she had not seen Gull again.

And oh, Leliel.

She still loved him, in her little girl heart. He had been her prince charming, surly and unwilling though he'd been for nearly their entire lives. So many long years of his disapproval, his frustration and irritation...but Muriel had loved him to ruin and back, and when she had been with Gull, the abandonment that was actually for once not abandonment had not seemed so intense. He had been her shelter, in the storm that losing Leliel when he'd finally promised to love her had been. But Leliel had returned, and with it he had brought back and replaced the pieces of her heart that he had taken with her. And she was left with a heart torn two ways. It seemed only Brigand could hold the entirety of her love, and though she once had hated him, the moment she'd seen his tiny newborn frame she'd never looked back.

Would Gull love him, as she did? Muriel could not comprehend an alternative. Her heart loved too deeply to envision anyone not loving her precious baby boy. But, Muriel and Gull had not anticipated their mating to come to fruition. What if he was not ready to be a father? What if he did not feel the similar echoes in his heart that she did, the ones that resonated a little too much like love?

Muriel sighed, gazing down into the ever burning fires, her four wings wide and bathing in the warmth. Brigand was near, she knew he was, and with him must be Leliel. She did not fear ever losing them, because she so rarely let them out of her sight. Brigand's growing frustration with it made her ache, because he could not understand her fears, her desperation. "I need you, Gull," she whispered into the rising sun.

@[Gull] and @[Brigand]! This is Muriel's last thread before she dies, so please keep it moving if possible!

No matter how valiantly she wished and prayed, pleaded and begged and sold her soul, the fiery pits did not unearth the soul she searched for. It hurt that she could still remember him with such clarity. His soft curling smile, boyish and charming, unsure of himself in endearing ways but with a playful coyness that had captured her attention. His soft eyes, calm and unmoving, like bedrock. He had been her first stable, reliable friend. Regardless of how she feared she may feel for him, Muriel would always cherish him foremost as the man who had given her another reason to live. All she wanted was to see him one more time. Tell him about the son they had together, make sure he was okay, that he was even alive...but Muriel wouldn't allow herself to think of that. He had to be alive. He had to. And maybe in the very end she could tell him that, impossibly, perhaps, she had begun to feel something for him.

The rising sun was her only answer. It played light on her pale flanks, added to the sweat already glistening on her lean frame. It was unbearably hot but she never so much as twitched a single muscle in contemplation of departing. Her rosen hide remained as still and calm as blown glass, delicate but beautiful and coveted nonetheless. Muriel could be stubborn, and though she was a lost and faithless sinner undeserving of fruition for her pleas, she still mulishly hoped that her fervent desires alone would will Gull into existence. Whether she deserved that was another thing she did not desire to dwell upon. She had already been given Brigand and Leliel. Oh but she was a selfish and greedy soul, and her heart longed for those few missing pieces still dedicatedly stuck on the stallion who ever eluded her.

Maybe the future was foreseen by the Gods, who took pity on the valiant mare with the kind heart and feeble will. Perhaps it was for Brigand, who would need a protector, a parent to love and console him when her time ran out. Or maybe it was for Gull, to either punish or reward him, to give her back to him only to rip her away irreversibly. Muriel was unaware of her fate, her pending demise, and instead she heard salvation in the disbelieving utterance of her name. As if stuck in a realm of slowed, half-hearted time, she turned and let her wide, blown eyes fall upon him. His name slipped out of her lips on a prayerful gasp, a sigh of impossibilities rolled into one. A chance meeting that undermined all her long seasons of searching for him. "Gull..." and then as he began to move for her, a hysterical delight overtook her.

Her name had never sounded more beautiful, and she laughed aloud in a heady rush of gratitude and love and disbelief and a thousand other emotions that collided one another and exploded into fragmented stardust shards inside her buzzing head. Her wings flared toto e her balance and she turned to find him, not daring to so much as blink lest his mirage disappear. It would crush her to lose him so brutally, a figment of her desperate, lonely imagination. "GULL!" she cried in jubilant response, flying more than running with how light her hooves - her entire body and soul - felt. She was floating, and he was her rock, holding her down to earth right when she'd thought she'd never come back down.

They came together like reversed magnets, their polarities compatible, sucking them back together with an almost violent sort of euphoria. Muriel barely heard his gasped words of disbelief, saw only his searching gaze, the clear desire to touch and be touched. Be assured this was real. So Muriel threw her foremost wings towards him, hoping to clasp round his barrel, slip to interlock their primaries and ruck up their feathers together. She wanted to be part of him intrinsically, wanted to sew him into her flesh and never let him leave her side again. A morbid sort of sorry dedication. And she was laughing to the heavens even as tears poured down her face because he was alive! And it was all she had ever wanted. At last she'd been called home, her compass completed, heart returned to fullness. She sought his muzzle with her own, wanting to breathe in the scent that she would so often awake to in half-slumber, searching in vain for him as her sleep-addled mind swore hollow promises that he was there, just as he had been in her dreams. A ghost of a scent, a touch, that she'd chase into awareness only to cry herself back to sleep when he was not there beside her, completing her ragtag little family. Muriel had never owned anything in her life but that little group. Maybe she could finally complete it.

"I'm alive," was all she could think to say through her tears, laughing and hiccuping, overwhelmed with her gratitude and relief. "You're here." To anyone else it would sound like the most sincere prayer, with how it rolled off her tongue. As if there was no greater gift possible in the world.

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.

The Gods had drawn together the nightly greys of dusk and the hues of gold and pink of dawn, brought them together and allowed them to influence once another. Polar opposites, in so many different ways. And yet they had made something beautiful together, not only in Brigand but in the ties that connected their hearts. It mattered little to her, where he had been or with whom during the flood, the seasons in which she could not find him. Time and again she had welcomed Leliel back into her heart after his prolonged, unexcused absences.

She had suffered hurt. A lot of it. Heartbreak, abandonment, loneliness, despair. Muriel had simply never learned how to begrudge someone the pain they inflicted upon her. Her heart was too pure for hatred, for bitterness. Perhaps in another life, another time, she would realize that and be thankful for whatever had instilled it inside of her. But she was unaware of it, clueless to whatever light Gull saw radiant and beautiful within her. She could only see him. Captivated by the azures of his eyes, flickering in shades as the firelight case itself across the glassy lenses. Bellona or no, he had come back. He had come to her. There was nothing that could push her from his side, nothing aside the most important question held in balance in that moment.

Her words seemed to strike some sort of tension into him, which only made her babble faster, wings seizing up with hesitation and indecision. Should she reach for him? Try to comfort him? But the damage was done, and at last she had found her voice even as he seemed to retreat from her, spitting out the confession nervously. She knew that Brigand was near, likely somewhere with Leliel. But if Gull ended up not wanting him...could she return to their son, conceal how it would hurt her? He was a bright child, and their relationship was extremely close. How could she explain to him who Gull was to him? The loss that she experienced but that he would not? He perceived her so clearly, as if he saw right into her soul sometimes. There was no way she could hide her pain from him, much less Leliel for that matter. So she braced herself, prepared for the vitriol that she feared would spring like tar from his tongue, hot and ready to scald her.

Except...that's not what came out of Gull's mouth. Muriel stared stupidly at him for a moment, having stepped forward into what she thought was space only to find one more available step before the cliff's edge. Her heart pounded in her chest, and it took a warbling breath before she could even hope to consider his words and what message they held. Breath escaped her in a whoosh, and she blinked a few times before she rushed to comfort him. "He's okay," she assured in a quiet murmur, moving to brush her primaries against his shoulder in a movement of comfort. "He's nearby, with someone I trust very dearly. But the heat won't be good for him...here, lets move away from the Heart, and I'll go get him okay?" Voice was quiet, a little tremulous with the daunting task ahead. She still feared his reaction, after all.

But nonetheless she turned and led the way away from the blistering heat of the Heart, her first and foremost concern her son. And with a silent motion she pleaded with him to remain, tucking her wings and letting her long legs carry her back towards the very edges of the Deep Forest, where Leliel and Brigand awaited. They were never far from her, a comfort she couldn't always admit to herself. "It's me Leliel," she assured quietly as she approached, a gesture, a habit that she had picked up ever since he had been blinded. "I found Gull," she whispered, not wanting to break his heart ever further, as she knew she had when he'd discovered that Brigand was not his son. "I...I want Brigand to at least meet him." That was all the explanation she could give, pressing her muzzle to his cheek before turning to her son.

"Brigand, come with me. I have someone I'd like you to meet." She plastered on a nervous smile, extending a wing to her son before turning back towards the Heart and leading him onward. Her knees shook and her heart quivered, Gull's figure on the horizon seeming daunting, almost godlike. Making sure Brigand was close at her flank, she approached him, trying to calm her breathing if only for their son's sake. Their's. It was such a new word for her to use in correlation with the beautiful quad-winged colt. "Gull, this is Brigand. Sweetheart...this is your father."

@[Brigand]

Muriel had never considered that Gull might run. She held him in too bright and beautiful a light, and perhaps she had placed her faith rightfully if his continued presence was anything to go by. The only absence she felt as she retrieved their son was the one that had always ached the moment they'd been separated. The one she hardly dared to admit to, much less analyse. Instead, she turned her eyes upon her son, her greatest achievement and gift in life. The gods had never favored Muriel, on Janat or in Helovia. She was plain and inconspicuous, despite her appearance, her personality, her ideology. Muriel was content to simply be, to allow life to revolve around her and instead form her own little world where she could. Like a bird she created a nest, a safe haven where she could freely share her love and not feel the sting of retribution and disdain. Perhaps she was childlike in that aspect, hiding away and surrounding herself only with the good in life. But it had served her well.

"Mum." Her smile is beatific, and she does not hesitate to drape her wing in a temporary embrace across his little, growing body. He could charm her with a single syllable, her own title no less. His indecision and worry was clear on his little face, his expressive eyes. Perhaps in time he would learn to conceal his reactions, but Muriel quietly hoped he would take more after her than Gull in that aspect. It had not always served her well, but the beautiful maiden had never appreciated dishonesty in any form or figure, draped as it was in supposed well-intentions. "All is well," she assured softly, nuzzling his little ears. It was hard to stop touching, Muriel often found. Having him near seemed to erase every single little worry in her life, her heart. Perhaps she smothered him at times, but she prayed that when the day came where she was taken from his side, that he would remember the memories of her touch and her love.

The tension is palpable, obvious to the mare, but a mother's instincts did not often fail. Instead she merely smiled, a little bit teasingly, back at Gull when he looked to her for help and guidance. Oh no, her grin was saying, this is all you right now. Even though her heart ached to hear her son ask such sad, desperate questions, she awaited Gull's words before adding any of her own. Without taking her eyes off Gull at first, she let them roll from her tongue. Gull may have tried to make the words more understandable, but Muriel knew her son was bright, and he would more than comprehend a better explanation. "There was a horrible event that shook the earth apart, and we were separated. I searched for him, and he for us, but we could not find one another. It was not his fault that he could not be there when you were born, my love." Voice dipped into a quieter register, eyes soft and sympathetic as they turned to her son.

He whispers words up to her, meant solely for her ears, and Muriel's eyes filled with tears she did not let fall. "I know baby," she whispered back, voice valiant but breaking subtly. "You don't have to love him, I know it's strange. But try to give him a chance, okay? We never forget, but we always try to forgive," she reminded him, a motto she'd always repeated to him as he was growing. It was the one she'd lived by her entire life, after all. Eyes lifted to Gull, an encouraging smile on her lips, a little tremulous but hearty and homey. "It will take time. But...but you are more than welcome to stay with us, or see us however often you want if you desire your distance to come to terms." It was the best she could offer him, but she prayed he would stay. He was Brigand's father, after all. She and Leliel did the best they could, but it would never really be the same.

@[Brigand] @[Gull]