Jeremy Lyndon wasn't much of a man by most accounts. He was tall and rangy, like one post of a long-abandoned barbed-wire fence. His features weren't fine, nor was his speech, and his clothing and manners were coarse and low-born. Still, for all his faults, he was loved with an inhuman passion that would live on long after the man himself had gone to feed the worms.

Gideon was a Muse, but none could claim she was fickle. Jeremy was the first real man she'd laid eyes on, and she loved him from the minute his gaze met hers. She loved the way his eyes had widened when he first saw her, how his voice broke a bit when he said hello. She loved asking him questions as they got to know each other, loved the funny expressions he got right before he'd say "Well, that's kind of a strange thing to say, don't you think?"  She loved how he kissed her and how he started turning off the light when they were going to make love. She loved everything she learned about him, digging through the refuse from his apartment building. And how dedicated to his work he was, even when it meant he couldn't make time for her. And even when he started refusing her calls and threatened to get a restraining order, she still loved him. The night he died, she loved him, even as he turned the gun towards her, and when she struggled with him, begging him to return her affection and the bullet exploded in his chest, she loved him as his hatred for her faded from his dying eyes.

Three seasons later, and Constant came into the world. When he'd first started moving in her belly, even Seeker (who would later come to be known as Uncle See, despite his protestations) claimed it was impossible. But impossible or no, a few months later Gideon struggled for most of a red-hot Arizona summer day to bring Constant into the world with an incredulous throng doing what they could to aid her through the unfamiliar process.

None of them knew what to expect from Gideon's son. Seeker and Cyrano had both brought progeny into the world, but only through the rites, never like this. None of them had even seen a birth, nor held a live baby. This mewling bundle of flesh was nothing like a new Created, nothing like anything they'd been let near before. Until his arrival, babies had been kept from them, guarded by overprotective parents and snatched away by suspicious nursemaids if the throng wandered too near their carriages. But he was theirs. All of theirs, for they raised him as a family, sharing the duties and together reaping the benefits.

"He could grow to hate us," Seeker had warned her, out of earshot of the others. But he hadn't. He loved them all, apparently impervious to Disquiet, and more than once their scion's innocent affection and honest insights had aided them in their Pilgrimage where a more sage voice might have been at a loss.

And now it was only the two of them. Seeker had been the first, finding his Redemption when Constant was barely as tall as his waist. The Nepri had forgotten them, forgotten himself, and walked away into his new future without ever looking back. Constant had been the one to comfort the remains of his family. "It's not his fault. He cat remember us. But we can remember him." Gideon and Cyrano had nodded at each other, surprised at how much the boy understood.

Cyrano was next to go, although he hadn't so much walked away as been torn from the arms of his throng in ragged bloody chunks. He'd put himself between Gideon and the boy, and held off three Pandorans until they could escape. Without Seeker, there was no one to bring him back from his final sleep, and the two of them had been able to do little more than creep back to cover up the remains and escape again, hoping the Pandoran pack wouldn't follow to finish the job. She'd almost lost it there, falling to her knees along side the rubble they'd covered him with and refusing to get up for the longest time. But Constant eventually led her out of the tunnel and back into the twilight of the street above. "He wanted us to go on, Mama. We owe it to him. He died so we could go on."

She didn't know how to go on, after that, though. Months passed, and she didn't let Constant out of her sight. She'd quit her job, stopped going out at all unless he was right beside her, and then only for necessities such as a teen aged boy would need before returning to their sequestered little den beneath the abandoned house they called home. She'd stopped seeking, stopped trying, stopped living, in truth. All she could think about was making sure he didn't get taken from her as well. She worried he'd chafe under the attention, but he just nodded in his sage way. "It's okay, Mama. I understand."

He was gone the next morning, nothing but a note left on the counter. She'd cried as she read it, and then broke the table and the chairs and the little black and white television before returning to the counter to read it again.

"You gotta go on, Mama, and while I'm here, you can't look forward. I'll see you again, some day, on the other side of your journey. I know you can do it. I love you. Constant."

The boy understood more than she thought.

(The Miracle of Birth was written by Jess Hartley and published on pages 33-35 of Magnum Opus, a Promethean supplement. Copyright White Wolf Games, printed with permission.)