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"...Oh. If this woman's daughter was an Extremist, and exiled, and if the woman herself wasn't... Hijil knew enough about the battle to know that that meant... "Oh." Hijil looked back at where Foladia had left them, frowning. It must have been horrible for that woman to have had to fight her own child and lose her. Already, though she did not yet have children, Hijil's heart ached for her. She turned back. She would not give in to her diapproval, sympathy or not.

Hijil blinked, baffled, at the parchment. Her reading skills were mediocre at best, but... "Those are..." she burst out with a shy giggle, a little embarrassed. "That's... a lot." She'd really thought about it. It made Hijil feel warm inside... and a little guilty that she couldn't remember the names she'd come up with herself.

"Silver, Crystal, Starlight..." she blushed. Those were all names of things, actual things that existed. She should come up with something more original, she felt. Something more unique. But those things were pretty, and she liked them... Could she change them in some way? Why couldn't she remember the really good ones she'd thought up the night before? "Um... um..." she tried hard, but the sheer possibilities of the whole thing brought her up short. There was too much possibility. She needed to re-orient.

She clung to a name that stood out in Bhima's list. "Ishida is your mother's name." Hijil said. She remembered that much. "I think that's a good name."

Suddenly she had an idea. It may well have not been a good idea, but she wanted to share it anyway. "Bhima..." she asked hesitantly, "Don't people sometimes name children really, uh, long names?"

"Yes... I remember." She remembered now. She had forgotten, in the... everything... that had followed, but Hijil remembered now. Back when they'd been ready for children, back before the extremists and the battle. They were ready again now, though, and things were turning out well in the end.

Names that mean the same thing? Yes, of course, that would be best. Especially since 'Trowel' and 'hammer' had just come to mind. Though those things felt strong and hard-working to her, those were not names at all. Those were things, and weren't even beautiful names for things.

"I -" she thought a moment, "I just, um... had an idea... Yes, a name that would combine all the hopes and dreams and love that Hijil had in her heart, and would bequeath it to her children. A name so long, with so many parts, that it would snake around them protectively like a tail. "... but it's kind of silly." she admitted, blushing. Bhim Hi Moonray Starlight Softblossom Spiritblessed did not have any sort of ring to it, and Hijil already found it difficult to remember which pretty names she'd included in it, and which she hadn't. She'd be forgetting her child's name. That would not be good.

However...

"Is Bhim'hi on that paper?" she asked. From that name came another, "Or... Jillia?"

It really was obvious, wasn't it, that Hijil had sort of spliced their names together. And yet, she had come up with a good one. But... male? "You think so?" She asked eagerly, oddly pleased. Her experience with males was very limited - that she'd managed to come up with a male name, somehow, was wonderful. It meant that... if they had a son... and if they used her name... that she would have named her son.

Her son.

Her son.

Stars and leaves this is actually happening.

The path was narrowing - smooth, well kept, but narrow - and Hijil felt a strange sensation, cool like dew, along her neck, her skin, her soul. There were no longer houses around them, only stones and roots. Fewer people, too, and the sounds of the shore were louder, clearer somehow. They were entering a very different place.

"We're close now..." Hijil breathed, keenly aware of her hand in Bhima's, "Aren't we...

Hijil tensed, but it was no use. No amount of preparation could have helped to ease the overwhelming awe she felt upon beholding Aisha's vastness. Her trunk alone could contain Hijil several times over, and her canopy... Hijil wondered if an entire village could fit beneath the shield of the canopy, or in it, or...

There were blooms in that tree. Someone else's children, she knew, lying nestled in soft-textured, bright-colored blossoms. There were so many... so many...

Hijil was unaware that her jaw had dropped and that she was gaping, wide eyed, at the tree that had birthed an entire race. She realized that she was gaping and closed her mouth, swallowing hard. "What do we do...?" she whispered tensely, shaking a little as she beheld it, "How do we...?"

Hijil followed suit, doing - perhaps awkwardly and definitely to the best of her ability - whatever Bhima did. She kneeled and bowed and listened anxiously as Bima pled. It seemed so strange to her - less strange, though, then when they'd been at home. There the idea of begging for a child had been bizarre, even with only limited knowledge of the 'usual way' of such things, and Hijil had wondered how they would even know if it worked. Now, surrounded by such overwhelming beauty, she could believe that there was something there to hear her and grant her her children.

Their children.

She'd thought of a plea several times, to be sure. What she would say, what she would do... that sort of thing. But none of those preparations mattered here. And besides, she hadn't thought of anything like what Bhima was saying.

Her strengths were laid out before the tree by her lover, put on display to... what? Convince the tree? The idea that so much convincing could be needed... it chilled her to her guts. Silence began to stretch out after the end of Bhima's plea, and Hijil stirred from her bow.

"Aisha... hear our plea." she said finally, repeating Bhima's beginning words, "My wife says that I am strong and determined and intelligent, and I achknowledge that I am these things. I have had to be so my whole life, to find her across chasms of time and distance. We have fought alongside each other. We have fought for each other, We..." Her hands were shaking, her throat dry.

"We are both strong and determined..." She continued, "But that we found each other speaks to our love. Our love is so strong..." Was she crying, or were those droplets of rain, falling from the leaves of the trees. "And we both have so much of it to give. We've waited so long... if you bless us with children, we will love them... we will love them so much..."

She was crying. She was pleading with a tree to give her children and she was crying. "They will be surrounded with that love and grow up strong and happy... They will be so happy..." She could barely get the words out, she was crying so deeply. The amount of words she was using was quite possibly more than she ever had used in the course of her entire life, but this was important. What if this tree - this enormous and stately tree that had brought light into her life and into the lives of others - didn't give them children? They had waited for so long, and Hijil's heart ached for a child to share her life with, to shape and raise and love. To hold, together, with her wife.

"So, please... bless us with a child." she managed, before closing her eyes and falling silent in her supplicating bow, drained.

A child.

If children was too much to ask for, then a child. Or even someone else's child, abandoned on the tree. Or with parents lost to war. Or a hybrid, lost and alone. Someone. Anyone. Each would be a blessing, and Hijil, her mind awhirl with emotion as she knelt before the goddess-tree, would love them.

That was it? Hijil looked at the tree, and then at her love, puzzled. Wasn't something supposed to happen?

No?

All right. She nodded. If that was it, then... that was it. And it would do Hijil no good to stay there and wait, and hope. She held her wife's hand, as she had done before. "Lets go, then..." she said, her voice tired and raspy. It had gotten much use today.