Glad that Tiamat has already sent Toulouse on an errand to prove both his validity and loyalty to our herd, I nod in approval; I also can’t say I don’t hold my own reservations, but I wouldn’t be here now, if people didn’t give the underdog a shot every now and again, right?

Even though my name is written in the sky, and Tiamat has already swept to my side, congratulations on her lips, it doesn’t really sink home that this is happening until the rest come. It’s sort of like a dream, until then, like when I fly through clear skies while sleeping, only to plummet from them at some point, like a stone. That same sensation is lilting through my chest, the easy freedom of flight, and I can’t help but wonder when the fall is going to come.

Except it doesn’t; the opposite occurs, as Erebos arrives, so proud, and happy, expressions I have not seen on him in long enough that it makes an ache bloom to life in my chest that he had ever changed. Though I am filled with trepidation and self doubt, I cannot repress the laughter and the grin which rises to my face at his mocking bow, or the cajoling call of my name alongside my new title. I had done it to him, after all; perhaps it is fitting that I be embarrassed, in turn.

"Ha, please," I jest in turn, a smirk broad and full of cheer spreading across my face, glad to be among my friends, in one of the small droplets of sun-warmed, golden perfection life affords us in the endless river of cold, gray water, "you know I’ll cause her all the problems. Otherwise, we can all assure I am gravely ill."

So when Toulouse, Weaver, Albrecht, Roland, and Lena arrive, all people I think of fondly, my heart lifts even more. I meet the others I do not know as well, or have had rough starts with in no different fashion, with a smile, with excitement, and that same unhidden, splinter of worry in my heart that this is but the beginning of the end for me. Ode (though he says nothing to me, and moves, instead, towards the God), a man I only know from his haunting presence about my blade brother from time to time, and his wraith-like gaze which wanders during gatherings, Oizys, from the Veins, with the foul mouth, and Wessex, who surely had some sort of stick up her ass, but was otherwise fine by me. She was the one who’d left offended as a rain-drenched cat the last we’d met, after all. I had found the interaction quite amusing.

But it’s Lena, tender, ever-present Lena, who strikes the blow to my heart that makes my smile fall, and a somber seriousness rise to the lines of my face. That shadow that has lived inside me since I found my father dead, my distant brother standing over him, our sorrow perhaps the only thing in this life we shared, aside from him, it blooms back to life at the mention of him, and the immediate recollection of his face.

“You were always my greatest creation,” he says in they eye of my memory, as the cool wind pulls through his tangled hair, and love marks every inch of his face; the last I would see him home, where, I believed, anyway, we belonged.

"Thank you," I tell the Time Mender, softly, sincerely, before more sonorously I announce to the rest, "thank all of you."

Smiling at Tiamat and Toulouse, overhearing her mention of a “surprise,” I wiggle my eyebrow at him and laugh, before looking to the God for his words.

[ OOC; promptly dies now ]