Stone Circle life is old there, older than the trees

Would you like to wrap this up with a final post? :) The reunion of Merrit/Valette can be off-screen, but I'd love a separate, present-day thread of catching up with Valette, if you're game for that! Maybe some mother-son bonding, if the kids are old enough for Val to hang out with him one-on-one haha :)

Merrit didn't feel like a good man, but he kept these doubts to himself. He instead leaned into Arlette's embrace and allowed her warmth to brighten his unshedable night and preserve the soft smile that remained on his face. This was how things should have always been, and he let her peace surround him.

The news of her progress in her chosen career pleased him, but he had hardly time to comment on this further before his sister chattered on to conversation she deemed more important than herself - an assessment to which Merrit hardly agreed. Arlette held a quarter of his heart, the others belonging to mother, Keen, and Stark. Be it love or revile, he still felt something for his father, and try as he might, he simply couldn't sweep out this deep, dark recess to replace with something new. So he let this quarter be, and hoped that one day he might have the courage to overcome whatever demons he kept securely locked away in there.

But his father was not the focus of Arlette's excitement - mother was, and Merrit found his heart flood with warmth at the mention of her. "Yes, please. I would love that," he said, and his tail waved with the anxious anticipation of seeing her again. Mother, and her children - no, his siblings, he corrected. No matter their sire, they shared his mother's blood, and that was enough to procure a room in his walled up heart without the need to prove themselves worthy of his affections.