She doesn’t feel him lingering behind her during the birth. For once, his presence isn’t like her own heartbeat, obvious and sustaining. Worry hides everything from her, takes away her joy and revels in the new lines creasing her tired face. Because as she looks at the foal - her daughter - she seems to look through it at first. She sees, not the angelic face of an innocent taking its first gulp of mountain air, but a sinewy, raw tangle of limbs and hair. She sees that there will be no normalcy for such a child, no sense of belonging in a world full of the otherwise whole and beautiful. She sees all the mockery and disgust and isolation. She sees that the world is a cruel beast that rips apart and maims little girls, and that there is no way to combat it.
It is not fair.
She is powerless.
More than anything, she finds fault with herself. Life or death had swung like a pendulum above the undead filly’s ears, and when she pulled her head down to clean the girl, she had also pulled down death. Even having chosen life, she is filled with a sense of dread. What kind of a mother lets something like this live? What sort of woman puts their own selfish need for a miracle above their better senses?
But the hope swirling in her breast is like a light slow to die out.
Talulah remembers how it felt to tell the truth; she remembers cutting the tethers from her heels and feeling lifted, free – as if the rules of gravity had no hold on her any longer. The truth is that she loves this child. She loves that Tiphon had found his home with her again, that their souls had sparked at the welcome sight of each other’s. She loves that they had bared themselves before entwining again, silver meeting gold, and made another walking reminder of their adoration. How could she end their newest child’s life for its differences, for its potential to be mocked and prodded, before it has had a chance? The monster would then be found in her own reflection, not staring back at her from the place she’s just entered the world.
Her guardian comes then. He is like the sun after a storm that only she had been caught in. And one look into his worried, metallic eyes tells her that she will keep one secret from him to the grave. She will tell him all the rest (the way that Jason had been another kind of angel, how she had tasted the white-hot flames on her lips and craved the afterburn), but not this. Not that she had almost ended his daughter out of pity and revulsion. As if he can read her thoughts, she turns from holding his gaze and leans her head against his leg.
“Tiphon.” The undead-girl-with-no-name watches them watch her, her golden eyes understanding more of what they see each passing moment. Talulah can see that she is not so different from her other children, apart from the flesh peeling off of her in strips like an accordion. She wants to learn and breath and feel like the rest of them; she is living, even if she looks one step from the grave. The porcelain stallion’s words drop like a lead weight in Talulah’s ears. “Like your father…” she repeats, like the family you refused to tell me about all these years. For a moment, she wants to be angry. Because maybe if she’d known, maybe if he’d let her in all those decades ago, this wouldn’t have happened. They could be together still, but they wouldn’t have had another child. Maybe they had been lucky with Ramiel. Maybe their luck has run out.
But it is no good now. He knows it as much as she does, and when he apologizes, she cuts him off with a shake of her head. She can feel his muzzle sliding along her smooth neck at the sudden motion. “She’s special – a miracle.” The metal-mare looks from Tiphon to their zombie daughter, a fire igniting in her stare. She must believe it – they all must for this to work. The girl calls herself a monster and it nearly breaks her heart all over again. “You are a miracle.” How else could someone live with such deformities? How could someone survive in such a state of gore and not be in pain? But there is one thing she cannot do. “Please,” she looks to him, her eyes more desperate and lost when the filly can’t see. “She needs a name.” What do you call a monst-- a miracle? What kind of name suits such a girl?
t a l u l a h
metal woman of the dale
ooc: Angst-fest, party of 3!
