there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail
the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream
but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever
Time grew strange in his pregnancy, seemed to extend forever. He began to wonder if it was all inside his head – the shifting creature, his expanding belly, all of it. Truth is, he knows little of the duration of pregnancies, his only other child having been conceived in a dream state and born by him.
He birthed his second son alone in a labor that felt like days, delivered a golden child with the monster’s eyes, and he wept, and wept, unable to stop himself. He loves the child immediately, the same way he had Abysm, though he feels so strangely empty when he stands, no longer keeping life inside of him, that same life now rising on shaking legs.
He names the boy Cringe, without exactly knowing why. There’s something about him that makes Rapt a little nervous. Maybe it’s just how he looks like his father.
He loves him, though. That’s all that matters.
It’s not long after this that the world succumbs to chaos, visions of all sorts, word of a plague. The child is too small, too frail to make the journey to the safe lands. It’s a struggle to find his son milk, whatever horrible magic had led him to conceiving had not extended to anything else, leaving Rapt to beg. It works, mostly, though he’s constantly nervous that his son will go hungry, and he’s far more preoccupied with this particular fear than the more abstract idea of a plague.
They wander together, father and son, and today they’re at the river. Cringe is fascinated by the water, pawing at it with one small hoof, and Rapt watches vigilantly. The sun’s out, today, and it’s quite lovely, and for a time he forgets the world is wrought with sickness, only stares at his impossible son.