rivers or veins; any

[brave]

can't tell if i've got rivers or veins
running under my skin

Immortal mother births immortal daughter.
During a rainstorm, which is why the medicine hat mare had sought out the home of the giant redwoods. Here, there was fog and damp but nothing like the rain that sluiced down her swollen sides as the foal kicked and turned inside, demanding release from her pent-up prison of flesh. The mare had known it would be a filly as she had always known with an innate sense the sex of each foal she bore. What she had not known, was that it would have eyes as blue as the sky instead of the familiar black of their bloodline.

Scalped gave birth to her daughter on the thick bed of pine needles beneath the boughs of a great big mothering redwood that kept the rain off her fur. She’d given birth in rain storms before but something told her not to with this child. It must have been something that Coyote had whispered in the old mare’s ear while in the form of a fly buzzing around her head that made her seek out this place instead of any other. So she’d laid down at the base of a giant redwood, grunted and strained and out slid the filly in a slick lifeless heap.

The mare tore the birth sac back from the nose with her blunt teeth. Swiped her tongue over the nostrils and face in quick mothering strokes that woke a sucking gasp of air from the little one. Cleaned the rest of the sac and fluids from her skin to reveal a palomino splash underneath all the birth-muck, as her tongue laved across the fur fuzzing it out and introducing life into those tender new muscles with each lick and small chew. Encouragement came from a bump of her nose to the small one’s rump and the foal rocked forward than back, like a misshapen canoe newly made and thrown to the mercy of the river.

Her knees crooked beneath her as she swayed and tried to pull those four tender hooves together to hoist herself upright. The curls of baby mane frizzed up and out, small dandelion colored puffballs that ran down the length of her neck with one tiny bob between her ears that would one day become a forelock. Finally, brain and hooves connected and she found herself at a new height, shock evident in the bright blue of her eyes as they met the proud black of her mother’s gaze. One puff of air blown against her face nearly sent her back down on her rump but somehow, she remained up but unsteady on her matchstick legs.

There was more encouragement from her mother. Touches of lips to hip and shoulder and back and face. Puffs of air blown onto her and sucked back in that took the sweet newborn scent of her with it. She made her first noise to indicate the gnawing pit in her belly to which the creature that she instinctively knew as her mother responded with an erstwhile bump of her nose to the foal’s head that turned it toward the mare’s pale sweat-damp flank to which a few pine needles had affixed themselves to. Persuaded that this is where the source of her nutrition lay, she turned and swayed and somehow made it the scant step or two to that flank that she poked about until pushing up and under it, bold in her acquisition of the milk-heavy teat.

She drank until her belly was full. Guzzled until the milk clung to whiskers and ran down her chin to stain her yellow breast just above the white that splashed it. Then she curled up to sleep at her mother’s front feet. Scalped, just as tired, stood vigil over her that night and all the nights thereafter. Their mornings and afternoons a pattern of nursing and exploration and their nights spent just like this, nursing then napping. But as it happens, the filly could stand it no longer and she longed for something to break the monotony of it all.

So Brave, being that she was just that - brave, went gallivanting off into the redwoods farther from her mother’s keen sight and side than she ever had.

brave