[color=#1A1A3B][b][u][h1][sub][sub][sub]Farren[/sub][/sub][/sub][/h1][/u][/b][/color]		    listened, quiet, watching her expression even though–almost paradoxically–seeing and hearing her apparent joy at recounting the experience only made him feel worse. As she went on, Farren’s expression went from serious with a hint of curiosity, to one of increasing concern. Listening to her speak of what must have been one of–if not the most–traumatizing experiences she’d ever had, Farren really came to grips with how thoroughly Gerlinde must have been crushed beneath the weight of that overwhelming strangeness and despair. Coupled with the fact that it must have been unbelievably lonely and frightening as she dealt with essentially constant and rapid changes to her body that she’d have had no real explanation for, well…it was no wonder she seemed so disconnected from herself.

Beside that, the confirmation that she had indeed been pregnant weighed on him and his shoulders dropped slightly beneath the compounding pressure of that knowledge. The whole story was, in fact, so profoundly heartrending that Farren didn’t even have it in him to be disgusted with the scholars. [color=#1A1A3B][b]“I wish I had known,”[/b][/color] Farren said quietly, sounding subdued as he glanced away, then up at the night sky. It was a pointless thought, perhaps even more pointless to voice it, but the words had come anyway.

[color=#1A1A3B][b]“When did you realize that none of it mattered?”[/b][/color] he asked, not looking at her as he referenced what she’d said some time ago in the Dream. A part of him wondered what they’d done with her original child and–indeed–the slug-babies thereafter. It was not lost on him either that she’d been left with the last of her…children and that Gerlinde had not said what had come of the infant–if that was even the correct term. Still, he didn’t ask…it was better to have one terrible piece of knowledge at a time, so as not to break….