for every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable
in every lost soul, the bones of a miracle
Ophanim will no longer be a prisoner of Loess now that Castile has ousted the Hellhound from Sylva. She is eager to see him returned to his home well and whole but waits a few days after the news reaches her to go and find him. He has his own family who will be waiting and though she has been lover to both he and Starsin she will not encroach on their reunion. She has not seen either of them in the time between those separate trysts and the haloed stallion has no idea she carries his child.
It surprises her that she wants him to know. She considers herself parent enough for her children, but they also have Litotes for a father and he is a fine one. Ivar never received news of Valek, and with the absence as yet of any Kelpie traits in the boy she is not sure that sire would be interested anyway. She has no reason to believe Ophanim will be pleased with this child but instinct often tells a woman things that experience will not.
The winter morning she had set aside to visit Loess happens to be the same morning that her youngest child has selected for its arrival. Kensa is laboring before daybreak, and it is the earliest in the year she has ever gone into parturition. Even in her meadow the snow is drifted and deep, a cutting early morning wind chilling her down to the bone.
This pregnancy has been different, even little Kelynen had been riotous in her belly, kicking and rolling until he ran out of room. The babe arriving today has never been as excitable. Not for the first time the chestnut wonders about its well being. Kensa makes a sudden decision to leave Hyaline, to escape the snow in the hopes that the land to the west of her mountain range is just a little warmer.
It is a good thing she does not select another, further place.
Teleporting through freezing water in the early stages of labor is exhausting. She chose a salty hot spring for her arrival point but it is still winter and the water that lingers on her skin chills immediately. She doesn’t call for anyone, she does not desire her voice to be recognized or her summons answered by Starsin, Castile or god forbid Brigade. So she selects a place beneath a granite outcropping where the stone shelters her from the wind and breaks the cold. It is there she brings her second daughter into the world. A chestnut like her, marked in rosy gold, and as she cleans the small girl, the same mauve brindling her father had worn the day they had come together. “Well there’s no doubt, pretty one.” She whispers with a laugh, breathing warmth onto the small face.
@[Ophanim] @[Affirmative]
