I’ll love you til the sun dies, Ether

[Briseis]

little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep,
little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories,
little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece

The first time she had felt what was now the familiar feeling of new life forming inside of her, she almost hadn’t dared to believe it. The idea that this was his baby was almost too good to be true, and she would be lying if she said she wasn’t completely elated at the idea. She loved Chryseis and Misfit, no matter how they had come to be, but there was something indescribable in knowing that this was a result of everything her and Ether had become.

Ever since their reconciliation, it was not often that she could be found away from his side, and now was no different. Even as the waves of pain coursed through her body, she stood alongside of him. The smoothness of her cheek lay pressed to his neck, as she closed her eyes and grit her teeth with each contraction that gripped her sides. When the intensity was finally too much, when she found herself having to fight to stand, she lowered herself to the ground with a heavy groan.

There is not the fear of the unknown such as when Chryseis had been born, and none of the emotional trauma that had surrounded Misfit’s conception and birth, but physically, this one was only marginally easier. There was something reassuring in knowing that Ether was there, even if she was too consumed by the task at hand to show it. She pushed and strained, her neck and flanks growing damp with her effort as she bit her lip against the cries of pain that built in her chest, with only a few strangled sounds emitted when it became truly unbearable.

It is with a final heave that the colt finally emerges, and for a moment she simply lays there, the ground torn from her struggle and her sides still panting as she fought to catch her breath. But the feel of the newborn shifting and moving stirs her to rise, dirt and debris clinging to her sides and mane as she stands on trembling legs. For just a moment, her eyes flicker to Ether’s face, and even through the exhaustion, there is something in her that glows when her lips brush across his cheek, before reaching down to tend to their newborn son.

She is surprised to find as she dries his small, shivering body that beneath the darkened dampness, his coat begins to lighten to the same roaned color as Chryseis. For a moment, she can feel her heart rise into her throat, because she knew it was impossible for this baby to belong to anyone except for Ether, even though she had expected him to be black. But when she looks once again to the colt’s face, and she finds herself getting lost in something about his eyes — not bright and yellow like his father’s, but still deep and soulful, like she could stare at them for eternity and still never find the bottom — she finds that all her doubts are erased. “What should we name him?” She asks quietly as the colt begins to attempt to get his spindly legs beneath him, her gaze tearing away from him only to look at Ether, and she feels as though her heart may explode at the sight of him and their new son, together. For the first time in her life, there was someone alongside of her that she loved just as much as the child she had just birthed, and she knows that she will never want it any other way.

BRISEIS

underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside,
I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind