It does not happen in a single moment.
He does not come to the stunning realization all at once.
It is the way she refuses to fade at her edges.
It is how completely he loses himself in the heat and the weight and undeniable life of her.
It is the way her barrel swells to accommodate the life growing inside of it.
He wakes sometime in the night in the early days of fall. He touches his lips to her chest to feel her heartbeat and then to the swell of her stomach to feel the flutter of life there, too. He smiles and heaves a relieved sigh as he settles back against her, whispers, ‘you’re real’ and then falls easy back into a dreamless sleep.
They are inseparable. He ignores the hollow cries of that bastard heart because he’s finally made his way home to her. This is where he belongs and he cannot help but feel as if they don’t have much time left. (She will not last forever, will she? Despite how desperately he wishes she could).
It is not panic he feels when the first of her contractions tear through her, take her to her knees, but it’s something close. It tightens a vise around his throat and he murmurs sweet nothings into the shell of her ear when, despite the frigid temperature, she begins to sweat.
The first filly arrives without complication. Wings. Confusion darkens his brow but he lends no voice to it, simply fashions up a smile.
He is torn between offering Plumeria support and attempting to provide the first filly warmth. He drops his head, huffs hot air across the filly’s spine as Plumeria struggles. His breath comes in heaving gasps as he watches her groan and strain and war against nature and her body. He is consumed with abject terror but he does not draw his mouth away from their winged daughter.
And then there is absolute stillness. A second daughter. The two of them identical save for the first one’s wings, folded tightly around her as if they might offer her some semblance of warmth. All four of them tremble. The fillies with cold, Plumeria with exhaustion, and Jarris with panic.
He goes to her, finally. Presses his forehead against her shoulder as if to help prop her up. “They are,” he says and then, “are you all right?” He lifts his head then to kiss her sweat-slick neck.
