It will be a long time before Luster is able to see it clearly, but one day, she will understand that it is better to know than to be left to rot in the dark of mystery. She will know Heartfire was kind enough to set her free from the prison she never meant to build.
For now she is only quiet, only listening - nearly cracking a bit of a grin in the corners of her mouth when Heartfire admits to not knowing everything. But there is too much weight in the frown that has stolen rights of her lips, too much weight in it to lift even a little. Instead she is a bird, brightly colored and wide-eyed, a mirror to the words her sister hands her so carefully. “Stray magic?” Repeating things, trying to understand. “Both of our memories?” A parrot, nothing more.
She is struggling now, that beautiful blue and white face a mess of so many things, too many things for any one being to experience at once. But here she is, trying, failing, drowning more than a little.
But the next words give her something to hold onto, a way to keep herself afloat while everything else is a weight bound to her ankles and pulling her down into the deep. “Alive.” She repeats - why does she keep doing that, is she really so broken, is there really nothing more in her than a reflection now?
Except she’s shaking her head, dazed, pulling herself back up out of the dark because he is alive and she isn’t sure anything else matters more than that. As long as he is okay. “So,” but she’s pausing and frowning and blinking, trying to organize the thoughts being so completely overwhelmed by the emotion ruling her, “he doesn’t know. About me, or that,” the breath goes out of her, a skip in her heartbeat at the thought of their beautiful children growing so safely inside her, his children, “I’m pregnant.”
And it sounds different now, feels different. Knowing these little lives growing inside her were placed there by a man who had promised her so much. It’s good, and perfect, and it makes her ache inside because it is nothing she thought she would ever find, ever deserve. But it is everything she has ever wanted. A family of her own. A family for Merry, who needed more than just her, more than just a mother.
But Dovev doesn’t know.
Her eyes lift to Heartfire’s face, so soft and aching and full of gratitude for the woman who had come to give her the life that might’ve slipped right past her otherwise. “Can you see where he is? I need to find him, try and explain the impossible.” Because it is impossible. Still impossible, even now. "Maybe it'll be easier to understand if you come with me.
