Love is a fickle thing, too.
Ilma can only reach and grasp what she can, but so far it seemed always out of reach for her, and she is left tangling in the empty air. She grasped a few hairs of Asshal, but it turned out that was lust. She'd tried to reach for Arithmetic, while perhaps she should have tried for someone else, someone like Svedka - but she doesn't dare break their friendship over it. No, a stable love like the one her parents had - that is something simply not for Ilma, as far as she believes right now.
At least when it comes to the love of a man. Sure, she loves her friends - loves them dearly - she loves her family, whom she misses; she loves her daughter and she will come to love her second child, even if that may be harder to understand to an outsider - it's hers, the baby is hers and hers alone - you won't have to carry it alone, Ilma.
She bites her lip, she almost cries, but they're the happy tears that well up now - because it's happiness now that he offers, a small tidbit of what she had been hoping for in the first place - "You'd do that?" she wonders aloud, surprised but, to be honest, the good kind of surprise, the very best kind. She wonders how far he'd go with that, because sure, being the male figure is one thing - though it could still range from uncle to full-on pretending to be the father, or stepfather - she thinks for the baby that might be better, at least, not to outright tell that he is not the father until they're old enough to see the differences.
But she doesn't want to saddle Svedka with that burden, either. She knows he wants to explore. He can't stay at home forever, and she refuses to ask him to what level he intents to be around. She's grateful for just about anything he can give.
She'll simply need a father figure to impress the right kind of playfulness and morality on the foal - to be honest, by now she suspects it to be a boy, because the littlest things are different from when she carried Tähti. And a boy would need a better figure to look up to than his own father. Or than the story of his own father, mostly. And Ilma will never know how to ever repay him.
He said he'd fix it. He can't wipe it all out, but comes as close to fixing as anyone ever could.
The glue will now just have to harden for a time.
She rests her head on his back, when he pops the question as casually as one might expect should they have met on any day last summer. She must look awful - she knows, and she lets herself feel the humour of it. "That depends... do you count the nightmares?" she shakes her head. She slumbers at daytime to catch up. So could she sleep now? Well, yes maybe she could. There's a different kind of strength in her now, that although it feels like she borrowed it, she thinks she can keep with her for at least the coming evening. "Perhaps I shouldn't try out here in the snow, though." she mumbles, feeling silly suddenly for standing with him here for so long, in the icy layer of water that falls upon both their backs. He almost gets to be as white as she.
don't let the fear of flying stop you from falling
@[Svedka]