ORIGIN

He'd taken too long to get here.

It wasn't that the way was hard. He'd just-... stopped, a lot. Dallied. Paused, mind blank, eyes staring off at nothing. He didn't want to do this--he'd put it off, without meaning to. What should have been a journey of perhaps an hour became instead half a day.

But he was here now: approaching Mercy's garden. As Venari had for him, he performed at least the small kindness of setting the gemstone horn aside, hidden in the bushes; he didn't want it to be the first thing his fathers saw. Assuming either of them were here--but this was the place they spent the most time in, when they were in Orion, at least.

"Dad-? Are you here?" It didn't matter which one--or both of them. The news was bad either way. Horrible to hear, he knew firsthand... and horrible to deliver, as he was about to find out.