-Oh my love, don't forsake me; Take what the water gave me-
It’s almost peaceful here, for a few moments. Circinae has taken to laying on her side, the dappling of light from outside her veiled quarters looping pensively over her coat like the bright ripples of light over water. It’s warm; pleasant enough that the sweat breaking loose across her brow and shoulders won’t stifle her while she concentrates. In her experience she knows it’s best to wait, at first. Whatever she’d brought to life within was shifting, searching for that veil between their world and this one and the wolf mother can remember when she had tried to rush this experience the first time.
Oh, that hectic first time ... Weren’t first-time occurrences always hectic, though? Breathtaking and mind-expanding all in one with the knowledge of, this is happening! To counteract the knowledge of, This will never happen again. How scared she’d been back then! Scared enough to take that fateful step into the ocean while her body convulsed in pain, terrified enough to try her teleporting in order to save herself and her boys.
And now - now she’s here beneath a lonely willow, listening to the brief call of a springtime dove while her abdomen clenches with sharp, sudden pain. Her own spasming cry is drowned by the piercing tone of another - one Jah calling for one Canaan (Canaan, oh Canaan! Her heart leaps at the sound of his name on those ruby lips) and whatever anxiety she might have been combatting before slips away with the quiet entrance of her lightning girl. “Jah, please-” She begins to whimper as the scent of chamomile assaults her tender nose, but she cannot manage the rest; a gargle of agony cuts her breath short.
“Please, oh please,” She wants to say, “find Canaan for me.” It had been the whole purpose of her journey up the mountainside that day - simply to find or be found by her soulmate. There wasn’t another creature in their world who she wanted more in this moment. They had nurtured this life together, showered it together with so much unspoken joy already. She needed him - she always did - and even if hell itself tried to stop them, Circinae was determined that they would bring their child into this world together.
Her watering eyes smart, then close. “Canaan, please … Canaan.” She murmurs weakly, each new shudder coming quicker than the last.
“I’m here.” He answers.
It’s enough to pull her eyes open and her lips up into a dazzling smile. With a joyful cry she loses sense of control and shifts, (there is something innate between their spirits, wild and tumultuous as horses should be, that tugs on her whenever he’s near) the blinding flash of rippling skin trading brown for green her final act before the true trial comes. Her head rises, dark now with with perspiration, and she curls aside to make room for him so that, together, they might feel their child enter this world.
Green against gold, gold against green, her body expends the last of its energy to collapse against him and strain for life. (“Hello, my name is Canaan. And you are?”) She pushes. (“I’m Circinae, but of course you can call me Circy. That tends to be easier for everyone to remember.”) There are stars in her eyes now; the foal is crowning. (“Circinae”, he echoes, “something tells me there is nothing forgettable about you.”)
A sac slips wetly free, the small, writhing inhabitant nearly shapeless from within until it expands to press against the rubber-like material. With fear in her eyes the new mother watches the exchange of bodies and says not a word, refuses to breath until it’s evident that the foal within is whole and normal. The stillness around them is suffocating. “Little one?” She whispers shakily, hardly willing to believe that it was alive - So small and delicate!
“Help me, please!” She says to them both and yet to neither of them specifically. Canaan’s reassurance helps to lift her, Jah’s mouth is already upon the sac when her own green lips reach for it too. The activity they lacked before is now in full-swing while the pale membrane shreds beneath their teeth to reveal a downy, ivory-colored foal. Across that tiny back are quivering feathers of … water.
“A filly .. a girl! Oh Canaan a girl!” Is all that Circinae needs to say. The wings, the strange birth - they meant nothing compared to the way her daughter flicks first one, and then the other pale ear with easy fluidity. The babe is pushing airy, fluttering breaths from her small nostrils and the hush around them returns while the trio wait to hear her first sounds. Circinae doesn’t want to tear her eyes away from the scene but she does, the pinprick of a memory driving her blue eyes to where Canaan supports her side.
“I love you.” She whispers, pressing the words into his skin with the pressure of her lips. “I always have and I always will.”
Circinae
whoooooooo there's a novella for you two