I left my baby lying here...

[weemanmurray]

Ian Murray was gloriously drunk. Not gloriously...that was the wrong word. He was drunk so that he didn't think. He'd been sitting under the tree for a long time, far enough away that he wasn't torturing himself with her screaming, but the midwife had come now, her hands bloody but she'd been smiling too.

"You can go on up now," she said, with a nod of her head. "You can go up and see them."

With Rollo ordered to stay on the ground, Ian shakily climbed the staircase to the treehouse. He hovered in the doorway like he didn't belong there.

"Are ye well, lass?"