To Greet the Day

It was dawn, and Rayek, once chief hunter and protector of the Sun Village, Sorrow's End, woke to greet it.  He stretched softly with lean brown limbs graceful in a way humans had yet to equal, and blinked up at the colors of the sky through the forest branches.
A strange feeling welled up in the black-haired elf, imagining he was five hundred years younger and ten thousand years back in time.  The Sun-Toucher would be at the Bridge of Destiny, greeting the day star.  The maidens would be rising and shooing their night's lovemates off to their own huts, and gardeners would be getting water for the foodplants growing in their plots.  Rayek sighed softly, as memories overwhelmed his heart.
Only to be overwhelmed themselves by a swell of nausea that pushed itself up behind his jaws and sent him upright and stumbling for the bushes.
While the yellow-eyed elf indulged his rebelling stomach, a wizened figure limped up behind him, leaning on a staff with a two-fingered hand that by rights should have had three.
"Ah, brown-skin," said Ekuar the crippled rock-shaper, leaning concernedly over his traveling companion and adopted son.  "Our lady being a bit troublesome yet, eh?"
"Errgh-" Rayek mumbled as he stood upright, leaning heavily against a tree and brushing the back of his hand over his lips.  "She- has not spoken yet on this matter.  After all . . ."
"Yes, yes, I do understand," Ekuar said good-naturedly.  "I know how distracting it can be, with a complex shaping project before you."
Rayek merely smiled with a hint of irony, and stood by the tree resting as his mentor and perhaps only friend puttered about their small camp, stirring the banked fire and starting- irk.
Best not to think about breakfast right now.
He turned to face the dawn again, laying a three-fingered hand gently against the very pit of his stomach.  *Winnowill*, he sent, questing within for her spirit.  *Winnowill.  Speak to me, beloved.  I must have words with you.*
There- a tenuous grasp of spirit-hands as she momentarily emerged from the darkness.  *Rayek,* she sent, sounding faint and a bit tired.  She was much changed from the stagnating, mad anti-healer she had been for so long.  He had been loath to trust the change of heart, but he had seen himself, how the spirits of the lost Gliders, her tribe, had worn her down, broken her and left her to rebuild herself after coming through the portal from their crystal palace and making her face the crimes she had done to them.
Her mischief had not ended there, nor at her death- he had been the prison of her malevolent spirit, wandering the world for five hundred years as jail and jailor.  Now- after the confrontation with all those she had wronged, and an eight of years more of talk and quiet thought, Winnowill wished to live again, shed her mantle of the Black Snake.
*Winnowill- I think we need to speak on what is happening to me in the mornings lately.*  Rayek's brow creased a little- nausea was not an elfin symptom of pregnancy, and that was the closest equivalent to what was happening between them.  He had agreed to let the healer shape his flesh into a new body for herself, carrying her as he had for so many eights of years, but for a final gestation of two.
*Ah- that.  I am sorry, beloved- it is one thing to encourage a conception, or to shape a living being's flesh to other than it is supposed to be,* she sent, images of such acts from the point of view of a healer performing such magic.  *To start building a body within another from the beginning, without benefit of male and female Recognized, is another.  Things- are unbalanced right now, and I dare not correct them or I will lose the fragile start I have made.*
Rayek sighed softly, and gave her a mental smirk. *So it will be mornings greeting the bushes before the sun for a while, it seems.*
*Indeed,* she murmured, tired sending tinged with some good humor.  *But it will end eventually, when I have formed my shelter and your body will sustain the rest.  But Rayek- you must find someplace that is safe, and stay there.  I cannot help you if you are attacked, and it is better if you rest as much as possible.*
*I know- and you will practice humbling yourself before old enemies, beloved,* he sent, stroking the flat plane of his belly where even now, her new shell took shape.  *We will go to the palace, and the Wolfriders' holt.  Safety is there- though no doubt we will be given rough words by some.*  There were many they had wronged in their lives before this humbling journey- but elf would eventually welcome elf, if no harm were given.
Ekuar watched his heart's son commune with his beloved a few moments more, and smiled as he stumped about the camp on his wooden help-leg and staff.  So it seemed that given enough time, the hardest of hearts could learn to love others again, if given the right incentive.  What better way to heal a stagnating madwoman than to give her a chance to breathe as she never had before, he mused.  Certainly the freedom Rayek had granted him from the trolls who had captured him as a child had done wonders for his sanity, and had started the arrogant Sun-Villager on a path of caring for others beyond himself.
He looked up sharply as Rayek's eyes flew open and he bolted for the bracken again.  Indeed- the elf he had first known would never have permitted such indignities for any reason.
"Ah, brownskin, I can see your portion will be mine again, today," he sighed affectionately, setting a small pot to boil.