I wish I could feel it all for you, I wish I could do it all for you

She isn’t sure she wants company. She knows her body well enough to know things are starting, even without a glance into the web of timelines around her that would offer certainty. She’s pacing on the beach, watching the ebb and flow of the strange glowing creatures washed in with every wave. To be really honest, Kellyn isn’t sure why she’s still here. More than a small amount of her had wanted to walk away when he’d casually announced that in addition to getting Kellyn pregnant, he’d done the same to her daughter. If she thought he’d had any idea, she would have left. Maybe caused a minor diplomatic issue on her way out, because even though she generally avoids her grandfather like the plague, she knows exactly how to pull on his heartstrings and could have gotten Brennen here in moments; especially since he might have mixed feelings about Kellyn, but he’s never had anything but affection for Carwyn.


But, the little pink mare has seen no sign that Carwyn isn’t perfectly pleased to be here, if perhaps not pleased to be sharing the island with her typically absentee mother. So here she is, ridiculously round and considering her options for after she drops the creature inside her to the warm sand. Kellyn isn’t prone to filicide, and hasn’t abandoned any of her children before they were old enough to wean. The only one she’d ever tried to raise by herself had been the first, and it hadn’t gone well; unlike Carwyn who regarded her warily but without hatred, she isn’t sure Cassady would ever speak to her voluntarily. Carwyn and Cleary she’d left to her family to raise, and the fourth filly had been given to her father. Kellyn had refused to name the girl, but Sorenson refuses to let her forget the name Rhonen had chosen: Noah.


This child feels different. For starters, she knows it’s a son. She even has a name picked out for him, thought she hasn’t spoken it aloud. Perhaps she can raise a son, where she could not raise a daughter. ’You’ll walk away from this one, too,’ snarls the female ghost, eyes burning in disgust. ’And instead of taking it to Father, you’re planning to leave it here, with the kelpie.’ Bethanie had disliked Ivar on sight, though Sorenson was more reserved in his opinion. ‘Carwyn is here too,’ he defended Kellyn, ‘and it is the child’s father.’ They descended into bickering, and she couldn’t block them out. She had to listen to it, like always, hating herself for being the wedge between them, but unable to do anything but self-destruct.


The fifth is the easiest yet. They’d all gotten progressively easier, and in very little time the little mare is rolling onto her stomach, blinking at the colt. Carwyn had been tinted distinctively blue, but this colt is blue, straight up. As blue as Cassady was purple. The thought flits across her mind that it would be so easy, to leave him here with Carwyn and Ivar. He’d be easy to pass off as Carwyn’s, being this color. Still, she cleans him up almost without thinking, and tucks him close to her side. Cagney had cuddled her close like this, so long ago, and so had Brennen. She remembers the way it was comforting and safe. Somehow, she’s not surprised to find that the boy is scaled, or to see the sharp teeth lurking inside his mouth.


She is afraid to have him nurse from her, with those teeth, but she knows she will nurse him anyway. Those glimmers of goodness are the reason that Sorenson hasn’t abandoned her, though she knows he disapproves of most of her choices. And she doesn’t really want to lose the ghost of her uncle, though she often bemoans his lurking, because he is the only link to her father and grandfather she allows herself to keep.

Kellyn

the girl who walks in time and talks to ghosts
daughter of cagney and elite