build me up from bones, wrap me up in skin
hold me close enough to breathe me in
Life is darkness, for a time.
Darkness, and a warm embrace that squeezes her more and more as time goes on. Gentle rocking, swaying, movement. Gentle words murmured that send her off to sleep. Security and love and the endless, nourishing dark.
Until –
She slips into the morning light. The sun catches in her brand-new eyes when they open. This place, too, is warm, soft - radiant.
“Radiant,” Mother names her, nuzzles her. The girl leans into the touch, tries to blink the afterglow of the sunrise away to better see her. She wants to view the face of her very best friend. She wants to hear the tender voice again, the one that had reverberated in the hollow of her shallow, unborn chest (there had been another, too - one with even more words for her – but the deeper voice wasn’t here now). She wants to negate the space that Eira makes between them as she pulls away, to curl into the crook of her shoulder or flank. She wants many things all at once, she realizes, but she can’t have any of them until she moves from her nest of spongy moss.
But standing seems like an insurmountable challenge.
A thread of fear tangles in her hungry stomach. She scrambles against the slippery green and can’t find purchase. What if she can’t do it? Come on sweety, up you go! “Please. Wait for me, Momma.” What if she doesn’t? What if she won’t? Radiant pushes and pushes with legs that are too long, too spindly. The panic at being left behind finally pulls her up off the ground, her sides fluttering with spent effort.
Walking comes quicker, and the red girl only wavers on the first couple of steps it takes to reach her dam again. She presses her head into the curve of her rich bay stomach, closes her eyes to steady herself before opening them again (tries to level the fear of being alone that had risen like a tide only moments ago). Mother is here. She is darkness and light and love. Radiant finds her first meal and drinks until she can hold no more. Sleep tugs at her consciousness, but she is loath to succumb to her tired feet. Instead, she leans against Eira, follows the bright Tephran sun as it climbs into the sky. “Momma, it is warm like you.” She turns to smile. “But you are much better.”
