hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She joins them from across the way, toddling awkwardly through the snow drifts with her pregnant belly swinging from side to side. It didn’t seem possible that she could grow any larger than this, and yet the mornings came and went and still, nothing. She didn’t worry that something might be wrong though, not when she could feel the child moving inside her, could feel tiny hooves poking at her belly when she moved around too much. It had been an odd feeling at first, to have something living in her belly, but it was a sensation she had quickly come to love. At nights when she could not sleep, on long days when Offspring had to tend to Kingdom related issues, she could simply stand and count with a soft smile the number of times the child shifted inside her.
With a gentle smile etched across the bright and pale of her pink lips, she closed the distance between herself and the pair, settling close to Offspring. But for once she did not immediately reach out to taste the winter on his skin, the dust in his fur. She was struck instead by the softness of the expression stretched across his heavy head while he watched this bright child, his daughter, playing in the snow. This moment seemed to stretch on forever and she greedily traced the slack lines of his face, the way the shadows seemed to fade from his crimson eyes. Even his smile was different when he watched the girl, Maribel, she guessed from what he had told her a few days ago. A thought struck her, a fleeting curiosity as she found herself wondering if he had been a father before. This felt too natural to be something new, but then, it seemed there was little that did not come easily to him. With a quick shake of her small head the thought was gone, it did not matter right now.
Easing a little closer to both, though still a little reluctant to interrupt this moment, this memory she knew she would look back on fondly for a long time to come, she came to stand beside Offspring. She recalls the bleating cry as the girl had called out into the echo of the quiet Tundra, a roar Offspring had called it, and Isle smiles again. “Offspring, did you hear that?” She says and her dark eyes twinkle conspiratorially despite not feeling as adept at this as he was, and then with a feigned frown that deepened the soft wrinkles around her pale mouth, “I’m afraid your Tundra might have lions.”
Isle
