show me where my armor ends; any

[Longear]

She frowns.

Though, there isn’t much difference here. In this body her little lips are pulled permanently downwards at their corners, as if ever scowling, until she pulls them up deliberately. But there is precious little to smile about  at this moment. She is reaching her limits – real, physical limits. The ones defined by her ribs and her organs and skin. These limits that can be tested and pulled and can endure so very much, but not this. Not for much longer. (Ouch.) It is not in the other soul’s nature to resist itself. They are both more comfortable when they are low down and nimble-quick; the other soul has always been particularly greedy, insisting upon brooding when she cannot be who she was meant to be. 

But even the rabbit can see the absurdity in this. 

Even she can only hope for the relief that their mare’s body gives them. Little though it may be, for two foals is crowding enough, at least those two can tangle there in relative harmony with their mother’s form. Here, one is receptive – she mirrors the shift with her own bean-tiny frame – the other? She is resistant. She is different from them.

Like her father, she must be. And the pup is getting far too big. She presses down, against her sister and into her mother’s side. It is too much.

She groans, shifting her weight and sitting up. (No.) “No use,” she sighs, quietly. And so she drops to her fours and in a second she is grey-furred and shaggy, round and short, “there,” it is reassuring and pointy all at once. A gentle coo to her cuddled twins and a reproach to the other. “Better?” The smaller body has been sanctuary to her – where she had fled the heat and waters of war; where many times she had outrun raptors and slavering, toothed creatures. In her primal, agouti fur, she can be unseen and ever-so quiet.

She is safe and in safety, she could find her mother.

She had expected to achieve that victory much quicker,  it had been as if she could feel the strange string that connected her wrist to her mother's hips. But perhaps it has snapped, or Vineine had shook it loose the day she had failed to bring him into the world alive. Or she had been a silly girl with silly ideas, because Longear has been looking for years.

Looking. Exhausting. Hoping.

Until she knotted with Woodrow beneath broad and brilliant skies and she was forced to take nest. She would have to put  that endless pursuit on the sidelines. Her mother, to be fair, would have agreed, full-throated.

She had followed Vineine here a few times as a girl. Today, she lopes a different path, sun-spotted and grey with snow. She is new to the Gates, sure. But she had learned some kingdomly duty from mother. Years ago, she had found it terribly tedious. She still does, though less tedious than standing in the snow and counting bumps against her protruding belly and wondering where the coyote might be, as hormones chased him through her mind. 

She comes to them because she sees them first, indigo-pointed and oddly small (she knows about small) and because camaraderie draws her to the bulge of the other mare’s sides. Both of their firsts. Heavy loads. “Hello,” she tries to keep any tedium from her voice, normal sing-song (like her mother’s). “I’m Longear, from the Gates.” But then, the Field is tedium and she is agitated.

Motherhood, indeed.