04-06-2017, 10:19 PM
while collecting the stars, I connected the dots.
I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.
She feels unready when the first contractions come, when her belly tightens and her nerves scream and she turns and Mandan is not there. “Mandan.” She breathes, a whimper-sound, soft and beautiful and etched with the pain that travels through her copper skin in ragged waves. Regret is there also, a deep throb in her chest as she tries to remember why it was she had not gone looking for him, why she had not spent these last many months buried and content in the hollow of his dark chest.I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.
He doesn’t know.
The truth makes her flush warm and embarrassed, and even now she ducks her head to hide the uncertainty that flashes bright and vulnerable in the backs of those quiet jade eyes. He must know, he must, she had grown grotesquely round in the last month, the weight made more evident by the sharp angles of a figure that was otherwise thin, avian and beautiful. Even the soft feathering of her wings could no longer hide the life that grew within her, a heat, a pressure she had come to love once the fear subsided.
Still, he had not come to her side, nor she to his, and fear made that doubt sharp, made it cruel.
Maybe he did not want to know.
But she remembers a weight in his gaze, his mouth against her neck and the heat it had stirred somewhere deep and unnamable inside her, and suddenly she is turning deeper into Tephra, hurrying between the contractions to the places she had seen him most often. But there is no flash of deep mahogany, no rustle of feather besides her own, no darkly handsome face scowling out at her from the deepening night. His absence makes something else twist in her gut, something besides regret, something she absolutely refuses to think on for the treacherous weight such a truth would carry.
Of course she doesn’t love him, that would be silly.
And yet -
She groans at a new pain that cripples her, knocks her to her knees and then her side, presses her flat into the dirt with that copper neck rigid and her small head outstretched. She groans again, tensing, almost invisible between the thick green plants that grow up around her and the billow of mist that pours like fog from the nearby spring. She prefers it this way, she thinks, hidden away like a ghost in the belly of a green and grey kingdom that had always been home. Tucked away near the streaks of throbbing orange and gold, veins of magma that lit the night, every night, even when the stars refused to shine behind the obsidian of clouds.
In the quiet of the night, she struggles, heaving and breathless, until there is not one but three silhouettes in the hazy, silver dark. The first is a small filly, slight and beautiful, with skin like pale rust, like Exists except fainter. She moves, struggling, and Exist shifts to clean her, quieting her again with long strokes of her tongue against damp, perfect skin. She memorizes as she goes, touching every part of that small face, following the arch of her neck, the softness of downy mane – further across her withers and her back, along her hips and her legs. Everything seems good, seems well, but the blue and copper mare extends her healing light to the girl anyway, letting it fill her daughter in whichever quiet ways she may or may not need. “Praise.” She whispers, the first sound, first word this child will ever hear, and when she lifts that small head to peer up at Exist, she knows she has named her. “My beautiful, Praise.” She says again, softer, reaching forward with a quiet groan to press a kiss to that beautiful forehead.
But she is interrupted by new pain, new tightness, a new shape in the dirt behind her once the struggling is finished. She groans again, exhausted, sweat dark like bronze against her neck, her shoulders, her hips. But she does not tend to her own needs yet, will not spare the healing on herself until she is sure this second child is okay. But when she twists and shifts, reaching out to clean the wet from her, this body is small and thin, completely still beneath her mouth but for the shallow rise and fall of delicate ribs.
She stands quickly and turns to them, laying back down so that the bay is against her chest and beneath her neck, and the apricot is tucked safely to the curve of her belly. With urgent, wandering lips, she pushes all her ability into this child, her child, who even now struggles to respond. It takes many long moments, seconds stretched into eons until time is unrecognizable, but then the girl does stir, does lift her head and find Exists quiet, worried face. “Prevail.” She whispers, she breathes, she places the name in a kiss against that impossibly small forehead, willing her. Her lips find two hard knots near those small ears, smooth bumps of something solid and, frowning, she brushes aside the forelock to take a closer look. Hard and dark, gleaming dully, they remind her of the soft knobs of antler she had seen growing on weanling deer. Exists face softens with easy curiosity, tired curiosity, wondering who in her family had given her such horns. She wondered, too, at the color.
It was easy to see who beautiful Praise had taken after, such a soft, faded apricot. She was a watered down shade of her mother’s copper, pale and perfect. But Prevail was the same rich mahogany as her father, dark and beautiful, with legs the color of blue gems like her mother – like her mother’s mother, too.
She looked so much like Victra.
With a sigh of exhausted pleasure, a heart so full and bright that is spilled over like an ocean poured into a puddle, she drew them in close with the soft of her nose, curling around them until they found their will to stand and nurse. Until then, she was content to drown in their sound, their scent, their perfectness. This was not the future she had expected for herself, but looking at them now, curled with their warmth, she knows it is the future she would do anything to keep.
Exist
@[mandan]