She nodded, much more slowly, her fist held tightly shut around the blister on her palm. "I'm the countess of Cnoch-na-Niall, aye. You were there. They told me you were there. And that Mabhe wouldn't let you be brought back."

"You are?" The youth's face lit up and he grasped her shoulders tightly, "Wonderful! That's... that's..." he almost choked for a moment before taking a few deep breaths, a slow sort of smile on his face. "Lugh's bolts, I just knew she'd finally have some luck."

He sighed some, "She didn't. Let me, that is. Time stopped and..." he frowned a little before looking to her, "Ever have that knowledge that the good thing just wasn't gonna last? I just knew from the moment I stood at her side after she called the Hunt, Niabheara. I knew I wouldn't get to stay." He smiled a little then, "But I got to. For a while."

"You . . . you were meant to be here. We didn't know what had become of you. We were scared. There were all manner of . . . I was afraid that the Hunt had taken you up." She reached out and touched his shoulder, as if afraid he was a ghost. "Mabhe was my grandmother."

"Grandmother? Ha!" The youth clapped his hands and spun around once on the ball of his feet before grasping her shoulders, smiling broadly, "Then it is such a pleasure to meet you again! I... I had barely thought I would meet the child, let alone the..." He sighed a couple times before grasping her shoulder again. "Oh, I am so glad to be here if you are here. I do not know what I would have done if they hadn't managed a child. And look at you!" He said, barely resisting the urge to grasp her face. "Lovely as she was! Same eyes, same hair! Oh!"

He took a few breaths to calm himself before shaking his head to clear it, "Forgive me. I'm... I've been so scared of coming here and finding out that... that I'd just hurt them. I'm sorry. I don't mean to climb all over you when you were trying to have a fire."

The reaction surprised a laugh out of her. She put her hands on his shoulders to hold him down to the spot. "No, no, it's just . . . I ne'er met Mabhe. She was gone long before I was born."

She grimaced at the pile of paper flowers on the ground, slowly growing sodden in the rain. "You interrupted nothing. I was getting rid of a few old things."

"She was?" Well, that seemed to cut him down a little. "I suppose that makes sense. Four hundred years. Long time for anyone..." He rubbed at his upper arm before looking at the paper flowers. "Well. Maybe I could help? Or we could go inside? Or something?"

Niabheara rubbed her arms and considered that sitting around in the rain burning love tokens was a tad dramatic, even for her. "I'm sorry," she said, even though she really couldn't be blamed for Mabhe. "Inside, yes. Could you . . . could you tell me about her?"

"Sorry... don't be sorry, Niabheara," he said as he turned toward the castle with a quiet smile. "I came back here expecting that there wouldn't be a soul who'd want to listen to the mad tallfolk talk about his time in the far past, afraid that Mabhe might have died without a child who didn't leave or die or get snatched away." Looking to her, the little smile grew ever-so-slightly. "I'm very lucky. It's almost like having family. Sort of."

Gods. His cousins were probably dead, too.

It just kept coming in waves.

"What would you like to know?" he asked before just talking, "She was... beautiful. Sad a lot of the time. Not that I could blame her. Intense, though. So intense. About anything she could be, really."

Niabheara hesitated. "There's my father, too," she said. "He's gone to the North. There is the Duke of Oireachteigh, Mabhe's brother-in-law." She tried to remember how old, precisely, the Duke was, and if he had been alive before Mabhe was killed. She shivered again. "And I really think we need to be under cover."

"And a..." the youth smiled and slid some of his hair from his face, squeezing water down it. "And... brother-in-law?" He thought back for a moment to see if he remembered meeting him. Seth shrugged a little "Wow. Not so alone at all." He smiled brightly at her. And then, all at once, damn near tackled her in the midst of giving her a hug.

Just for a moment.

And after releasing her, he nodded sharply and made for some cover, "Come on. I'll show you a trick once we get under cover."