Emberwood you saw me spinning from the corner of your eye

lmk if the pp isn't okay!!

the weeks passed in a blur of delirious joy at @Merrit's side; since that first morning together, yakone's loneliness had melted away like the last of the winter frosts. he saw her, she felt, in a way no one had seen her since her mother died. they looked, yes, but what they saw was not the woman yakone truly was.
merrit was different.
her happiness was tempered somewhat by the weight of what lay ahead. as the days flew by, her pregnancy became more apparent; a shock to her initially, but soon it became another source of joy. thoughts of her prior dalliances had quickly fallen to the wayside. she thought of merrit as their father, and no one else.
though she had often seen the illness that typically accompanied pregnancy in her own mother and half-expected it in herself, yakone experienced none of it. she felt more alive than she could ever remember feeling; she seemed to glow with new life, with a gravity-defying bounce to her step despite the added weight of growing children within her.
today she led merrit through a beautiful woodland, prancing and teasing him until inevitably he would catch her. his touch would distract her, as it always did, and she would forget their game in favor of preening and kissing her lover. theirs was an idyllic and quiet existence. she could think of nowhere she would rather be.

Soon, he would be a father.

He always reckoned he'd be afraid when this day came. Terrified and unprepared, and finally able to understand why his own father had left. How strange, that he would feel such excitement instead! For he realized, now, that in his quiet contemplations he had never factored in the other, the mother of the children he would see.

Before his lover, he had pictured nothing solid at all, just a construct of what he thought was someone secured in reality, when in reality, his imperfect imagination had been her source. Taking the form of women he had known throughout his travels - those he had admired, respected, loved, even - but never of any who had been anything more to him.

But oh, his quiet, radiant lover! She glowed like the morning sun: boundless, with an endless day to shine - and how grateful he was, that she longed to share her light with him! How she wooed him to forget the griefs that broke him like the standing stones! How she spoke to him in ways he had never heard, through gestures, glances, and gentle touches, just as she led him now.

He followed her through the woodland, followed her dance through the evening glow. She willed him on, willed him to catch her, and he fell for her again, leaning into her kisses, and offering her soft ones of his own.

"You are beautiful," he whispered, when they had settled into each other. "And these ones you carry will be beautiful, too."