The safest way to put it, would be to say that she had been in hiding.
When Clayton and she had spent a night together, she couldn’t have cared less about any so-called consequences. She had believed (or truthfully she hadn’t been thinking much besides finally wanting and actually getting, for though she had the body of a three-year-old at the time, she was twice that age), she had imagined they would still be friends and perhaps even, that she had done something good, lightening his mood. She knew there were others, that he was actually romantically involved with, but he had been easy to convince by shrugging off anything romantic between them. And truthfully it wasn’t romantic love between them, just a weird form of friendship.
Weird, because she had become pregnant, and she had felt too awkward to tell him, ever since.
Eventually, the greying pegasus mare had decided that perhaps, perhaps, she should go to the Cove. For all she knew her mother hung around that part of the world, and there was a chance Clayton, or Dawn, or Will, would be there too to help her through the process of birthing.
But she was late - late to move, anyway, and knew that she carried more than just one foal. Just my luck. But the young-in-body mare gritted her teeth like she always had, and carried on as normal. That meant roaming this world and that, and if perhaps she had skipped a season she was none the wiser… through the pain and fatigue of her hyper-swollen abdomen, she had no time to notice that the sickness was no more.
She made it almost, and then in one of the many crevices in Pangea (hopefully, one that would have lead her towards Hyaline or the Cove, but she didn’t really know where she was), she fell to the ground. For several yards, tens, a hundred, she dragged herself forwards on her belly, silently cursing under her breath. Once or twice she had stopped to let a wave of pain pass through her body, and finally, when she found a twist in the path that offered her shade, she gave up.
Panting and cringing, but never ever ever even outing a single yelp, she went through the birthing process of her firstborns alone. Time passed in a blur in which she focused only on breathing, and gritted her teeth through the pain, the discomfort of birthing on sharp rock ground, and the heaviness of her belly keeping her down on dry dust for so long.
She did not know how many contractions had passed when finally, a pale figure slid out of her body, relieving the grey, raven-winged woman of her discomfort for a moment.
Breathing heavily, she stood, and examined the pale, near-white figure. It was only hormones that kept her from toppling over, and she had just enough strength in her roughed-up body to clean the nose and examine the red eyes, pale body and green mane and tail, which actually gave the filly a slightly sickly look. ”Tauti,” her mother decided, murmuring against the (still damp) shivering filly’s body softly. She had wings - they would have to keep the little one warm for the moment.
Because Tähti wasn’t done by a long shot. No sooner had she named the child or she needed to abandon her, and her already tired body slumped down once more, sweat and blood mingling where she was. There was a vague worry that lions or wolves would find them, then the faint hope that one or more of her children would survive, then the crushing thought that that would mean they carried the same curse as she.
Pain overtook her a second time, and this time she knew how to get into the rhythm, breathing and pushing with the waves more quickly, more efficiently. Halfway through, something was off, the child almost stuck - but Tähti had only ever trained as a warrior, and biting through the pain, she kept pushing, and pushing - until at last the reddish-looking buckskin was freed.
This time Tähti didn’t get up. Instead she turned on her belly, smearing blood all over her birthing ground. Seeing that this one had wings and horns too, she at first didn’t notice the difference - but then the grey mare’s gaze sharpened a little more, finding blood on the girl’s horns, neck and back, and knew it to be her own.
Looking at both her fillies for a moment, she seemed happy, even though she now had noticed that she would be bleeding a while - perhaps too long. Nevertheless she was never a quitter, and stretched her neck towards the girls to clean them as best as she could. ”Tauti, Sota.” Sickness, and War. She knew them to be their rightful names, and only wondered how long it would be before she would die herself, or be able to stand up. At least, she figured, the girls were moving.
Resting her head against the rock that had granted them shadow, the raven-winged woman hardly moved. She cleaned her daughters as best as she could, and in her blacked-out world hardly noticed the signals of the third.
But he came, through blood and his mother’s ripped-open insides, and when she noticed she knew that today was one of those setback days once more. A third child, after having been scraped by the first two’s hooves and horns, she would not be able to handle. But he came anyway, eating away at her, his own mother, although he would not know it until it was too late. This one, she decided, was a taker - and so when the colt so easily left her body, and Tähti looked at his scrawny midnight body and silver blinking eyes, at the way he immediately searched a tit, she knew what to name him. ”Nälkä,” she called him, knowing he would be hungry for quite a while longer.
Energy was something she used to have when she was young. But the mouse-grey mare slipped into darkness, between her three wet children and a slowly oozing, growing pool of scarlet.
She’d wake, she knew, but how, when and where, she could never influence.
has always been within
Fyi she is three birthing seasons late because of break/closeting, so I don’t really care if it’s summer xD
@[Clayton] @[City] so, if either of you wants to thread, I figured now would be as good a time as any, but later is fine with me as well.