02-16-2019, 12:46 PM
The wide swell of her belly bulges and stretches around the child preparing for birth. Ivar’s seen this before, the flurry of movement as the child turns about, but this child seems more active than most. At first he is pleased with himself – what a strong child he’s made! – and that pride only grows stronger when the bay mare refers to it as a them. Two children then, both of them active and lively despite the gauntness of their mother. Wishbone has given them her strength then, the piebald stallion realizes.
It’s a sacrifice that would never have occurred to Ivar, and one that he does not entirely understand. It’s certainly not one he’d have ever made himself.
Ivar follows Wishbone when she commands it without hesitation, but his pale brow is knitted with thought.
He longs for the water most in times like these, when the complex storm of emotions rises in threatening waves. In the water, he’d have slit her belly with glittering teeth, freed the children within and fed them on mother’s meat. Without emotion, the skeletal pregnant mare is nothing more than a tool, useful only in satisfying the kelpie’s needs. She’s not even kelpie herself, and the children she carries are unlikely to even be waterborn. A kelpie has no use for offspring that are unable to move freely in the sea and even less use for their mothers.
If I die, promise me you’ll protect them, she says, her stern face dappled by the shadows of the banyan.
Like all of his kind, the kelpie is bound to his word. Does she know this, he wonders as he meets her amber eyes, can Wishbone know what she is asking? They have kept their natures secret from Beqanna for over a decade, and with it the meaning that a promise holds for them. No, Ivar decides. She doesn’t. She can’t.
“I promise.” He answers. Reaching forward, the stallion tucks a strand of her lusterless mane behind one dark ear. There was no quaking of the world at the commitment, but as Ivar’s blue ear flicks back toward the sea for a moment, he imagines that its siren call is just a little quieter than it was before.
“Now relax.” The kelpie’s voice is calm even in the face of her severity. The jovial grin had faded at her declaration of the imminent arrival of their children, but there is something that is almost affectionate in the depths of his golden eyes. He’s not been out of the water quite long enough to feel it yet, but the hypnotic command that he presses into her cheek as he places a kiss there suggests that he nearly is. It’ll get easier, he tells her subconscious mind just before he pulls away, it isn’t so bad.
The kelpie can’t heal the plague that afflicts her or soothe the pain from the contractions that wrack her her body. He is helpless to do most anything. Taking away panic isn’t unfamiliar to the sapphire and gold stallion, he has pressed relaxation and fearlessness into dozens of minds. His victims die painlessly and without panic, and while Ivar wouldn’t (directly) be responsible for Wishbone’s death, the least he can do is make sure that it would not be a dishonorable one.
“You aren’t dying, anyway.” he adds with an attempt at a smile. “I won’t let you.”
@[Wishbone] <3
It’s a sacrifice that would never have occurred to Ivar, and one that he does not entirely understand. It’s certainly not one he’d have ever made himself.
Ivar follows Wishbone when she commands it without hesitation, but his pale brow is knitted with thought.
He longs for the water most in times like these, when the complex storm of emotions rises in threatening waves. In the water, he’d have slit her belly with glittering teeth, freed the children within and fed them on mother’s meat. Without emotion, the skeletal pregnant mare is nothing more than a tool, useful only in satisfying the kelpie’s needs. She’s not even kelpie herself, and the children she carries are unlikely to even be waterborn. A kelpie has no use for offspring that are unable to move freely in the sea and even less use for their mothers.
If I die, promise me you’ll protect them, she says, her stern face dappled by the shadows of the banyan.
Like all of his kind, the kelpie is bound to his word. Does she know this, he wonders as he meets her amber eyes, can Wishbone know what she is asking? They have kept their natures secret from Beqanna for over a decade, and with it the meaning that a promise holds for them. No, Ivar decides. She doesn’t. She can’t.
“I promise.” He answers. Reaching forward, the stallion tucks a strand of her lusterless mane behind one dark ear. There was no quaking of the world at the commitment, but as Ivar’s blue ear flicks back toward the sea for a moment, he imagines that its siren call is just a little quieter than it was before.
“Now relax.” The kelpie’s voice is calm even in the face of her severity. The jovial grin had faded at her declaration of the imminent arrival of their children, but there is something that is almost affectionate in the depths of his golden eyes. He’s not been out of the water quite long enough to feel it yet, but the hypnotic command that he presses into her cheek as he places a kiss there suggests that he nearly is. It’ll get easier, he tells her subconscious mind just before he pulls away, it isn’t so bad.
The kelpie can’t heal the plague that afflicts her or soothe the pain from the contractions that wrack her her body. He is helpless to do most anything. Taking away panic isn’t unfamiliar to the sapphire and gold stallion, he has pressed relaxation and fearlessness into dozens of minds. His victims die painlessly and without panic, and while Ivar wouldn’t (directly) be responsible for Wishbone’s death, the least he can do is make sure that it would not be a dishonorable one.
“You aren’t dying, anyway.” he adds with an attempt at a smile. “I won’t let you.”
@[Wishbone] <3