how come I never got used to the feeling of sleeping in a cage?
too long driving, too damn hungry; a tied-up hound but nothing stays
It all happened so fast, but still Valdis capably kept within stride. A war, she heard from the reptiles as they slithered across the forest floor. A dragon, another lizard said as it scampered up a tree and disappeared among the leaves. That was enough for Valdis to piece her assumptions together before her thoughts were interrupted by a contraction and a figure luring her away from Sylva’s embrace.
Her pulse brimming with anger and disgust for Mary and Sinner, Valdis obliged amiably.
It was a long trek punctuated with more and more contractions. By the time Pangea engulfs her with its barren cliffs and valley, Valdis’ body succumbs to nature’s expectations and her captor left her alone. Resigning to instincts, she collapses with labored breaths and grunts until, hours later, a child is left in the wake of blood and amniotic fluid. It’s startling how easy – and reasonably quick – the labor was in comparison to her daughter. Skeptically, she lifts herself enough to peer across her body and see the small boy scrambling. Oddly, he is much smaller than Dracarys. An exhausted huff slips from her lungs as she rises to her feet to better observe the newborn.
Small.
Strangely so.
A tender brush of her lips across his neck startles him into an unexpected shift that sprouts thick hair and triangular ears and paws. Valdis reels back in surprise but returns above him when he hardly moves toward her. His limbs are too-small, but still he resembles his father. ”Dwarf,” she whispers quietly to herself in mild distaste as her mind strays to Sylva and its monarchy. They will ridicule him, scorn him for what he is and what he isn’t. Valdis’ brows furrow both in pity and in a confused maternal love that she cannot stop spreading through her when he peers up at her inquisitively. ”Erio,” she names him simply before granting him access to nurse while she observes Pangea for the first time.
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Valdis