01-27-2019, 11:26 PM
The pain in her body is what tells her it is time, but this intangible pull towards the Volcanic lands of Tephra makes less sense to her. It is not home like the forests of Taiga are, it lacks the trees she loves, the hideaway places of a world made so lush in its rebirth. Instead it is bitter and acrid, humid in a way that immediately coats her skin in sweat, leaving patches a shade of wet pearl in the glittering white of her fur.
Another contraction ripples through her body and she groans, legs nearly buckling beneath her with exhaustion despite that the hardest part is yet to come. This pregnancy has not been easy, the child so enormous inside her, and no family or father to whisper away the fears of being a mother. This never would have been her choice, to bring new life into a world broken by plague, outlined in sick and blood and loss. She isn’t sure she would have chosen this in any world, chosen to be a mother when she knew so little about family, about raising a malleable mind. But certainly never like this.
She makes it to a place on the easternmost side of the territory, finding a small chain of hills and ridges cut through the grass that she can weather in. Her body trembles, sides heaving and flanks soaked, and it is only as she goes to lie down beside the vast stone architecture that she notices there is cool air breezing at her from somewhere nearby. Clenching her teeth, she noses into the underbrush at the base of the stone hills, following a scent of cool, stale air until, quite suddenly, it opens to a slit in the side of the stone. She hesitates, her muscles tightening with another contraction, but the need to be hidden, to keep her unborn child safe and away from predators outweighs the worry she feels about this strange, stone den.
The stone and dirt brush against her sides as she pushes in through the crevice, finding herself suddenly in a shallow stone cavern filled with soft, glowing light. It pools in the ceiling and in some of the hollows along the walls, casts long shadows across a stone and moss floor, and, though she does not notice it, another long shadow across the narrow mouth of a second chamber at the back of the cave.
She lowers herself to the ground with a long, low groan, landing heavily as her trembling limbs give out beneath her. Her nose lowers, settling against the coolness of the stone floor when, after a few more contractions, she finds herself to exhausted to lift it again. A final contraction comes, lays her out flat on her side as she groans against the blinding pain, feels the edges of her vision blur and then darken until all she knows is the strange way fear and relief can come together in this moment as she slips into unconsciousness.
Another contraction ripples through her body and she groans, legs nearly buckling beneath her with exhaustion despite that the hardest part is yet to come. This pregnancy has not been easy, the child so enormous inside her, and no family or father to whisper away the fears of being a mother. This never would have been her choice, to bring new life into a world broken by plague, outlined in sick and blood and loss. She isn’t sure she would have chosen this in any world, chosen to be a mother when she knew so little about family, about raising a malleable mind. But certainly never like this.
She makes it to a place on the easternmost side of the territory, finding a small chain of hills and ridges cut through the grass that she can weather in. Her body trembles, sides heaving and flanks soaked, and it is only as she goes to lie down beside the vast stone architecture that she notices there is cool air breezing at her from somewhere nearby. Clenching her teeth, she noses into the underbrush at the base of the stone hills, following a scent of cool, stale air until, quite suddenly, it opens to a slit in the side of the stone. She hesitates, her muscles tightening with another contraction, but the need to be hidden, to keep her unborn child safe and away from predators outweighs the worry she feels about this strange, stone den.
The stone and dirt brush against her sides as she pushes in through the crevice, finding herself suddenly in a shallow stone cavern filled with soft, glowing light. It pools in the ceiling and in some of the hollows along the walls, casts long shadows across a stone and moss floor, and, though she does not notice it, another long shadow across the narrow mouth of a second chamber at the back of the cave.
She lowers herself to the ground with a long, low groan, landing heavily as her trembling limbs give out beneath her. Her nose lowers, settling against the coolness of the stone floor when, after a few more contractions, she finds herself to exhausted to lift it again. A final contraction comes, lays her out flat on her side as she groans against the blinding pain, feels the edges of her vision blur and then darken until all she knows is the strange way fear and relief can come together in this moment as she slips into unconsciousness.