The years inbetween the flood and now were hazy with pain, and she cared not to remember them. Siobhan had tried to go back home, but everywhere she turned she could see mothers and fathers and daughters. So many daughters. For a time she had hated every family that she saw, had wanted to rage at them and chase them away if only to soothe the jagged edges of her wound for a time.

After that had come the sorrow. All the way down to her bones like an abyss with no bottom it had swallowed her. Days spent mourning everything she'd known spanned into weeks and then months until at last the blissful numbness had taken it away. The intervening years had done much to soothe the worst of the pain, but the red mare was certain she didn't want it to all go away. Call it twisted, but she needed to hurt when she remembered them. It felt like the only way she could honor the loss that it was while still moving toward her future.

And she wanted this future. Wanted it so desperately that the thought of how close she'd come to losing it at the Lagoon's interference made her teeth clench and blood boil. She wanted Bjorn and his kisses. She wanted this herd, in all it's broken hearted glory. And she wanted this foal far more than she could ever express with words.

It had nearly not happened.

Diarmaid and Bjorn were vastly different, and the feelings they engendered were certainly not the same. She'd loved the bay stallion she'd called her own, but they were exclusive to one another only because he had been too young to hold onto other mares. Their love was born of fondness, not passion and while she missed him terribly it paled in comparison to the mountain of grief she held for her daughter.

That was why their pairing had happened as it did. Why Siobhan had appeared like a wraith in the night, tears long dried on her cheeks. She'd asked him with her body, not trusting her words, not trusting her ability to explain why her skin trembled at his touch. It was passion yes, but mixed with fear and desire as well. She'd taken advantage of her own weakness, her longing for another child, and had sought him out before the feeling had faded from her.

She thinks of all this as he comforts her, his skin pressed against hers and she breathes in the strength he lends. With the dam broken, she can feel the honesty bubbling up through the cracks in her armor. The red girl wishes, for a moment, that she had a language to hide behind. She imagines the truth would feel less like ripping open a scab if she could murmur her truth without knowing he might see beyond it, to the core.

"I am still scared." She murmurs the words against his lips before withdrawing, a smile that trembles just slightly on her lips. Her muzzle brushes across his forehead, moving the strands from his face so that she can look more clearly into his eyes. "Scared of the future you've given me."

She wills herself to say it, to bare the core of what had done the most to change her since coming here. The feelings she felt but could not shape into words and she quails. In the aftermath of losing the foals, of her other failings, she cannot lay more onto his shoulders. She broadens her smile, a flash, and then settles the fluttering at it's edges.

"But thankful. Tell me about you, love. Before all of this." She says instead, her muzzle gesturing to the land around them in all of it's tropical glory.

OOC: If you aren't okay with the way I wrote the way they did the deed just let me know :)