Yvaine loved to stand outside her daughter's crib at night and watch her sleep. Yvaine knew she should go to sleep as well, but she could never bring herself to leave. Besides, it was peaceful watching her. Her little baby girl slept so soundly through the night. All the women of the court remarked upon it, saying how unusual it was for an infant so young to sleep so well.

Yvaine wouldn't know.

Stars, after all, were formed glowing. They were not born. They started as the tiniest crystal and then one day awoke, fully grown.

Not that she'd ever thought of it as grown. There was no 'to be older' or 'to be younger' just… to be.

And it was nice, so far up there in the sky, to watch the humans. But she thinks maybe she would have liked to grow. To have her own mother to claim. Someone who once stood outside of her own crib, watching her tiny chest puff up and down with each breath.

The time for that, however, was long past. And she'd been blessed so much, gone farther and seen more than she'd ever dared to dream.

How she wept for her sisters, sometimes. To think they would go lifetimes without knowing what it was to love. And be loved in return. She'd thought she'd known so much about the world and its humans, when really she'd known so little.

And now a different kind of love filled her chest. The love of a mother.

She crouched closer to the crib and whispered.

"You're going to grow, my love. You're going to ride horses and learn to skip and have birthdays and dance…" She bent down and pressed a kiss to her baby's temple. "I promise, darling. You're going to do everything."

Over near the door, just out of sight from his wife, Tristran smiled.