You had forgotten the arguments, of the way he had left you with the shards of yourself, all of your tears, left you when you were crumbling because of a man you didn't even know, a crime you didn't commit, how he had tried to defend you, telling you the things you needed (but did not want) to hear and how you had only struck out in return, trying to tear down the convictions that mean(t) so much to him, and how he had stayed to punish a fiend instead of climbing back up the mountain home with you. You had forgotten, and even as his hesitation reminds you of it, you push it away, swallow the bitterness that still clings to some corner of your aching soul, smiling to reassure him, to reassure yourself, to keep the words from finding their way from you now.

'Enna,' and he smiles, losing you within the folds of its making, a little... less but still his,  your anger, his betrayal, lost once more to you, too, as quickly as it had come. Your eyes drift to the oval at his feet as he says only that he got it from a cave,  the curl of your lips growing upwards, becoming brighter in your excitement, too entrenched to ponder the depths hidden there between his teeth, in the shadow of his glances and all the silence in between.

'Maybe it was waiting for you,' you laugh, and laugh again as he echoes your sentiments, as he winks and smiles again, thoroughly delighted to hear it come from him, to have it be more than just a childish thought, the wishings of a woman who had once buried fragments of herself there beneath that tree, kept only to yourself.  “Yes, I think it was.” The pianissimo of your laugh quiets into the silence punctuated by the humming life brought by the mild spring that has reached even the Basin.

There is the slightest noise, one that you almost miss, that directs your attention back to his egg, your eyes widening at a crack that had not been there before, a fresh swell of excitement rising within you hotly, breathing out to expel the squeak at the back of your throat. His question catches you off-guard then, and you only stare stupidly at the quivering orb, for moments too stunned by this start of something new to think of an answer.

“Just this,” you begin belatedly, a hushed whisper, and like the two of them, at first your eyes do not move from the cracking shell. “That they begin life as eggs, hatching into many different creatures that bond to your soul.” You shrug, discouraged in your own lack of knowledge, fighting against the worry that begins to chew at your heart as you finally look down to your own egg, the reality of a creature, unknown to you, curled within the fragile walls suddenly terrifying when there had been only excitement.

It had been the same for your child(ren), the instinctual fear of the unknown and all of your self-doubt, the memory of a girl with black locks and dead eyes, that maybe could have lived if you only tried a little harder, cared a little more before it had been too late. You had known enough of what would come then, however, known that your body would provide what they had needed and that they would not starve, would not want.

You had known enough, and Etziel had not sunk into your soul, a second being sharing all the damaged pieces of you that even you do not want, would part with if there ever came a chance, had not been made to bear the winter that is always in your heart. And yet, for all the swirling doubt and regret, the sudden opposition to ever being stupid enough to bring this thing with you, as the little creature begins to wobble, showing its first signs of life, you find your breath caught in your throat, the heat chased from your cheeks, your reservations too selfishly far from your reach for you to want to grasp at them again just yet.