This is my last child. Birth is hard fucking work. And based on how Kushiel turned out, raising the little brats is a thankless task. You take care of them, feed them and make sure they don't die, teach them your version of the truth and then the little fuckers run off to the Chamber. Hypothetically, of course.
I have rediscovered that I am not pleasant when I am writhing in pain. In fact, everyone should be grateful that I don't have powers more menacing than mind reading because I would be zapping the shit out of anyone in a twenty mile radius right now just for distraction.
Ah, perhaps that's why I don't have any greater gifts. Someone had excellent foresight.
I've shut out the minds of everyone around me. I bite my mouth shut as well, unwilling to have uninvited company, and pace near the trees in the secluded edge of the Valley. It's fucking hot, and I make a mental note to harass Demian about the quality of his damned wall. What's the point of protection if we're all roasting to death in the summer heat? Sure will make ruling hard for the next leader when his subjects are all burnt to a crisp.
Thankfully, this second child is nothing like Kushiel was. She is eager to be born, and unlike the day of excruciating torture I suffered with her big brother, the little gray filly slides quickly out after only an hour of hard labor. I'm not saying it was easy, mind you. But it was a sight easier than giving birth to a child who a week later would burn me with a flame he found.
I look her over curiously, and she pops to her feet before I get the chance to nudge her up. I grin a little at that, my brown eyes warming affectionately as she finds her feet. Gods, would it be too much to ask to have a child who didn't look like Carnage? How many grey babies does he have, and me, a dark bay. Well, Kush will be happy enough.
True to my word, I send a message to Kushiel. I fully expect him to drop anything he is doing and come barrelling in. (I mean, assuming he does something more than make mental love to the burning tree in the Chamber all day)
Oh, not because I asked him to. Never for that. Simply because he has been dying to meet his sibling ever since I told him he was going to have one. I eye Namaah, and sigh. She really is the spitting image of her brother at that age.
G A L L O W S
We must all hang together or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
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