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Once he'd heard from Wrap You in Stories, Shallows had urgently started on a journey to his father's homestead, closer to the sea. However, it was not his father he was seeking, but his father's lifemate, whom he had assumed also shared the same homestead by this point. In any case, there was bound to be someone he could find around the shore. He'd heard there were a few around there.

Today he had made it past the bramble - his hooves were tired, and his pace slowed somewhat. Yet, the buck pressed on, for it needed to be done. When he saw the flash of red on cream resting at a grassy bank, he found energy anew, and scampered over with urgency.

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Distant Thunder looked up at a sea green speck coming ever-closer. Had he not already found his mate, he would have been quite excited - now, he was intrigued. A buck came running into view with that familiar green.

Ah, one of Tiding's children! That one from that time that he tried not to think about because he behaved very badly. He got to his hooves at his arrival.

"Boy," he said warmly, then felt odd because that was so unfamiliar! For shame, Thunder. He wasn't just a boy, he was his mate's boy.

He tried again hopefully, "son?"

Shallows was furtively looking around just in case, but was relieved by the lack of his father's presence. That relief didn't stop a weird look passing over his face when Thunder said that, but he was asking a favour, so he would run with it.

"Yes it's me, Shallows," he reminded gently, then turned eager, "I need your help, like, as a Legendary. You see, I met this very sweet doe and as far as we can tell, she is um...with child and I wanted to do my best to make sure it all turns out well."

"With child!" Thunder said, rapturously, "oh, how wonderful! And you came to me!"

Yeah, his chest was puffing. His adoptive child! With child!

"Er, yes," Shallows replied, deciding to leave out the fact that anyone but his father would do.

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At that very moment, the (literal) snake in the grass decided to spring up into an Acha stag.

"Hold up, hold up," Tidings said, "don't you mean you came to ask your dear old dad?"

Upon the sudden unwelcome appearance of his blood-father, Shallows screamed in a manner that had to be explicated because merely describing screaming would not do.

"AAAAAAAGH!!"

Then, "NO!" in a way that would be rather hurtful had he not wholly believed that his father could not be emotionally affected by anything he said, in any way.

"Well, that's rather hurtful," he said, "in that case, I won't bless you."

Thunder looked back and forth between father and son with some panic, then meekly asked his mate, "...may - may I still bless him though?"

Tidings made a big show of tramping in a circle to stamp down the grass, and huffing his rump upon it, turning his back upon them.

"If you must," he declared.

"All - all right," Thunder said nervily and cleared his throat, eyes darting back one last time before settling on Shallows.

"Well then son, is there something you and your sweet doe would like?"

Shallows' eyes also darted to his father briefly, but with more wariness and disdain. He allowed himself to brighten up before continuing.

"I think definitely healthy -"

"Brains," Tidings might have coughed, and then somehow coughed out a whole sentence, "won't be getting them from their dad."

"They don't need that, their mother is smart!" Shallows took the bait, hook, line and sinker, and then stumbled back, "- and so am I!"

Tidings looked over his shoulder in a way that very distinctly said, Told you.