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It's the same coffeehouse they've been meeting in ever since they came back. Great for students, cheap food, cheap drinks -

It's all the same - but something's different. Kevin and Dave don't know what, exactly, but they can tell nonetheless. It's there in Paul's silence, and in the way he keeps looking at the door.

It's there, at long last. After this endless autumn: change.

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It's only when she sees black spots in front of her eyes that Kim realizes she is quite literally holding her breath.

Don't you have any idea how he's feeling? she had shouted at Jen, some months back, before it became painfully obvious that the other woman would no longer speak of Fionavar-- or of Dave, or Paul, or Kevin. Perhaps especially Kevin, who had tried to reach out with flowers.

Don't you care?

Jennifer hadn't, but that was before the child had been born. Now-- everything seems so fragile still, but it's no small grace that her friend is here beside her, in the world once more-- and now this.

She doesn't know what to say, and so Kim Ford says nothing.

Kevin is still looking at Jen, just looking, as it has been long and long since he's been able to catch a glimpse.

He loved her once, so much, and loves her yet, though it is nothing like the same, was nothing like the same even before the lecture, and the crossing, and everything that came after.

And there is still so much yet to be done.

"Well, if that part of things is over and done with," he says slowly, at last, "is there--is there anything else we need to know?"

He spreads his hands, almost helplessly, looking to Dave for a second or two, searching for something familiar in amongst so much strangeness and pain.

Dave - solid as ever, confused as ever among events that feel increasingly too large for him - doesn't intend to say anything. He doesn't know what to make of the child, doesn't know what to think -

- and so it's with some surprise that he hears his own voice ask, "Jen - where is he now? Your son? Is he - with someone?"

The question's awkward, as usual; as usual, Dave can't say what he really wants to say, which is: it's awful for a kid to be raised without love.

Paul jumps in, with a warning glance, before Jen can answer.

"He's with a woman who'll care for him - the fewer people who know where, I think, the better."

Jennifer gives Paul a very long look, but when she turns back to Dave, her eyes are kind, and she is even smiling, a little.

"He's being taken care of, yes. She'll take very good care of him, I think -- it's why I chose her."

A hesitation and then she tells them, all of them,

"His name is Darien."

Darien.

She had dreamed it, had seen a golden-haired young man with brilliant blue eyes in the middle of a wood somewhere that she's never yet walked, and had known his name then with a Seer's deep and certain awareness.

Hearing it said is different, though. It's real-- her dreaming had come true, and even though she'd known it would, still, hearing it said gives her something of hope.

"Darien," Kim says softly, as her gaze goes unerringly to Paul.

"It's a beautiful name."

Paul meets her gaze with his own, grey and steady.

He hasn't told Jen; it's in his look now, but then, he thinks, Kim knows that already.

There's silence for a moment, after that.

And eventually it's broken; Kevin makes a joke, and Dave asks a question; there's news to convey, and things to discuss, endlessly, as they've been discussing them all autumn -

- but the important things have been said.

His name is Darien.

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