And inside you're burning
with some secret yearning

As the soft, dusky streaks of evening fade slowly into the velvety star-strewn hues of night, she can feel the pangs of labor begin. Twice before she has experienced this very feeling. She knows now exactly what to expect. The first time had been mildly alarming, though to be honest, she had known very well the outcome of her dalliances. So even if the experience had been somewhat disquieting, she could not say it was unexpected. The second time had been anticipated and dreaded in equal measure, but the actual experience had turned out to be somehow anticlimactic. This time though, it is surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) rather boring.

For the first several hours, she pays as little mind to the contractions in her swollen belly as she can. Although, given the increasing pain, that is becoming much harder to do. When she is no longer able to ignore it, she finds a still, quiet nook in the depths of the forest and settles in. She knows now that the worst is yet to come.

Were it possible to avoid this part, she would gladly do so. But alas, she has made her bed. Now it seems she must lie in it.

Starlight swirls about her, coalescing into a diamond bright shield that settles around her chosen corner of forest. The outside world is just barely visible through the impenetrable ward she had settled around herself and her coming child. It is a precaution, one she feels justified in taking, considering the number of rather dangerous men she has come to know. Perhaps none of them would care. But then again, perhaps they would.

When at last the foal slips into the world, Lirren lays against the dense leaf-cover, red and teal body damp and exhausted. She is only grateful none are her to witness her in her weakest moment. She remains where she is for several long moments until she has regained enough strength the rise with some semblance of grace. As she turns to clean and examine the filly, she draws the starlit shield to her, revealing a lovely view of trees interspersed by night sky and cloaking her sweat-streaked body in the beauty of her own stars.

A small smile touches her blue lips as she watches the small girl, a child with skin to match hers. None of her previous children, while beautiful in their own ways, had inherited even a hint of the unusual coloring she herself displays.

”Keilani,” she says softly, releasing the girl’s name into the star-studded night air as a smile slowly curves her lips. ”Welcome to the world, my dear.”

Lirren

starlit daughter of joythief and carnage

And inside you're burning
with some secret yearning

She remembers only snippets of the days from her earliest youth. Short, chaotic bursts of memory filled with warmth and love and sadness. She does not remember her own mother. Her elder sister had never told her that she had slipped into this world upon her mother’s dying breath. She had never told her that her name, a name as star-strewn and elegant as she, had been given to her not by her mother, but by her sister. A sister who had been fortunate enough to stumble upon their dying mother only moments after she had been born. Little did she know that it had been her sister’s empathic abilities that had drawn her to that bone-littered beach.

For a brief moment in time, she reflects upon these mysterious circumstances. And for another moment, she wonders what her blue-tinged daughter will remember of her youth.

Would she remember only a mother who longed for the stars far more than anything one would ever find upon this plane? Would she even think of her mother at all?

Do her other children ever think of her? Her oldest is a boy now grown. Were she being honest, she would freely admit that she had left him the moment he had been able to sustain life on his own. Her second had been stolen from her side far too soon. Let the thieves rue the day she finds them.

And this, her third, gazes up at her with wide, innocent eyes and a youthful grin full of milk. She wonders, for just a moment, what would become of this one.

Only time will tell.

Returning the girl’s milky smile with a faint curve of her own lips, she reaches out to brush the whispy teal forelock with a soft caress. ”Rest, Keilani. There is so much of the world to see and you will need your strength.”

And she would. A mother’s love offers only so much protection in such a cruel and callous world.

Lirren

starlit daughter of joythief and carnage