Flight must be the most wonderful thing in the world, and Ilma is eternally grateful she can share this gift with her children. If only she could share it with everyone, she’s be the happiest woman alive.

Not that Llowell at this point seems to grasp the concept very well, to be honest. He was even at birth quick to use the wrong limb to stand, and his wings aren’t strong enough to support much flight yet. She’s explained it to him multiple times, but the boy is too curious and too impatient, and tries to glide at least on a daily basis now. She lets him, because it will only make him stronger and learn to cope with disappointment. Once in a while when he gets back to her on the afternoons she gives him a ‘told you so’ look but doesn’t comment any further than that. She loves him, although she must be honest with herself that he will probably never be her favourite child. A mother isn’t allowed to have favourites, really, but she has those feelings anyway and so she does what she always does, hide them in plain sight by perhaps showering him with whatever and all love that she can give.

Today he is quick to rise again, but she grasps his mane a moment to bring him to a standstill. ”Llowell, please, you should learn to swim also.” She knows enough winged horses who cannot seem to understand what to do with wings when they touch the water, and she is pretty sure that Tähti was even younger than her little brother when she was taught (since Solace had beat her to it back then). She has told her son that living with a lake meant learning to swim, but he has been too preoccupied with the air to think of the water, and Ilma has had a hard time keeping up with the boy on mornings until today.

Of course, he makes a face, she sees him trying to hide it but it doesn’t matter. If anything it makes her smile, but perhaps she is lucky that he doesn’t see that. ”I promise if you know the basics you can run off on your own again.” This is her second child after all, she’s less scared that something may happen to him than when she was when Tähti was so young. A matter of a little experience perhaps, and also that there are more horses in their kingdom now who can come to his aid should he need it.

And so they walk the slope downhills towards the lake, the white mare and her tarnished son, greeting the cold lake water in the early morning with a splash (and a soft protesting cry that it’s far too cold).

The white woman outs a soft laugh when her young son protests at the coldness of the water at his feet. She lowers her head to drink, ignoring his whuffs and his pinned-down ears until he calms down. Then, she lifts her head to look down on him with one twinkling eye. "Just be glad it's summer." she tells him, adoring the way his mouth gapes like a fish. Instead she takes a few steps into the lake water - it is cold, yes, but he'll have to make do and just get used to it. She has no intentions of letting him run around and fly only to crash-land in the lake without knowing how to stay afloat. However annoying he may think it is in his teenage mind.

The pegasus is distracted from her son, of course, by the sound and scent of a familiar man approaching through the damp mist that for the moment still rises from the lake. She smiles readily at him, seemingly forgetting even Llowell at that point as she extends her neck to return his greeting. Although there may be a little hesitation somewhere in her mind at the beginning, she wants to forget the past, and gives in to the caressed feeling that he gives her.

Llowell by then, has followed her into the water, but shouts his surprise and Ilma smiles at him, too. She hears Svedka chuckle, and although she does not want to give her son the feeling he's being laughed at, she can't help the smile on her lips changing from a loving to a laughing-grinning one.

She turns back to her gold-and-white friend when he speaks, and nods. "Better to know how not to use your wings underwater," she tells him, but he's already in the lake and spreading diamond droplets around himself like a halo. She grins and then nudges her son. "Come on, it's going to take all day the longer you stall." She then walks with a determined stride past the palomino overo stallion's hind, head high and only looking back at him and, behind him her son, from the corner of her eyes until she's almost nothing more than a white head and blinking eyes in the lake. Ooohh yes, it's cold. But keeping up appearances is of utmost importance, too. With her wings tucked to her sides, they don't drag her down, they aero-dynamical shape designed perhaps to let air flow past easily, but doing that same trick to water, especially with the glands between them that secrete their natural oil.

Of course, her son will take at least thrice as long. She paddles a little deeper, making a long, slow turn to face the boys. After all, she wants to keep moving to stay warm.

It's rather unsettling; however much she wanted a family and now can't seem to be able to divide her time between her son and her... whatsitcalled. She wouldn't dare say lover, for they have made no such moves towards one another, although perhaps bordering on it. But friend seemed so general. Perhaps that's why Solace had given him the title of Heart - specially made, because other things don't fit. Normal descriptions just don't seem to work on Svedka, she muses.

He'd probably really like that idea, so she opts not to tell him this last thought. Instead she smiles, forgetting a moment her dun-striped son. The milk and honey coloured stallion is quick to join her in the water, having done so thousands of times already, and circling her to the deeper side of the lake, from her point of view. He doesn't swim away however; on top of the shimmering water, his head is closing in on hers, and she chuckles when she sees a long-lost flower untie itself from his mane, dried as it is by now. It floats over the soft lake water waves, and her eyes trace the speck of colour just up until Svedka's breath is on her skin to remove a piece of weed that apparently had seemed fit to attach itself to her. His question though, is much more serious in tone, genuinely wanting to know how she is. Has been. Feels.

She has no ready answer, for she is a mix of emotions that slowly are neighing to the better half; with fall coming up, it will have been about a year ago now, soon. She still dreams weirdly - sometimes Arithmetic still shows up in her dreams, either to pull her away from her happier life in Hyaline, or instead to claim Llowell for himself, saying that he doesn't need his mother any more. The worst are the dreams she has of Svedka himself, though. Not that she doesn't like having him in her dreams, they always start very lovely, but it still comes with the sense of impeding danger, and sometimes he shifts into Arty, or Ashhal shows up, and it's always a mess in the end.

But by daytime, none of those things ever happen. By daylight, her son grows into a strong young colt, ready to take on the world but always with half an eye on his mother to make sure she is safe. He sleeps close to her, and he knows that she has nightmares about every other night. Still, it's better than every night, Ilma reasons - and she readily tells Llowell to not linger near her just for her; she has others to fall back on. Even if they don't join her when she's dreaming.

Speaking of which - a yelp interrupts her, and she realizes she'd already opened her mouth to start on a complex answer. Her son, being younger than the both of them, is not yet tall as they and has lost his footing earlier. Ilma swims up to him, inspecting him while he tries to swim. "Steady. Tuck in your wings. All the way. One foot at the time." Now, it is Llowell who takes near hundred percent of her attention; funny how she can't seem to focus on the two of them at the same time.

She doesn’t notice Svedka’s admiration - if she did she would be puzzled. To her this is what being a mother means, nothing special, but simply being there for Llowell. He seems to get the hang of it however, and when he finally manages to tuck in his wing fully like she had instructed, he moves way more smoothly. ”There you go,” she says, satisfied that he won’t drown simply for the fact that he has wings. Her tarnished son pays her hardly any mind, moving his feet irregularly at first, but instinctively kicking and moving around in a way that makes clear to her that he will survive next time he is in the water. His head threatens to go under for a moment when he stops moving; at once Svedka is there just like he promised earlier, and the colt smiles a little and puffs his chest. ”I got this.” He didn’t have it earlier, but he knows that he will, and that he has to practise this as much as he is practising flying. The colt has not got a lot of patience for swimming today however, not with his mother and his uncle-father-something (mother said just to call Svedka by his name but since he’s always been there, he feels like family even though Llowell knows by now that had he been his father, mother would have introduced him as such and since she hasn’t.... well his father is out there somewhere, but someone who apparently didn’t seem bothered to interrupt his and his mother’s life - except in her nightmares. Svedka is much more family than his biological father will ever be).

”Can I go now?” he asks, and his mother chuckles. He’s in deeper than he’d realized. ”If you can get out safely on your own.” Well, the child+who-nears-teenager accepts the challenge for what it is, although he understands now how tiresome swimming is and that knowing the technique isn’t quite enough. He will learn later, though - he swims to the shore with a ver, very similar expression his mother wore earlier when she so gracefully entered the cold water to prove it was safe, that is was nothing; when he reaches the shore he shakes himself and settles into a trot to explore other things.

Ilma watches her son, standing on the pebbles with a grin. Nothing like a challenge to get her son to learn something he hadn’t cared much about earlier. When she moves to smile at Svedka, she realizes that they haven’t talked much since her son’s birth - he has been occupied with other meetings, probably girls who were far more interesting than a tired, tainted mother of by now, two, and also with his niece and nephew. Ilma could wish things different a thousand times or more, but, things were what they were, and besides, she had never thought she alone would be enough to keep him tied to Hyaline. She was just glad the combination of her, his twin, and his niece and nephew seemed enough to pull him back long and often enough not to lose track of him completely.

Her mind goes to places she doesn’t want it to go - she’s not the reason he keeps coming back, come on Ilma, face it. He likes you as a friend and nothing more. He’s just concerned for someone going through a lot of stuff, and that’s about all. Still, she just stands there, the summer sun warming her back as her gaze is fixed on him, and she cannot let go, just as countless other times he just didn’t know about because he was busy with something else, then.