"Elspethlove", I could feel his words inside my head, his comforting presense settling around me. I pushed him away, all prickles. I wasn't yet ready to answer his questions about my reluctance to annouce our bonding.

I had trouble making excuses.

He is the one person I do not want to lie to.

Why my reluctance to bond, after I was so joyous at first?

For so many reasons - because I am yet to begin the Quest and a bondmate would make me reluctant to leave. And what if we were to have a child - child would slow me down, how could I leave our child without knowing if I would return?

And also because when I think of our what our child could be, I think of Lidgebaby.

Lidgebaby was a powerful coercer, but with selfish baby desires. He blocked the Talents of all those around them, even stopping me from using my own. He bound those close to him together, leaving them unable to part or leave the baby.

Combining my own Talent with Rushton's latent Talent could be a disaster. It could produce a child with abilities far greater than my own, far greater than Lidgebaby's. Our child could put us all in danger, even in its innocence.

How could I tell him this?

But then, how do I leave him alone when I am not likely to return? Perhaps what he wants is a comfort that with a child I would be less restless, less likely to leave my mountain home.

I cannot tell him of the quest. Cannot tell him what I learned from Atthis.

I reached out stroke Maruman's head and he bit me reproachfully. Funaga thoughts, he sent to me. He sees them as a weakness, the strange old cat. All this worrying and wanting.

Without warning, I thought of Jes. Leaving the two of us together may have given our parents some comfort in the moments before their deaths, but it did us no good. There was no comfort is being together, yet apart. Is that what I am doing to Rushton at the moment? Pushing him away? In that moment, I saw.

A tiny child with dark hair and piercing green eyes. She looked so much like Rushton, with an expression so serious that I knew she was mine. "Elspeth love," Rushton said, and this time he was behind me. "Can you tell me what you're thinking yet?"

I opened my mind to him and reached out to let him see.