Swiftcurrent Creek This isn't funny. Come back!

The familiar look of shock swept over his sister. Expected, despite how strained her relationship with mother had become in the last year of her life. Their love had soured, but Valette was still their mother, Easthollow their childhood, and the news, he imagined, was not what she had been expecting.

Merrit took a step forward when she fell to her haunches, but Thyme beat him to comfort her, and the Raven paused in his advance. “I know,” he said softly. He hadn’t expected that to be the last time she’d ever see them, too.

She asked how he was, and to this he only gave a ghosted smile. Pained, despite the time that had passed. Six months. Was that how long it had been? Merrit held only a vague recollection of all that had transpired between then and now. They had felt fast and slow all the same, and he had not realized how long he had made Arlette wait to hear the news herself… and how he might have never told her, if he had not come across her today, whatever his intentions had been…

But Arlette didn’t need to know this. He’d had his reasons for not telling her the first time they’d encountered one another since mother’s passing, and they were valid and logical, by every one of his standards, and he could spin the wait to be the same.

“It was winter,” was all he said, before he continued in a rush. He would not have her cut him off until he explained himself in full.

“You must understand. I wanted to tell you. But when I saw you were pregnant… Arlette, I couldn’t know how the news would affect you. What if it has made you lose these children, too?” he stepped forward again, am earnest plea for understanding in his hazel eyes, “I couldn’t be the reason. I had always planned to return to tell you, but I had seen so much, and grief, it has a way of twisting time. I’m sorry I did not come sooner.”