Many years have passed since the first day she stepped foot on Beqannian soil. She had been so lost back in those days, both physically and mentally. She had just run and run and run, away from her past, away from the heartache, away from the pain that she thought would never, ever subside.
Little did she know back then that she would be visited by a far greater, far intense pain in the future. Yet she does not run from this pain. Not this time. Rather, she embraces it wholeheartedly, with a love that she once thought could never again be challenged. For the pain is no longer emotional, but physical, revealing itself in small kicks within her belly highlighted by sudden cramps. They had begun not long ago as just once or twice a day, but in the preceding weeks, escaladed to an almost-constant level.
She had tried to walk off the pain, wandering and wandering and wandering, through forests and streams and valleys and beaches, but all to no avail. But today, she stops wandering, for the pain is too difficult to bear. She glances about, finding that she has wandered into a quiet section of an otherwise bustling meadow. Voices drift about, but she pays no heed to the distant murmurs. She finds instead a small babbling brook, comforted by the steady cadence of its water rolling over stones.
With a soft grunt, she lowers her steel-gray body to the grass nearby, careful not to place too much weight on her swollen belly in the process. And then she pushes, instinct taking over. She pushes and pushes and pushes with every ounce of strength her weakening body has.
And finally, hours later, she sighs a long, well-earned breath of relief. The pain is over.
Curiously she lifts her sweat-laden head, spying a dark form behind her still heaving hindquarters. Her eyes widen in shock.
She expects a child. That is for sure. But the child she sees takes her breath away. The child has wings! And the most stunning hair of white gold that she has ever seen. There’s no way such a creature came from her, she gasps… but the soreness in her body convinces her otherwise.
“Louisiane,” she coos, reaching her muzzle out to caress her daughter. With a soft grunt, she turns her body and guides the newborn to nurse.
As the filly suckles, she is hesitant to take her eyes off the form, lest it vanish into nothing but a distant daydream. But she does, for one reason only: to give a weak but adamant bleating cry to the nearby forest. “Demian,” she manages to cry out. “Our daughter is beautiful.”
She has no clue whether the gentle stallion is nearby, but she tries regardless. To her, he had since transformed from the regal but strange recruiter she first met in the field to now mean so much more.
chalmette
SHE EXHALES VANILLA LACE
@[demian]