Spring was in full bloom Below, and that always made Hana feel more prone to rash decisions. The warm weather and longer, (comparatively!) brighter, days were just the thing to encourage wild flights of fancy like...settling down. Really putting down his roots, as a dryad might say.

Like giving up on this formal letter he’d tried and failed, tried and failed, given up on writing a dozen times. No ‘Sorry Mother, I hope you’ll understand, Father,’ no ‘I find life Below more open and welcoming than our stifling little township ever was. I’ll always love you, but I'm never coming back.’ Hana crumpled the parchment up and threw it in the fire, for the last time.

‘Meet your new grandchild!’ would communicate what he intended to do with his life quite well, he hoped. His parents and siblings could not convince him to change his mind, if he had obligations to stay and see to the well-being of a new being. If he couldn’t find someone interested in imbuing with him, well, Hana could get the stone himself and look for someone else interested in sharing a family...