[private] I couldn't utter my love when it counted; birthing

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

Adna melts at the brush of his lips and it takes everything within her to not show it. To simply give him that small smile even when she feels the distinct tightening in her chest and the fluttering of her belly.

This is temporary, she thinks. She reminds herself.

Her sister’s words continually play in her head (they will leave you in the morning) and she wonders if Beth had found Sabbath when Prayer had been born. Had they stood like this, as a makeshift family? Had he pressed a kiss to her forehead too? Looked at them with that same patient smile?

Had it been just like this?

It is poison in her veins and on her tongue and she just swallows it down.

She startles a little when the baby viper strikes out and finds purchase on his shoulder. She wants to breathe an apology, say that it will never happen again, but she knows better than most that there is no way to control that. There is no way to promise that the snake will not behave as a snake.

And there is no way that he would want a family of vipers.

She swallows the bitterness and shakes away the tears before they form, reaching out to press a soft fanged kiss to her daughter. Never regretting her for what she is or wishing she would change.

“I was thinking Gospel,” she says quietly, and she isn’t sure if the name feels fitting because of what she knows or despite it, but she cannot take it back now. She glances at him, wondering if he perhaps will put two and two together, hoping against hope that he will not, and then busies herself with the child, pressing another kiss to her daughter and wondering how long it will be before Beth leaves them again.

How desperately she does not want to be the one who is left.

ADNA