Emberflame Ridge there's no turning back now

She knew!  Oh, she knew, and maybe he wasn't so alone at all!  His hope was quick to rekindle — after all, wasn't a grief shared between two souls halved?  She came close to him, and he realized that she stood barely at his shoulder.  Would that have been where his mothers reached, had they made it long enough to see him grown?

His throat seemed to swell shut with sorrow, so he let any words that might've come up lie dormant, choosing instead to rub his chin over the thin bridge of her muzzle.  It felt good to hold someone again — she wasn't Eleuthera, but they were family, after all.

We did, he supplied quietly as she began to speak, his face twisted in confusion.  Had their mothers not told the other children that they were on an adventure?  That they'd always meant to come home?  But they were so young!  Maybe the girl had just forgotten.  

And then she told him of all of the hardships that Elysium had encumbered in his absence.  He felt shame rise up in his chest; even though he knew that it would have made no difference if they'd stayed home, he still... I'm sorry.  His mouth flattened and he swallowed hard.  He remembered how she had called him Olive, and his heart dropped straight into the molten core of the planet alongside his stomach.

Mama's gone, too — mama Seabreeze and mama Olive.  He let it hang in the quiet winter air between them, bracing himself for whatever reaction might come, hoping that she might take solace in the fact that in this grief she was not alone, and totally unaware of the fact that Ibis knew that they were "gone," but not of the fate that had came upon them.