the firestarters always get the burns
and the good guys never get the girl
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.
@[Svedka] hope you didn’t mind me powerplaying a tiny little bit at the beginning, but I didn’t intend to play Llowell so I had to get him out of the thread, he’s not even really my character, lol
Also, it’s a novel. xP