Duir arrives with Lena, and pauses alongside me, earning a grateful touch to his forehead with my dark lips, the ongoing events having, miraculously, stolen my words away for the moment. Sharing in Lena’s knowing smile with my own uncomfortable grimace of a smile, I’m glad when she turns her attention to the laboring Glacia. Soon, the cave is filled with Lena’s singing, and the magical hum of her healing, and though, occasionally, Glacia’s cries rise above the wordless hymn I have heard lilt from the caverns in this land all to often, I relish the peaceful tune, trying to remember it for when I look back, and remember when…

She comes. I don’t see the more gruesome details of it all, having stationed myself near the mouth of the cavern, a hesitant distance between myself, and the mare who gives me a daughter. I’m awkwardly trying to stay close but out of the way, not sure at all where my place in this moment is, having never paid attention to any birth, ever (no thanks). Now, it made sense why people chose to attend the arrivals of new children into the world; to be ready for their own.

I’m left haplessly unsure.

‘She’s beautiful…’ and she is, all onyx laden with snow, and embellished with gold, ‘Our child is so beautiful.’

"She is," I softly say, in awe, looking at the wet, sealed lids of her gold detailed eye, so like mine, wondering if her hidden gaze is gold, bronze, blue…

At first, everything is still, until Glacia moves to clean her; with a jolt, the babe comes to life, cries making their way from her lips as her icy blue eyes fly open, and she seems to see only the mares closest to her at first. It fills me with an odd sort of jealousy, and a desire to have her see me, too, and wonder why she doesn’t. We too far, Duir reminds me of very young children, she not see good yet.

Feeling some of my doubt fade away, I decide to close the distance some, then. My ears lift, and everything in me fills with an uneasy tension, and I step closer, forcing my crown lower to seem less imposing, and to see her more clearly in the glowing blue light of the nearby mushrooms. When she moves to stand, however, I stop, and my head is again erect, my eyes wide with terror each time she falls down.

Sure, I’d watched Duir learn to do it, too, but that was somehow different. He seemed stronger than she did, or maybe it was just that our bond allowed me to know he was fine, no matter how hard he fell, or that it had been a loamy forest floor, not a stone one… When she does at last manage to stand and wobble uneasily to Glacia’s flank, however, my worry is quickly replaced with an amused smile, watching her nub of a horn press into her mother’s dark side; meeting Glacia’s blue eyes, I ask the most obvious question to be asked at a birth.

"What do you think we should call her?" I ask, remembering how my mother had named me, and taking a quick moment to think of a similar combination of Glacia and I’s names for her; all the while, I watch her nurse, the most perfect girl in all the world, "what about Lynn? Or, hm, Gwyn has a nice sound to it…"

Maybe could have thought of this before now, Duir mentally scoffs.