She is too exhausted to feel him moving closer, arcing like a star across the meadow, drenched in those pale, twinkling lights. Her sides heave so hard, her pulse a drumbeat in her ears, an ache against her sternum. But it is fear that steals her breath now, fear that if something happens, if something goes wrong and she can’t be there to protect her children, what would happen to them? She groans, scrapes her forelegs across the grass to draw long furrows of dark soil in the soft ground below like she’s trying to sit up - trying to stand and find Dovev or Kharon or Heartfire, trying to find someone who can keep them safe if she can’t.
But it’s just fear, just this isolation and dark and those cold, silver stars staring down at her making her feel this way.
She can’t rise anyway, can’t do anything but try not to push yet - except even that is failing her now. There is pressure where there hadn’t been before, pain unlike anything she has ever known and it drags shadows across her vision as her body contracts again, nose stretching out before her in the grass with another low groan.
And a nose, lips, pressed suddenly to the scar on her neck.
There is only one someone who would ever touch her there so fondly, only one man who would lay a kiss across that patch of bare, ruined skin. She lifts her head to find him, straining in the dark and with fear still bright in the edges of those wild brown eyes. “Dovev,” she says, some broken kind of whisper that is stolen away in another groan, “you made it.” She tries to reach up and touch those pale, perfect lips to the bone mask of his beautiful face. Notices the trickle of blood at the seam where it disappears into his skin, tries to draw her tongue over it to clean and soothe the brokenness like she had so many other times. So easy to fall into these old habits.
But he is too far away or she is too exhausted, and her head drops tiredly back to the ground, the mottled blue of her cheek finding relief in the coolness of the soft, dewey grass. The pillar of light falls apart above them, millions of swirling little firefly lights turned to dust and falling in a whirl down to where they are. They settle in a dome around them, settle against Dovev because they love him so - hide in his hair and slip into the porous surface of that beautiful bone armor. Less to maintain as she finally stops fighting and gives into the contractions tearing apart her insides.
She pushes, her hooves digging into the grass until it unearths the dark soil below, closes her eyes and grinds her cheek, too. Her sides are so dark with sweat, that perfect skin a blue so deep it is bruised, almost black. She isn’t sure how long this goes on, isn’t sure how much longer she can do this, but then suddenly the pain changes, the pressure easing as a small figure lands in the grass behind her.
She tries to stand, tries to move so she can curl around their girl, but she is so tired, so exhausted and there are still contractions rippling through her stomach. Still another perfect child to come. She manages to twist enough that she can just barely reach her, fights a little more until she is close enough to clean the birth from her delicate blue body. Her tongue is warm, moving in long sweeping strokes across a body that starts to fuss now, across little muscles that want to move and do and be. She is so perfect, so perfect, and Luster feels an ache in her chest when she sees the blue and white patterns stretched across her skin as the sac comes off.
But there is more, too. Dark eyes like her father, black and beautiful like velvet, like an endless night sky with all these lights reflected there. She tips her unsteady face up at mom first, blinks like she isn’t entirely sure how to make sense of all this. Of this sudden new world. Then she’s lifting her face up to find her father, getting a little steadier where she lays, blinking less with those beautiful eyes. She is transfixed though, watching him with an air of impossible curiosity. Then the light around them seems to coalesce against her skin, drawing seamlessly together until the shapes they create across her body are undeniably like the bone plates on Dovev. A face plate appears and then fades, same with her shoulders and her ribs, the top of her slender spine. And then she is just dark again, attention shifting to look up at the flickering lights around them as Luster continues to clean and warm her and draw her as close as she can between contractions that are already trying to lay her flat on the ground. “It would seem that she takes after you.” Luster says so softly, pausing only for a moment to lift her beautiful, love-filled face to Dov. Then she tenses, huffs hard as another contraction rolls her from her belly to her side again, so careful to fight her way back from their beautiful daughter so she doesn’t accidentally strike her with a hoof. “Keep her warm, Dovev, keep our girl safe.” A groaned murmur as she closes her eyes again, body rigid and wanting to push.
