{oOo}

"... If my mother desires her biomass needs to be filled, Ruin, you and I are going hunting." Beryl said firmly to the lounging male who was... Her eyebrow twitched as she watched him. Was leaving dirty marks, ashes and dust all over the soft couch he was practically draped on.

Terra smiled fondly, inasmuch as such an expression could be interpreted, "Good girl." A kiss.

Ruin looks somewhat wild eyed. Though that may be because Beryl has a grip on his very human testicles. To motivate him. "Er," he floundered, "Yes, now please let go of that!"

When she finally did, he frowned at her, only half in jest. "You are a very bad little girl, daughter-mine. You're lucky I love you."

Terra looked..curious. "I don't remember having sex with you"

"Yes well, I don't remember you trying to eat your own offspring. I sort of thought that was my department." he snarked back, amused.

Beryl frowned. Sulked. Pouted. "Ru-in. Stop. Frustrating. My. Mother." Perhaps she should have mauled him harder?

Ruin hid his amusement at her discomfort, squawked in mock protest, moved out of her reach playfully.

"This wasn't my shell before when we knew each other." he said to Terra finally.

"Most creatures do eat their own offspring." Terra pointed out mildly.

Still, he was oddly familiar..

Then the pieces clicked together.

"You are...part of me, and I am an expression of you. I recall. You showed me," bringing the mitochondria into the other cells, sparked the brainstorm which was the use of oxygen. All that before there were conscious minds to hold her soul, before she could truly think.

"Yes." Ruin grinned, "So she is my daughter too." he added, "and a very good one, or at least she would be, if she'd stop grabbing my new shape's nether regions to make a point."

Terra smiled, fiercely, brightly. "I am glad that we...share a child. I will not get that chance again as I am married and he is long lived." she added warningly, because she knew him to some extent. "And I won't kill him. I like him."

Ruin who is Chaos, who knew survival of the fittest well, because he was the force testing all things to destruction or evolution and adaptation, ...laughs, long and loud. "Oh I have no doubt of that. An apex predator."

Terra smiled, lazy and confident as one of Russ's wolves.

"I'm off to hunt you down some biomass, Terra. I do hope you will heal faster." Ruin offered her a sharklike grin "But until you do, I'll be happy to keep doing my ex-husbandly duties." Like trolling.

"An Ex-husband is one that failed. I am strong though I am weak. The duty of an ex-husband is to placate, run, or die." Terra corrected him. "To fail me is to fail all that I am and all my children."

Ruin gave her an amused look. "Haven't failed you yet, have I?"

Yes, he was totally banking on her lack of memory. Ah, amnesia. How wonderfully useful you are, to such bastards as I!

Terra frowned. "I can't remember"

"And yet by human standards, you are already mated." Amused, Ruin shifted the conversation to another tangent. "Our daughter is doing his duty," Terra folded her arms in a very human gesture and frowned.

Beryl feeling rather appreciated, mentally vowed to bring back another hivefleet, or mass of Xeno corpses, rendered on to squishy bits and have it spread all over the place. The pettings. They were very good. She practically purred.

"He is defending you." Ruin noted, amused. "You are still not capable of outright eating some of the threats that are working against you. we will change that, I hope."

"He has looked into my mind, he was born of me before I came forth-I looked back. I was brought forth to defend our children," Terra approved.

Ruin tilted his head. Ah, it figured that would have registered. "Yes." he grinned widely at her. "Although, unlike you, I must admit to having quite different reasons for having been summoned."

"Withered I cannot see to my duties. It is his duty to see to it that I am well." She stopped here and scowled. "Love is powerful, love was evolved because it is a strong survival strategy. From love, from the instincts that love built upon, comes larger units of interaction usually formed along bloodlines."

Another curious look. "You are doing your duty." She kissed Chaos on the cheek. "We are family?"

Family. Did that mean he had two little girls now? Two little daughters... How adorable.

"Yes, we are." Ruin hugged her, impulsively.

Terra paused, almost attacked him, and then hugged him back, hard and warm and almost human.

{oOo}