Blackberry wasn't far - just a little ways down the tunnel, feasting on a few cave rats, tearing at the flesh with anger and frustration. However much she wanted to forget it, Pride's parting words still rang in her ears. Of course she gathered the children, the lost and alone. She would grow her family to be stronger! But would it happen as he said? Would they fight someone too great for them? And they would fall around her, bleeding, dying, and she would lose them forever? Was what she was doing wrong after all? But then her confused thoughts and anger melted away as the soft bellow touched her ears. She froze. She would know that voice anywhere.

If it had been one of her children returning after all this time, she would have been angry and suspicious. But this was her mate, the one person in the caves that she trusted wholly and completely. If he had been gone for so long, he had a reason.

Abandoning the half-eaten carcass, she stood and waddled as fast as she could back to the nest, catching sight of Blueberry's huge bulk immediately. She honked a greeting as she got closer and, as soon as she could, pressed her cheek into Blueberry's neck. His dark, musty scent was like her first breath of fresh air in many cycles. "I've missed you, Blueberry."

After a moment of enjoying his return, she leaned back and looked curiously at his face. "Why have you been away for so long?"

Blackberry could understand Blueberry's reasoning but still, that didn't make all of the emptiness from his leave disappear. But she wasn't angry. How could she be? How could she ever be angry at Blueberry? After everything he had done for her, after all they had been through? She couldn't be angry at him. So, instead, she dipped her head. "I worry too." Worry was an easy way to put it. She was terrified for her children. Despite wanting them to learn to fight, she didn't want them to die or even get hurt. Knowing that they could be out there now, endangering themselves, was almost too much to bear.

At Blueberry's next words, her head perked up with surprise. Did he somehow know of what had been happening? Did he know about the gem she had stashed in her nest? No, he couldn't. It was hidden well so Huckleberry couldn't find it. "I agree, wholeheartedly. In fact, I have already adopted another child. Dewberry. A young snake. She is new and very young so she has not shown much yet, but she will in time. I know it. Also..." She stood and hobbled into her nest, appearing a moment later with a sapphire clutched in her stomach, faintly glowing with a yellow light. She set it down in front of her. "This is the gem of a magpie. Huckleberry killed her and then gave it life. He betrayed me, but I'm giving him another chance. This was the price of his chance - that he should never raise this child, that it would be ours. This will be both our grandchild and another child."

Blackberry watched Blueberry leaned down to inspect the gem and narrowed her eyes. Had she been too harsh on Huckleberry? Had it been wrong to forbid them from raising their own child? After all, if someone had taken any of her children away, she would have torn their hearts right out of their chest. But she had never given her children away. Huckleberry had willingly offered their gem as repentance. It was, at least in her eyes, a fair trade.

"Yes, it seems only yesterday that they were children themselves." Saying it aloud made her feel old. How many cycles now had it been, in this horrifying body that she had grown so used to? She would bet that she had spent more time as this monster then as the normal goose she had been hatched as. It seemed such a long time ago, foggy and distant. She sighed. What a life she was living.

Something struck her suddenly and she looked back up at Blueberry. "So, why'd you bring all this up, anyways? Have you found more children to bring into the family?"

Blackberry sighed. "I know you are, Blueberry. But our kids are strong now. Jayberry has almost killed more than me now and Huckleberry stood against me in real combat. You don't have to worry about them - they are capable children." But, of course, they weren't children anymore. All of them, well, besides Dewberry, were adults by now. It seemed so strange that the five young gemlings she had raised from birth were now old enough to have kids of their own, as proven by Huckleberry.

She closed her eyes for a moment, reminiscing on the day that they had hatched, the happiness she had felt that day. Where had that all gone?

Blackberry followed Blueberry's gaze down to her necklace. There were three gems, actually, resting in their places. She had honestly forgotten that they were still there, or at least that they still had the potential for life. "No I hadn't," she replied, honestly. She glanced up at Blueberry and caught the traces of desire in his eyes. She narrowed her eyes with humor and leaned over again to snip off the owl talon. It clattered to the ground, the sapphire glimmering innocently under the lanterns.

She carefully picked it up with her beak and placed it in front of Blueberry. "You can do it, if you want." In her head, this was, perhaps, the gem she cared about the least. While it may sounded cheap, then, giving that one to Blueberry, she probably would have scratched anyone else, should they have asked that question.