I wish I could feel it all for you; any

[Kellyn]

I wish I could feel it all for you, I wish I could do it all for you

Getting pregnant again hadn’t really been in the plan.

The plan was simple: serve out her two years in Pangea, try to keep away from her ghosty spirit guides now that Harmonia had restored her powers, and then get the heck out of dodge. As nice as it was to live in a place with no behavioral expectations (honestly, Pollock had practically begged them to be naughty) the place just wasn’t growing on her. Apparently grandpa wasn’t any better at making a place for people to live than safely returning a granddaughter home from a quest non-pregnant, and Pangea is simply ugly and unwelcoming.

It’s worse than the Tundra, which is saying something.

But pregnant she is, and the strawberry pony is grumpy with it, nearly as big around as she is tall and waddling around the Kingdom with a perpetual scowl and her ears pinned to her head. At least, she is relieved to say, this baby isn’t wreaking havoc with her powers. That pregnancy with Cassady had been physically a piece of cake but the lack of control over her time-travel and ghost-seeing had been terrible. And Carwyn had been an accident pregnancy, but remarkably pleasant and easy.

Kellyn can’t honestly say this one is an accident – it’s not like she was in the past this time or anything – but it was careless. Meant to be physically fun, not actually produce a baby. And boy is this baby a pain in the…well, everything.

She is almost glad for the first pangs of labor, if only because it means that she will finally be not pregnant. And if she still doesn’t want to be a mommy (though she does wonder if the third time’s the charm?) the return of her powers gave her back her mild precognition and she had seen her other children and her grandfather many times on the sandy shores of Nerine, and she can always go drop this baby in his lap as well. It’s a girl, after all, and what better place for a girl to grow up than the new home of the Amazons?

Kellyn thinks about that while she struggles through the birth; she had seen a few futures where the pink-and-purple creature she is expelling from her body remained in Pangea, but many more where she ended up in Brennen’s more capable hooves. It seems almost destiny at this point; those futures had outnumbered the ones in which she remained almost three to one.

Right now though, this is the easy part. The strawberry mare rolls upright, blowing her forelock out of her eyes, and smiles at the little girl curled up at her feet. Right now, it is easy to admire the tiny ears and hooves, the blinking hazel eyes, the pretty purple mane and tail, the wings; and it is easy to imagine that she will keep this filly at her side and raise it right, rather than dumping the responsibility on her family. “Hello,” she croons, starting to clean the filly. “Hello, Cleary. My Cleary.”

It will be later, when it is harder, that the decision will have to be made.

Kellyn

the girl who walks in time and talks to ghosts
daughter of cagney and elite

[Alight]

once upon a time;

They kick and agitate inside, today more than usual.
They are ready. She can just tell.

She places her nose on her swollen side, closing her bright, brown eyes and exhales. “I love you,” she breathes into them, dust billowing off her coat where the sugary words touch. “We are almost there, honey.” We are almost together—

She had done so much for them. She had stepped close to a storm, faced lightning as it crackled and aroused the air around her, teasing and dangerous. She had burned, cooking from the inside out and had begged for mercy, tasting smoke on her tongue as she did. She had faced the moon in the vacuous, squeezing weightlessness of space, seeing in the pocked and deadened body what needed to be done.

She had toiled and fought and the fruits of those labors were growing, substantial and animated, in her womb.

They were all for him. If she could have done it in her body—come to him as-is, fire-flanked and golden-skinned—she would have. If she could have done it purely—their bodies as they once were, intertwined—she would have. But he had strayed, avoiding, like a lost comet, the light of her sun. He had resisted and become, temporarily, beguiled by another body—a wild-skinned, breeze-scented usurper.

For love, one does what one has to.

She wanders the ragged, outer territory of this ugly, dirty hell. She is far too encumbered now to run, thinking it better to nestle in some cave and bring her babies here than to get caught in some wild and unknown hinterland. At least here she feels safe, though it is in a strange kind of way—safe from harm by fear, for her father holds her here with nothing but the way his mind clicks its claws against the skull, seeking. 
And he wants her alive.

She steers clear of monsters and the high tower where her father stands and overwatches, today, moving steady and slow until the stagnant scent of sand and rock is perforated by something much more earthy and vibrant. These are things that she is made for, and his missed so. She cannot help but inspect, creeping close, crackling, blazing wings held tight to her sides until the quiet, domestic sight stills her and brings a soft smile to her lips.

“She is beautiful,” the indigo-haired princess sings, taking a tentative step closer, “I feel like I have a girl, too, but. We’ll see.”

PHOTOGRAPHY © TASHA MARIE