[private] Out with the golden we sew // Rapt

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever She goes, he follows. From this world to the next, except there’s nothing magical about the world, it’s the same as ever. Except then there’s a shifting, his body changing, warping. Anatomy upended, stomach stretching grotesquely as the child is shifted from her body to his, taken apart and put back together inside him. It hurts, the change – his body no longer his, changed and stolen by the impossible child, crushing his organs, dragging him down. The contraction hits then, following the child, nature eager to deliver the baby even in the most unnatural of circumstances. He moans – pain has never mattered to him, but this pain is so bone deep, begot in the most inward, private places of him. His own body, changed, hurting, betraying – The urge to push overwhelms him, and he bears down on his strange, warped stomach. Dirt sticks to his sweaty skin, mottling him. He cries out again, feeling the child inside him, the strange inner pressure of its body against his. (At some point he wakes, but he doesn’t know he wakes. The remnants of the dream remain, his body changed. Not for long – but enough. Enough to see it through.) He obeys the urges, pushes again and again and again and his muscle tremble, exhausted, and then the sensation changes as the child slides from him. It’s a boy, he notes, as the child breaks through the sac. A son, gold and white, a perfect mix of them. He’s suddenly aware he’s crying. Still prone on the grass, he looks for her, to make sure she’s all right. “Kagerus,” he says, soft, “we have a son.” rapt caius x else