DESOLATION COMES UPON THE SKY - birthing, Ea/Hestoni/other kids/any

[Hestoni]

press my nose up to the glass around your heart i should’ve known i was weaker from the start Although they have had five children already (although only four remain living, rest in peace his third daughter) he is still a nervous wreck when spring comes. He knows he shouldn’t be so worried – his fire has suffered through five childbirths and two of them had been one after the other – but his mind always dives toward the worst cases possible. He prays Rain is the only one who take the blows of premature death; he prays that Scorch will not become like her mother – leaving her newborn child in favor of the spirit world; he prays that Scorch will not become eternally weakened in the aftermath of her laboring; he prays their new child will be full and healthy and without severe blemishes. As soon as winter melts away into spring, the titan keeps a careful eye on his pregnant lover. The sight of her swollen sides and swaying curves appeals to the fatherly side in him – the side that marvels at the working ways of woman and how she can carry such a thing alongside all the internal organs, the side that loves her even more although she is hot and angry and fat with pregnancy, the side that adores every fiber of her being despite how sweaty or unattractive she might feel. Nonetheless, among all his wondering, is the ever present tendril of fear and worry that creeps along. He isn’t near her when she collapses, but the Jungle stirs around him. He can feel his home coming alive amid the struggles of a princess being born and his fire tattoos (living fire twining with the tattooed pale of his ribcage, excited fire creeping up his strong jaw into the chocolate brown of his serious eyes) leaps against his skin, beckoning for its sisters which lay covering his maiden as she labors. He reaches her before the delivery is complete but stays within the shadows. She might not know his presence is there in the moment of pain and weakness, but when she rises from that agony-clouded haze she will feel him there, lingering near her as an ever present guardian. Once she rises, he allows her a few moments to bond with their new child, licking it clean and murmuring its name over top of its fluffy baby head. Once someone new steps into the scene, however, he’s appearing from the shadows like the titan he is – hooves pounding against the ground and chest heaving with breaths heard as if they came from the crevasses of the earth. Their daughter – Ea, as she has been named – is cradled between the fire-laden legs of her mother and his lover. They are all influenced by the fire (the fire of their eternal love, the fire of life, the fire of magnificence and greatness and power) and it is blazed on their bodies like words spoken alive. “Il mio fuoco,” he says, a soothing combination of words clashing against the roughness and depth of his voice, “all is well. A daughter…” He pauses, forcing himself to swallow down a lump in his throat which somehow appeared along with the thought of their lost daughter, of the one they never knew. “She is beautiful. All of our daughters are beautiful.” And he means all of them. “She has your eyes.” And at this, he chuckles, seeing the dragon fire and sharp acuity that comes with the dragon vision of the princess’s mother. Turning his attention toward the intruder, the titan draws himself up to his full height of 16.2 hands. “Can we help you, miss?”