Her muzzles brushes against the emptiness of my forehead, and I sigh into her touch. I am reminded - swiftly transported in fact - back to our time together in the white and the quiet: Exploring her wingless body, and she exploring my hornless face. Now that we were alone again, the pieces seemed to softly rivet themselves back into place. As if it had been the crowd that had pulled us apart, that had interrupted and forced Glacia to run away, and tied my tongue. Because with her here now, it all seemed so simple and easy, just as it had that day.

The tears that darkened her already dark cheeks pierce my heart, but still I am silent. Why does she cry..? Is it for the same reasons that my own soul feels dark? Does she perhaps regret our actions? Does she wish she could just wrap up this child in a net and quietly forget about it? Or is it something about me - about the idea of bearing a child that carries my lineage? After all, I told her I was the last, the lonely, the ever-burning. What mother could possibly want a child born of such suffering and isolation?

-and I had been thinking about you-

Her words almost startle me, for no one thinks about me. At least not actively. I try to ruffle through my thoughts, to discern what it was I was thinking. Feeling. For some reason, I wasn't overly concerned.

Do I love you? I wonder silently as Glacia too slips seemingly into her own thoughts.

I don't know-

I feel ... something for her. Some sort of maddening and distracting concern and interest. She floods my thoughts and ignites my body in a way that no other ever has (but then, there haven't ever been others..) Is that love? Truly it was mere happenstance that brought us together. Not fate exactly, but something like it. Does that preclude the possibility that we love each other? That the world - the whiteness of that moment which forced us together - is at fault?

I can't myself from shaking at the thought, but nor can I pull myself away from her. I can't stop touching her. Feeling her. Being here.

She begins speaking again and my ears move forward to catch each and every syllable falling from her lips, as if I could scoop them up, place them in a jar and save them for later. Perhaps listen to them when the beating of her heart and the pulse running through her body isn't screaming in my ears.

"He?" I interrupt without thinking. He? I am - We are having a son? My face likely reveals something like surprise and joy, but inside I am still immobilized. I suddenly see myself as my Father - will I be the distant figure that Gaucho was?

Will I be like my Father in this? I want to say that I won't, but I can't convince myself of that.

I don't make an ounce of sense, do I?

"You've made life." I whisper, my wings folding more tightly around her (I bite my lip to try and stifle the electric shiver that runs through at our embrace).
"You don't have to make sense. At least not right now."