When she comes home from the battle grounds, she is victorious in more ways than one.

The land splits open before her, the hill she stands on racing down into the bowl-like heart of the kingdom. The wind pulls at her mane and tail, a southerly gale that urges her to follow the spill of green and return to everything she cherishes. Because somewhere down there, her son waits with his questioning eyes. She knows she has a lot to answer for (so much that she wonders how many sunrises and sunsets will come to pass before she’s through with her truths). She knows that he will worry for her if she tells them all. She knows that he will worry more if she keeps them behind pressed lips any longer.

She also knows that he will accept her, faults and all, because she is his mother.

Still, the weight is not any easier to bear.

Talulah finally moves her feet and meets his gaze and spills her truths. And when she is at least free of them, she can feel the freedom, everywhere and all at once. Her legs loosen with the knowledge that they won’t be running – not for a long while, because here is the pause she’s waited for. Her lungs fill more readily, effectively; her breaths are no longer stunted by all the words she’s unwittingly held back. And her heart seems to slow to a pace that is nearly as untroubled as her unbridled youth. She swears it sings when Ramiel doesn’t turn her away.

And then the unimaginable happens.

Her angel comes home. Tiphon’s light is fleeting and hesitating, but she spies it in the fall. He is there soon after, real, guiding, magnificent; she does not turn him away.

Now, the familiar pains are a welcome sign. Talulah finds the same place she’d birthed Ramiel – a high spot between the shelter of pines overlooking the river below – and falls to the ground. The pain is severe this time, as if Lupei’s white-fire has followed and cursed her long after the end of their challenge. She grits her teeth and sets her jaw. It is nothing less than she deserves, nothing less than she’s earned after the last half a dozen years. Finally, when she wonders if this child will be her end (after everything else she’s been through, how could something so pure drain her?), it slips from her.

It, she thinks, recoiling at the sight of the foal. What have I done? The monster flails under its cloak of afterbirth, desperate for its first taste of air. And for a second, the metal-mare thinks she won’t provide it. How easy it would be to leave it here, looking for all the world like the mistake it must be. She closes her eyes once, twice. Life, death. Then she works furiously to clean the undead child. Her body shakes and she’s not sure if it’s lingering birth-pains or repulsion for the nearness of her own foal.
 

t a l u l a h

metal woman of the dale

She doesn’t feel him lingering behind her during the birth. For once, his presence isn’t like her own heartbeat, obvious and sustaining. Worry hides everything from her, takes away her joy and revels in the new lines creasing her tired face. Because as she looks at the foal - her daughter - she seems to look through it at first. She sees, not the angelic face of an innocent taking its first gulp of mountain air, but a sinewy, raw tangle of limbs and hair. She sees that there will be no normalcy for such a child, no sense of belonging in a world full of the otherwise whole and beautiful. She sees all the mockery and disgust and isolation. She sees that the world is a cruel beast that rips apart and maims little girls, and that there is no way to combat it.

It is not fair.

She is powerless.

More than anything, she finds fault with herself. Life or death had swung like a pendulum above the undead filly’s ears, and when she pulled her head down to clean the girl, she had also pulled down death. Even having chosen life, she is filled with a sense of dread. What kind of a mother lets something like this live? What sort of woman puts their own selfish need for a miracle above their better senses?

But the hope swirling in her breast is like a light slow to die out.

Talulah remembers how it felt to tell the truth; she remembers cutting the tethers from her heels and feeling lifted, free – as if the rules of gravity had no hold on her any longer. The truth is that she loves this child. She loves that Tiphon had found his home with her again, that their souls had sparked at the welcome sight of each other’s. She loves that they had bared themselves before entwining again, silver meeting gold, and made another walking reminder of their adoration. How could she end their newest child’s life for its differences, for its potential to be mocked and prodded, before it has had a chance? The monster would then be found in her own reflection, not staring back at her from the place she’s just entered the world.

Her guardian comes then. He is like the sun after a storm that only she had been caught in. And one look into his worried, metallic eyes tells her that she will keep one secret from him to the grave. She will tell him all the rest (the way that Jason had been another kind of angel, how she had tasted the white-hot flames on her lips and craved the afterburn), but not this. Not that she had almost ended his daughter out of pity and revulsion. As if he can read her thoughts, she turns from holding his gaze and leans her head against his leg.

“Tiphon.” The undead-girl-with-no-name watches them watch her, her golden eyes understanding more of what they see each passing moment. Talulah can see that she is not so different from her other children, apart from the flesh peeling off of her in strips like an accordion. She wants to learn and breath and feel like the rest of them; she is living, even if she looks one step from the grave. The porcelain stallion’s words drop like a lead weight in Talulah’s ears. “Like your father…” she repeats, like the family you refused to tell me about all these years. For a moment, she wants to be angry. Because maybe if she’d known, maybe if he’d let her in all those decades ago, this wouldn’t have happened. They could be together still, but they wouldn’t have had another child. Maybe they had been lucky with Ramiel. Maybe their luck has run out.

But it is no good now. He knows it as much as she does, and when he apologizes, she cuts him off with a shake of her head. She can feel his muzzle sliding along her smooth neck at the sudden motion. “She’s special – a miracle.” The metal-mare looks from Tiphon to their zombie daughter, a fire igniting in her stare. She must believe it – they all must for this to work. The girl calls herself a monster and it nearly breaks her heart all over again. “You are a miracle.” How else could someone live with such deformities? How could someone survive in such a state of gore and not be in pain? But there is one thing she cannot do. “Please,” she looks to him, her eyes more desperate and lost when the filly can’t see. “She needs a name.” What do you call a monst-- a miracle? What kind of name suits such a girl?
 
 

t a l u l a h

metal woman of the dale