as if death itself was undone; birthing, vulgaris

[leliana]

leliana

I could hear the thunder and see the lightning crack
and all around the world was waking, I never could go back

There is a part of her that mourns this moment.

She should be pressing joyous kisses into the wet necks of her daughter and son. She should be curling around them, letting her forehead rest exhausted against his scaled neck. But she feels no fatigue, and she doesn’t feel any true maternal flicker of warmth. Just an echo of it. Some memory of what it was.

A frown crosses her features.

It is beautiful and stormy and she angles her head toward Vulgaris, studying the discomfort in him. She looks through him to the babes on the ground—to the boy who rises so quickly. The girl is not far behind him. He has her rich coloring and she is the color of ink. Both have the beginnings of flowers beginning to curl in their hair. They are beautiful—delicate, strong. Everything she could have hoped for.

Once would have.

“They are hungry,” she says simply and even her voice feels different in her mouth. It is not cold, but the warmth is a distant thing. The edges of it reverberates on her tongue and she realizes, almost instantly, that she can help them. There is a breath of wind around her as it extends from her to the children, filling their bellies with milk, comforting them with its weight. It is the most that she can give them now.

Larke lifts her delicate head, licking the milk from her lips, and then rises on spindly legs. She does not take to it as fast as her brother, but she doesn’t grow frantic about it either. She simply fights to stand and then moves forward, slowly, until her hip is to his. She leans over and exhales slowly into his fur.

Leliana watches the interaction, her expression unchanging. After several minutes, she looks back up, almost surprised to still see Vulgaris still there. “You’re upset.” A pause, the breath pooling into her chest, the rest of the world calling to her with silver bells. She remembers what it was to be upset once.

She spent so much of her time feeling such a thing.

“I won’t hurt them,” another shadow of a frown, “or you.”

But there is a part of her that is glad that he so quickly positioned himself before the twins. So glad to know that he is back, that he is himself, that he will be there to care for her children.

[ no more dreaming like a girl so in love with the wrong world ]

@[vulgaris]