Desolation comes upon the sky // Birthing; Shah, Brennen, any.

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

Originally, her plan had been to go to the river, to use the burble of the stream as a cover for any noise she might making while giving birth; indeed she had even spent a week there, attempting to find the perfect spot. But throughout her journeys, she had constantly been subject to prying eyes and ears, of the equine kind and of others. The life-giving nature of the stream meant that many gathered to it at all times of the day, and Scorch had no control over that, anyway; so, fat with child and sullen with depression, the mare made the last-minute trip from the river to the forest.

Having arrived with just enough time to find a perfectly secluded thicket, complete with a bed of pine needles and all, the mare awaited the arrival of her child. Ironically, the babe chose now to wait, wriggling as though to get more comfortable in his or her position. No, thought Scorch irritably, swinging her head around to impulsively and uselessly bite at the incredibly swollen skin of her barrel. No, don't you dare relax in there - you get out this instant. Though she spoke to the babe in this manner, it was with little to no love; where affection ought to have punctuated her brusque thoughts, only a dire need for haste and for solitude remained.

She knew what she needed to do, whether or not anyone else knew it, or thought her a monster for it. She had made herself a monster enough times over now that this would barely be another infraction upon the list she had made for herself, a list which enumerated each and every one of her sins in excruciating detail. The only catch to her plan lay stowed in the fact that she would have to do it without getting caught; and she would have to do it fast, without getting attached to the body of the child that she did not want.

After all, it was not as if Brunhild had stuck around, or had expressed interest in the maintenance of the life she had unwarrantedly embedded in Scorch's womb. The child would be born of two Amazonian legends, and would die the same, quickly and without ceremony. That or else some other mother would come rescue him or her, and that would be that; as Scorch was raised better by her faux-mother, so too would the child. At least, she told herself as much; told it to herself so often, in fact, that she rarely came to question the soundness of her judgement any more.

At long last, more than a day after her arrival, the pangs of birth began. Dread crept idly into Scorch's blood, with the laziness of any trickster, his fingers toying with the veins leading to her heart as though only half interested in the power he held there. A single tug and he could undo her, could send her back to her motherly nature, could send send her back to being a woman worthy of respect and sympathy. Dread leaned his head back and kicked his feat up on the recliner of her being, watching with slowly blinking eyes and a distracted smile as she went through the birth, unfeeling and determinedly silent.

Standing over top of the wet, feebly kicking child, Scorch took a step towards the entrance of the thicket; but at the last second, dread gave a tiny flick of his finger, and stopped her. Sick to her stomach and almost unbearably calm, the mare leaned down to careful extricate the birth fluids blocking the child's nose; and, careful not to glimpse its sex, she then turned, ghosting into the night without a second look back.

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

@[Brennen] @[Shahrizai] @[Hestoni] @[brunhild] first two I tagged since they expressed interest in stopping this from actually happening, second two are being tagged since it is relevant to their characters and i need people to witness how horrible scorch is because wow she is horrible

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feels like December knows me well

He curled close in his mother's womb, squeezing himself into as small a ball as possible in the vain effort to remain here, inextricable from her and her love - if he could even call it that. Truth be told he could not call much anything with the small beginnings of his consciousness, but what he did know was that the body harbouring him held little warmth for him. He felt parasitic, and yet needy, not knowing how to handle the fact that his existence repulsed the body responsible for transitioning him from unborn to born. He did not know how to handle the small reverberations made by her striking him through her skin, except to curl tighter and to hope that he may never come face to face with the monster he loved.

That he may never come face to face with the mother who did not want him.

Of course, he could never squeeze himself smaller than the days made him grow larger; and eventually the one came which would herald his transition from unborn to born. He knew it the moment his home caved in around him, as he faced to collapse of the only nation he had ever known. For a time the child scrambled wildly in the womb, as if in an attempt to claw his way deeper into the recesses of his mother - but she pushed against his efforts, infinitely more powerful and practiced at him in every way. To him, her will was his law; and her will was certainly not in his favour.

The first thing he knew upon exiting the womb was the coolness of the earth. The second was that he could not breathe. What should have taken a moment to accomplish took his mother nearly a minute, leaving the wet black colt to flail miserably on the forest floor, accruing pine needles in the mess of his coat. He should also have felt the way they poked and pierced his flesh, and he should have felt the firm warmth of his mother's tongue cleaning away the afterbirth which covered his small figure; he should have felt many things, but he only felt the snot being cleared away, and then nothing.

He could not even open his eyes or perk his ears for the wetness of it all, and for the hopelessness which bloomed like the flower of death in the slim width of his chest. Trembling, he lay, knowing only the instinctual fear of one abandoned.

Arct

yrus