Northstar Vale I want to drive away with you.

It was too bad that Seabreeze would never see her grand-daughters. That Terance was off somewhere else, too. Ibis was oblivious to the truth of her family: that both her mothers were long gone, so far gone that their old homestead was being built-over by a new conclave. She did not know that her father had left the Wilds, nor that he had died somewhere nameless. In her mind, her family was alive - having relocated somewhere when the world destabilized.

She watched both of them as she hummed her little tune, not aware that parts of the composition came from memory rather than spontaneity. It was like a hymn, almost. As one child shuffled, the other stretched. She brushed her nose against the exposed belly of one little girl and thought she might start weeping then and there; the shape of her daughter's round belly became incongruous as a sheen developed over her eyes.

'What would mama think of you?' Ibis could not help but think. 'Would she see herself in your face? I do.'

Carefully Ibis pressed a kiss to that belly, to that little nose, to the curled ears. She pulled Arielle towards her sister with a careful shift of her limbs, tucked them together beside one-another, and gave her the same myriad of tiny kisses.

'You're almost as dark as daddy,' she thought of the bronzed girl, 'You'll be handsome like him, I bet.'

'Maybe when you're older we can go see your grandpa.' She thinks, blinking away that sudden sadness and replacing it with a shy smile.