:...I am not sure I had more to lose than you - you must have been hoping to prevent the Cataclysm...: He's looking around now, a bit awed. :I - cannot really remember this place at all. It is quite incredible though. And you - you must know things about my first life that I do not know myself: 

Ma'ar comes back. "Urtho says he'll go away and give you privacy, and come back in the morning," he says, and then stands awkwardly with his hands clasped, unsure what to say. Adult Leareth looks less scary, sitting down protectively next to Carissa, but he's still kind of scary, and Ma'ar feels very small and young and stupid for some reason. 

Vanyel smiles and waves at him a little, without interrupting his lullaby. 

"Come here," she says to Ma'ar. "Thank you for talking to Urtho."

"Mmm." Ma'ar comes over and perches on the opposite side of the bed. 

Leareth smiles at him. Surely interacting with himself should feel less - awkward - than this, but - he doesn't really remember being Ma'ar, just a few fragments, he has no records of this life, it's almost all lost in the fog of the past. 

There's something very precious, and also very nervewracking, about getting that back. 

"Ma'ar," he says. "I hope you are learning things here." He says it in the Predain tongue, though very haltingly; language is one of the kinds of procedural memory that transfers relatively well between lifetimes, and he has some of his very old written records in that language, but it's still been a very very long time and very very many bodies ago since he last spoke it out loud. 

Ma'ar looks startled, and then nods. "Yes, I am. I'm - so glad you found us." He is not going to cry that would be so stupid. 

"He's been very helpful. With - getting here safely, with the baby...he's - very clever, but you knew that -" She holds out her free arm for him.

He snuggles up against her. Yawns. The adrenaline of being startled awake by a Gate had him very alert for a few minutes but it's fading now, and it's still the middle of the night. 

Leareth shifts position and adjusts a pillow so he's sitting against the head of the bed with his arm around Carissa and his other hand free to stroke her hair. He kisses her forehead. :I missed you so much. I was - it was a great relief when the link appeared and I knew you had survived to give birth, but - I was so scared - that what if you had not survived that, I know childbirth is quite dangerous in places without Healers...: 

:I wasn't going to risk it in a place without Healers: she says flatly. She feels kind of bad about that, now, knowing it was the only way he could find her, but it seems better to be upfront about it. :Predain didn't even know what I was talking about - though they were doing some interesting stuff with non-magic medicine - but Urtho's Tower had good healers, they promised...Ma'ar was scared, it's how his mother died - it wasn't even very awful except for all the ways it - wasn't what I wanted...:

:I am sorry. I - I wanted to be here for it...: He's surprisingly upset, actually, about missing the birth of his child. It's not the sort of thing he would expect to have a lot of emotions about, and yet. :I remember that - how my mother died - it is one of the very few things I remember. That and - they killed my baby sister, or left her out to die, there was a drought and they could not feed her. I am not sure if Ma'ar told you that: 

:He thought about it, sometimes. Didn't say it in that many words. We can raise them - once the gods are talked around -:

:This set of gods might be easier to talk around - Abadar believed They became much more cautious after the Cataclysm, because They were scared, which is quite understandable on Their part: Sigh. :Though we might have to try to find another Golarion that is closer, I am not sure our set of gods can reach this far to communicate. I suspect there is one, and perhaps many - in particular I wonder if it was not our Nefreti at all that kidnapped you: 

:Huh:. She is suddenly very tired and doesn't want anything at all - no, that's not quite right. She wants to be taken home and have Leareth fuss over her and be protective even though she is completely fine. It is a bizarrely unhelpful want considering how she is not completely fine at all. :We can change the baby's name, it's not as if she knows it yet, but we've been calling her Dierne. Dierne Aspexia Iomedae - you'll need that, it'll tell people you mean to raise Chelish kings and queens...:

:Dierne. I like that name. Maybe we can keep it as a middle name: He reaches, very gently, and touches her fluff of hair. :She is beautiful. ...Well, actually, she is kind of ugly, perhaps all newborns are. But part of me still thinks she is perfect. Maybe because she is ours: 

She leans into him and shivers. :Ours. I - I thought I was going to have to do everything alone - with Ma'ar, but he's so little -:

He squeezes her. 

:I want to take you home: he says suddenly. :I want you to be safe and comfortable and I want to take care of you and - make up for all of this - also we have been making excuses about why you were not appearing in public but it would be better if you did soon: Pause. :Aroden went for the Starstone. Two months ago, when it was clear that finding you might take us a very long time: And might never happen at all, but he doesn't mention that part. :So I am the King now, officially: 

:I want you to take me home.: Snuggle. :I want you to be very overbearing and insist on barely letting me out of your sight even though I'm fine. We can have a naming ceremony for the baby and I can appear at that and - it's got to be almost Signing Day - at the party for that - and otherwise I just want to feel safe. ...and I want nursemaids. For the baby. She's a lovely baby but I wasn't actually planning on doing all the soothing and feeding her and I can sense myself starting to feel like it was a big sacrifice.....I missed your coronation. How was it.:

:Very tedious, honestly. It went smoothly. I - very much missed having your advice for planning it, but we managed: He kisses her forehead. :I want to be very overbearing and not let you out of my sight, and - gods - are you all right? You...made it here, I suppose, but it must have been very overwhelming. I expect you have so much to tell me about: 

:Mostly I've just been here in the Tower occasionally arguing with Urtho on Ma'ar's behalf - Urtho's very scary, though he doesn't mean to be, or maybe mostly because he doesn't mean to be and so he doesn't have a principled account even to himself of how scary he is - we were in Predain for a week and it did not make a very good showing but I wasn't in any real danger, I was mostly terrified something'd happen to Ma'ar - he got thrown into a river by bandits and learned about rape at what is apparently a socially inappropriate age by local standards but I think he came through it okay -:

:I expect he is much better off than I was when I had to make the journey alone. I do not really remember anything specific but I have a vague sense that it was awful in many different ways: 

:It must've been. It's more than five hundred miles, I think, and there are lots of bandits and lots of predators with varying degrees of license and he didn't know about compulsions being possible -: Squeeze. 

:I hope he will not be upset if I want to take him away from here and bring him home with us. Not forever, I think, but - I do not want to leave him here alone just yet, with an Urtho who is not really the one I know now: 

:I think it'll be good for him. He'll be a little anxious but I bet he'll cope all right, and I've told him stories - about you, and Vanyel -: