Zevulun had known the sight of his loved ones would be emotional for him, but he was still struck by the painful ache that ripped through him as Eirena was the first to appear, running to him with a gilded girl at her side. Tears immediately welled in his blue eyes and made them glimmer, even as his vision blurred. He blinked rapidly and impatiently, not wanting to drop his head to his knees to rub the tears away, not wanting to miss any second of seeing Eirena as she was real and standing before him. All those agonizing minutes of separation and loneliness, of envisioning their faces - every loved one in the Prairie - had been what kept Zevulun fighting and alive, he was sure of it. To see her now, tangible, where he could stumble into her and press her skin and feel her warm and alive, was almost overwhelming.

The relief that she was alright was almost just as strong a blow. Zevulun swallowed painfully back at the lump that’d gathered up into his throat just as she pressed her hooves to the ground and pulled her gait short, stopping near him and grabbing who he could only assume must be their daughter. His gaze was momentarily transfixed on their little girl, somewhere outside his body and away from any physical ailments he may be suffering. No matter what, Zevulun was always awestruck by the sight of his children for the first time. The physical existence of a piece of himself and a piece of their mother, of the love and intimacy they shared being a creature standing before him… well, it never ceased to blow him away.

He was briefly struck by a pang in his chest at the reality he had already mentally suffered: there was so much time he had missed here.

It was then his eyes met hers and saw the tears gathered there. Concern changed his features, the immediate need to comfort her and soothe her and promise her it was alright, even when he wasn’t exactly certain himself if it was. He was still very much injured, and worried of infection, and even time it would still take to heal. There were so many answers he couldn’t give, so many things he couldn’t provide…

“I am,” he said anyway, because the truth was Zevulun was okay as long as he was with those he loved. As long as he was with his family. As Eirena gently nudged their daughter forward his attention dropped back down to the girl and again, despite the discomfort, he couldn’t help but give a small, relieved smile. His ears perked forward and he looked over their daughter, admiring her. He might’ve asked her name then, but Eirena had the obvious question that needed asked, and Zevulun lifted his eyes slowly back to her, suddenly consciously aware of how horrendous the injury to his back leg looked. There were healed, pink lines of other gashes, but that was the wound that was too deep to simply close over in just a few weeks.

“It was a mother bear,” he explained, “I frightened her cub, he tumbled down a ravine and injured himself and she…” A shiver rippled across his skin as a somewhat far-away look entered his eyes. He blinked and it was gone, mentally pulling himself from that traumatic day and back to the very real present instead. It must’ve been a first-time mother, with how overprotective she had become in her rage. “She came after me, I couldn’t… I tried to fight but there was this pain and then I fell and everything went black,” he surmised he had hit his head on a rock during his tumble. “When I awoke I couldn’t stand,” he’d had a fever, too, and the hallucinations that’d danced before his eyes had pushed him to places he’d never again wanted to go. “I tried, Eirena,” he said in a hushed voice, finally then breaking in his guilt, despite not wanting to show it at all, “I tried so hard to come back to you all before…”

A soft wind stirred the cool autumn and the same scent, that stranger’s scent, touched his nose. Zevulun closed his eyes and sighed a small breath before saying, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you had her.”

That was what was important to focus on. Their daughter. Not his shortcomings as a leader, but where he had failed her as the father to their child. Zevulun opened his eyes and looked at their daughter, then at Eirena. “She’s beautiful, like you.”