She remembered the day it had happened, deep in the belly of the meadow with a night sky stretched overhead and pocked with cold, silver stars. At first the stallion had been Shah, his kind face and sad, luminous eyes watching her from across the way. But as the night had unfolded, something changed. She felt it like a tremor of electricity trailing across the silk of her gleaming black skin, like butterflies burning in her stomach. Out of the corner of her eye he would change, silver to purple and then back again when her face turned to him like a flower to the sun if only to catch a glimpse. It was like the echo of a lie, an empty illusion at war with itself. She knew then, or she suspected, but it was easier to pretend like she hadn’t noticed, like she wasn’t a bug caught in a web. She shouldn’t have stayed, shouldn’t have let him touch her, but in that moment it was easier to feel relevant, to feel his mouth on her skin instead of the relentless loneliness eating pitted holes out of her chest. The regret had come later, later when the purple had stayed and his face wasn’t Shah’s and suddenly she was alone in the dark with those cold, terrible stars and the weight of her mistake.
But now, with sweat slick and gleaming in the hollows of her once delicate body, she felt only fear as it wrapped cold, skeletal fingers around the ache and tremble of her beating heart. She reached the edge of the Chamber just as the spasms of another contraction brought her to her knees in the cool dirt. The next crumpled her body. She had meant to find her mother, to find Oksana, to find some sort of comfort in this moment she was so afraid of. But maybe it was better this way, tucked away at the edge of the kingdom in a dark, private hollow as first one and then another damp body joined her in the dirt. Her sides heaved and muscles pushed to their absolute limit trembled and shook in the wake of the birth, but she lifted her face to them, eased her balance tiredly over her belly instead of stretched flat on her side in the dirt.
Her breath caught in her throat, dandelion wisps blowing in her lungs.
They were perfect.
She struggled quietly to her feet, those nearly gold eyes wide with wonder as she stretched her nose to the first, to the mulberry colt looking back at her. And then suddenly they were gone. She recoiled as though she had been struck, stumbling forward to touch her nose to a ground that was still warm where they had lain only seconds before. As the seconds gathered and collected and passed her by, the horror grew in her chest like a ravenous beast. She forgot her weariness, forgot the apprehension of being a mother, forgot the way her body ached and trembled so wrought as it was with exhaustion.
And then, as if following an impossible instinct, she turned and leapt deeper into the kingdom, her eyes flashing like spun gold set on fire.
ILKA
makai x oksana
soooo the twins are magicky and have disappeared to go hang-out with great-grandpa atrox. obviously ilka doesn't know any of this. so it's a fun treasure hunt if anyone feels like popping in.