And in the middle of the night, about a week later, a magical search-spell, coming from a direction that is not actually pointed to somewhere in this plane, tickles the air and then anchors on Carissa's shield-bracelet - 

- and about three seconds later there's a Gate-threshold slicing open the air and then there's a Gate, the other side opening to somewhere indescribably full of swirls of colour, and then someone is stepping through, lighting the room with a bright mage-light, hands raised and clearly ready to fight - 

"Carissa are you all right–"

" - I'm fine -

- I thought I killed you -

- there's a you here -"

This becomes obvious seconds later; Ma'ar has been sleeping in the other bedroom, he needs a lot more sleep than Carissa and Dierne isn't a difficult baby but she does fuss enough to wake him at night if he's right there, but the rooms aren't shielded separately and a Gate is incredibly obvious, and he bursts through the door at a run in his pyjamas, blinking at the sudden light, and flings up a shield over Carissa and his baby sister and then grabs the doorway and spins and glares at the mysterious stranger suddenly in their bedroom, snarling, "- what are you doing here?" 

Someone else steps through the Gate, sees the child in the doorway, and holds up both hands. "Hey it's all right we're not going to hurt you - or her -" he says, in a language which Ma'ar cannot understand at all. 

He can read their body language, though. They don't look hostile, and Carissa doesn't look scared? He glances at her, uncertainly, still shielding her. 

She is crying but happily. "That's Leareth," she says, to Ma'ar, in his language, and "that's Kiyamvir Ma'ar," to Leareth and Vanyel, in Valdemaran.

His eyes go wide. He lowers his hands, though not the shield, and turns and looks at Leareth, who is now doing less of the body language that says 'I will kill anything that startles me' but not zero of it - though he's now heading for Carissa and mostly looks like he'll kill anything that makes sudden movements at her and this is mostly reassuring. 

He neatly collapses the Gate behind him and crosses the room in two steps, bending and reaching for Carissa's hand, switching to Mindspeech because it's faster.

:I am so sorry that it took so long - you were, you are, so far away - where are we, are we safe here - is this–:

He does not have time to finish the sentence, because it turns out that when one Gates to the inside of Urtho's Tower with no warning, this sets off MANY alarms, and this is the point at which Urtho's security staff reach the apartment and start banging on the door, someone's shouting and demanding to know who's there and to be let in before they blast open the door. 

He shields all of them in under half a second, :Carissa what–:

:I think you set off an alarm -:

"It's fine! It's my husband! Everything's fine!"

There are bright lights and loud noises and Dierne doesn't like either of these! She's been woken from a sound sleep and is just now starting to wail. 

"Awww, she's so teeny..." Vanyel starts singing a lullaby, with a bit of Bardic Gift in it. 

Dierne quiets.

The banging on the door stops. "Er, ma'am, can someone let us in to check–"

"Back off, now," another voice interrupts. "- Carissa? There was a Gate -" pause, "...it's Leareth?"

"Yes. We're all okay. He was just - very far away -"

"I'll go talk to him and tell him we're all right," Ma'ar says, and dashes out of the bedroom. 

Leareth sits down on the side of the bed by Carissa, heavily. :We are in Urtho's Tower: 

She wants to cling to him and Dierne is kind of in the way. She leans against him. :Yes. I asked him to pick us up from Predain. Nefreti did it - she dropped me on Ma'ar -:

:Nefreti? I - wondered - but when I went to her she was incredibly unhelpful, she just told me that you were fine. And pregnant. I tried so hard to find you earlier, but - no way to search until I was in the same world-area, and there are so many, you would not believe how many there are - I found at least one other version of Velgarth, after the Cataclysm but I think well before Vanyel was born, I did not explore much since you were not there... And then when she was born - she is one of my descendants, my Void-shelter still exists - we only needed to follow the link, but we had to follow it such a long way...: 

:Oh. That makes sense. I hadn't thought about that. I thought - since I landed on Ma'ar - that I'd gone back in time - and you couldn't come, since you didn't exist -:

:Oh: 

He sits silently for a moment, one hand on protectively on her shoulder. 

:You must have been so afraid: 

Shrug. Why is she crying so much lately, she doesn't even have the pregnancy hormones to blame it on now. :Probably you were more afraid since you - had something to lose -: