"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
It was an attempt to fill a void, and already she is starting to regret it. It won’t be her first child, but she had little to do with the first one and she doesn’t know what to do with the second one. Her belly is swollen and walking is strangely laborious, nothing of her usual grace and careful precision. Now, every step is a job, a task, the pregnancy seemingly unending. She has no home and so she has ensconced herself in the forest, mourning the loss of her strange (and possible imaginary) quest-family as she faces this lonely life once more.
Part of her wants to go back to Aranea, to Magnus, to the other real friends she ever had; but she knows they aren’t even in Tephra anymore. If they had been in Tephra when she went looking, perhaps she would have had the strength to resist the call to dreaming that had led her into the stupid quest in the first place. (And oh, god, she misses him. Misses him like she imagines an amputee might miss a limb).
The baby had been an impulse idea – start a family to make up for all the families she has lose or never had. But the bigger it grows inside of her, the more she wonders if it will be enough – with no father in the picture, does it even count as a family?
It’s too late to change her mind. She knows these pains are labor.
At least this one is quick – the first had been a slow, (stupid slow), slow process. This one is an hour or so of pain and then – bam!- a kid. Another filly. Sloene cleans the girl carefully, removing all of the gunk and birth residue and then guiding the filly back to nurse, trying her best not to hypnotize the child into doing what she wants. The girl is pretty enough, a dark gray baby color that could shed out to a true black or into a gray like her dam, and she has Sloene’s gray eyes. Honestly, the little mare is glad the girl isn’t blue all over like her sire, though she still eyes the iridescent blue blaze on the kid’s head with some censure.
Sloene, a mother. And this time, she’s responsible for the kid and is supposed to keep it and raise it.
The lioness has taken control once again. Though she had spent more time around and near Longclaw, in his absence Marigold failed to stay in control. She honestly thought she was doing better, after all, Longclaws praise, attention, love and care was what she lived for. He makes her thrive, but his absence – he has duties too after all – is her biggest downfall too.
And the pregnancy hormones don’t really help either. In the first stages of her pregnancy she hadn’t really noticed it. The golden mare’s attention had been focussed on Longclaw, and his lessons, just as his military training. It had all started once she had started showing a slight rounding of her belly, which has been the first sign of the success of Longclaw’s seed. As if knowing it had changed everything, and made Marigold overreact to all sensations.
Opposite of what she’d thought, it is now proven that Marigold is yet to gain control over the lioness. The she-cat has still very much her own will, and intentions, and the most prominent thing on her feral mind is to keep her whelp safe and sound. Where Marigold thought of Tephra as safe, a place to belong and be protected, the lioness cared very little about the equine borders. It is how she’d ended up in the forest. Far from her natural habitat, but the vegetation and dark shadows make it easier to hide. From there it is easy to sneak and strike.
As she’s crouched down sneaking forward her belly slides across the ground. Her paws are carefully placed, all to make sure to move as soundlessly as possible. Meanwhile her dark eyes never stray away from her grey prey. Her stomach growls softly, only reaching her own ears, which in return twitch. No time to worry about that now, getting food to keep her whelp growing is her first priority.
And there is no better prey than one tired and slowed by a whelp of her own. The smell of labour, the blood, has lured her in. The scent is like a shining beacon showing her the way. The lioness does not think about orphaning a child, or taking a child from its mother. All she cared for was her own, nothing else matters. And thus she launces herself forward, growling loudly as her beak opens to show two lines of sharp teeth.
A beautiful face is a mute recommendation.
@[Devin]
Words for you, hopefully it will help a little with the muse! But no rush if not! <3
Labor is painful and messy and loud - and afterward, while she coaxes the foal into nursing, she's very distracted. Not that that's an excuse - she should have been on alert. If there wasn't a foal, she would have been paying much closer attention. She was raised better than this. But she didn't notice the lion's approach, and instinct is forced to take over as the cat flings itself out of the undergrowth. The grulla mare jumps forward between the cat and the filly, swinging her hindquarters towards the lioness and kicking out with a squeal.
Whether hooves meet flesh or not, Sloene spins around in front of the girl, wide silver eyes staring down at the tawny creature. In this breath, she has time to think; and lions are not native to this or any part of new Beqanna; this one might be a threat in this moment but somewhere inside, there is a horse. Maybe even someone she knows. It has been hard learning to master her own power - perhaps this stranger isn't in control of herself.
It takes a couple of harsh breaths, a moment of staring at each other, for Sloene to slide into the right frame of mind. The space between normal and magic, where her voice turns honeysuckle sweet and people start to do what she says. It's not foolproof, hypnotism, but it certainly has its advantages. "You don't want to do this," she says, putting as much power behind the command as she can muster. "You're not a hungry lion. You're a horse." Firm, even in her sweet voice, because she doesn't want to kill someone if she can help it, but something fierce inside says she might if this stranger takes another swipe at her foal.
