"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
07-29-2018, 02:27 PM (This post was last modified: 07-29-2018, 02:28 PM by Solace.)
Solace
. . .
Soft pre-dawn twilight has begun to play over the curves and cliffs of Hyaline. It was the time of day when the land lay hushed, sleepy, and coated in dew. It was the time of day when Solace woke to shake the exciting dreams from her mind and graze before there was enough light to set out for her morning patrol. Dawn flooded the rest of Beqanna an hour or two before the first rays could peak over Hyaline's protective ring of mountains to warm the lake shore.
But Solace had no intention of patrolling today - that task had fallen by the wayside for months. Today, rising from her bed of soft grass is enough of a challenge.
"I swear," the gold splashed mare grips, even a smile threatens to ruin the severity of her tone. "That will be the last time a dick gets anywhere near me in this world or the other."
But as Kagerus reaches out to help her rise she lets her weight lean against her mate, pressing in to drawn her scent like across her tongue.
The hulking form of Solace + Three ascends the craggy mountainside with Kagerus by her side. Her breath comes ragged, even as she moves with the speed of an ancient glacier. Should have done this day ago, she growls internally - but the sparkling lake and heavy wisteria blossoms had been to magnificent to leave.
Finally, the need to deliver drives The soon to be mother down, and she does not fight it. In a sheltered grove of red maples, Solace rests with her neck outstretched and the mountain of her barrel protruding skyward. In this break between contractions she breaths easily, soaking in Kagerus' excitement while she can, and enjoying the fond touches the other mare rains on her. But it is not long before her womb is shifting again. "They are fighting each other already," she states as her teeth clench and nostrils flair. "Who do you think will be first?" She asks as if they had any say in the matter - she couldn't be sure if it is her body seeking to press the triplets out into the world or the children trying to beat each other into the dappled gold light of morning.
A new sensation grips her, a light suction and a feeling of loss and relief simultaneously. A sharp breath whistles between her teeth as her pale head lifts from the earth.
Beside Solace, a small, damp filly lies with eyes squeezed shut and head bobbing. A splash of rich burgundy covers her topline, and for pure-white legs lay folded below her. Speechless, Solace watches the girl before uttering her name as if she could affirm who she was.
"Warlight?" she whispers, as she brings her muzzle to the filly's cheek. But the moment is brief, for the brother's too demand their freedom and their time has come.
@[Kagerus] @[Kuna] @[Radar] @[Velk] anyone is welcome
She is sleeping in her dark world of liquid warmth and muted sounds - safe nestled among her brothers. She does not know, yet, that they are not one, that they will ever be anything other than one.
But she had seen others in her sleep. These others have come to visit them in the strange world of dreams, and in that world, Warlight was more than a folded bud in her mother's womb. She had stood, side by side by side with her brothers and looked into the glowing faces of their mothers.
She thinks of this place now - the place out there that her mothers have shown her - and when she thinks of it in her liquid-time dream state, she yearns for it.
She reaches for it as her world contracts around her, and as she reaches she assumes they all reach.
And for the first time in her short life, Warlight finds herself somewhere else. She finds that she has left them - two-thirds of herself - back there and that this would send a shock of brightness into her mind.
When finally she does blink open her eyes she sees the face of the creature who had visited her in their dreams and she is not afraid. She looks right, and there is the other face which she knows - the face with the blue eyes and life-giving milk.
But she wishes to know where her brothers are.
Snuffling she turns in search of them a small, almost-whinny leaving her lips.
OOC: In case it isn't clear (very likely) Warlight has dream teleportation and teleported herself out beside Solace instead of waiting to be born
and in my dreams, i kissed your lips a thousand times
We've known them for months, our children - perhaps we've dreamt them up to some degree, but the part of me that is able to sense the consciousness of those inside of my dreams knows that we haven't dreamt them up at all. Three small lights shine every night as I lay asleep, glowing their hope into their mother's lives with all the ferocity of the sun.
Of course, they glowed other things into their mother's - or rather, their one mother. It's earlier dawn when the contractions hit Solace, pain blossoming through her fat little frame. The patter of my heart leaves my head feeling almost detached from my body, and I have to stop myself from uttering a nonsensical squeal at the excitement that jitters me so. Instead, I focus my energy on my wife, laughing at her little comment - "I promise that it won't be, with the way it makes your toes curl," - and urging her forward. Together, we make our way up the mountainside: slowly, perhaps, but fast enough that we needn't fear for the safety of our arriving triplets.
The labour is as labour will be, but it's different still. It's different from Rapt's labour with Abysm, so alien and gut-wrenching; and it's different than Solace's with the twins, where I felt timid and grateful. No, this time I am proud in my full ownership of this moment, in my place: although I am yet again not a Mother in the natural sense, but a Father, I accept it. Instead of letting it be the demon's voice within my skull, I allow it a different sort of power over me: one of love, and one of gratitude.
"You've got this Sol, just one more push."
But, as it turns out, I needn't've said anything at all; for there beside her sweat-soaked figure, a little bay filly suddenly appears. Her colour is an echo of both mine and her grandfather's, and her blinking eyes find me with a god-given wisdom that leaves me breathless. Solace breathes her name - the name we decided upon for our daughter many months ago - and I do too, my nutmeg eyes huge as if to open them wider would be to prolong this moment forever.
But time waits for no man, and another contraction hits the hard working mother. Side-stepping, I kneel down and begin cleaning Warlight of placenta, eyes never leaving Solace. There are two more babes to be squeezed from her womb, though she has lucked out by the magicks of our daughter.
When the next arrives, it is I to breathe his name, tears swarming in the depths of my eyes as the miracle of our triplets slowly becomes a reality.
The warmth was dream-like; but so, too, was everything about them.
Brother and sister, mother and mother: the individuals who would come to form his very being. He'd heard their voices upon so many occasions, and their bodies were almost his own. The grace of their unity created a calm demeanor in the unborn son, stilling his growing legs to the gratefulness of his mother. Warlight often dictated the arrangement of their sacs, and Sviko - he squirmed with the business of any youngest brother.
But Rhaegor; he sat in stillness, content to be closer to those he loved than he ever would be again in his life.
And that life...
It began now.
---
The coolness hit him abruptly, shattering perhaps for the first time his stoicism. An audio flutter of breath clears his nostrils of snot and debris, but no other sound accompanied his birth. Instead, he felt himself gently moved aside as the third impatiently kicked and turned in his angst to be with his siblings again; looking up, the golden son saw the face of his sire.
A smile widens his lip in unequivocal joy; none could argue the fact of his expression in that moment. Mother; Mother; Sister; and, turning, he watched with one nutmeg eye and one cerulean, to watch the moment of the last individual's arrival:
Do you believe you're missin' out?
That everything good is happening somewhere else?
Though the trek up the mountainside is labourous, I make it anyway: trailing yards behind my daughter and her wife, eager to meet the my grandchildren and to know their precious faces. Precious, as Kagerus's was; as Bergamot's was.
I have always had a soft spot for children.
I find myself in the doorway of their grotto just as the third child is arriving; and as his mother's look between themselves with a worry in their eyes as to just what they will do to care for all three at once during these first critical minutes, I step inside, tears adorning my high cheekbones.
I go to the middle child, the one with calm eyes and a beaming smile that leaves my stomach flipped. He is the same colour, the same disposition, the same: he is Rhaego reborn, my father in a new life's body. Chuckling airily in the fragile bones of my chest, I lean down, beginning to groom his wet, shaking hide.
"They are so beautiful," I murmur, glancing first to Solace, and then for a more prolonged period, to Kagerus. "Thank you, for honouring my father's memory."
my favorite color is you
you're vibrating out my frequencies.
While their days of growth are serene, they also become increasingly cramped. Legs push against bellies and heads press against rib-cages. The triplets spend their final few days in an endless tumble of placenta and almost-finished limbs. They will only be this close together in rare moments from this point on — perhaps in a warm heap beneath their mothers’ feet, perhaps in a bitter argument over something meaningless. None of it will come close to this forced intimacy however, where they grow and stretch around the bodies of one another and press against the swollenness of their mother’s body.
He is the last to slip away from their first home. Warlight had briskly swept herself away from their closeness with her own doings, avoiding the pressure of the birthing canal and the forceful, regular motions of the contractions. Rhaegor had dared himself into perfect position with those slow, purposeful movements — a serious stillness allowing the waves of labor to move him into the world of bright life.
Sviko spends a few extra minutes curled into his corner of the womb, nestled snugly against his mother’s spine where she’s surely endured back pains from his heavy presence. When his lanky body finally flows easily with the direction of the contractions, the warm places of his siblings are dreadfully empty. So too, when he slips from his mother and then struggles against the fluid surrounding him, is the world dreadfully empty compared to his original home.
The light is bright against his pale blue eyes when he first opens them. When the pain fades, the first thing his gaze lands on among the haze is the nutmeg eyes set into a slender bay-and-white face. She’s familiar to him; a smooth face among the wonderful mess of his growing, childish dreams. The gold-splashed boy’s tiny pink nostrils quiver in her direction, a warm greeting already in the back of his throat.
There are others there — his sister and brother, both familiar in their scents and shapes, his other mother, still recovering from the lengthy process of delivery, and an unfamiliar stallion, already working away the dampness of his brother — and Sviko looks them over with an expression of soft interest in his baby-blue eyes.
The dream-manipulator has kept himself apart from them.
He has his reasons and his scant familial ties do little to keep him tethered there. If the leash that could him about was his father than he’d remain. But more often than not, Abysm slips the collar of his mother’s watch.
Besides, she’s had her queenly lover’s twins to raise and now this - a trio of brats he’d probably come to adore in his own time just not right now as he hovers on the cusp of adulthood and feels more keenly the sting of his mother’s betrayal with the passing of each day.
So he comes and goes long before the last days before their impending arrival. Spends more of his time in the land of dreams far beyond even the reach of Kagerus with whom he shares the dream manipulation trait. He tends to manipulate himself into places she doesn’t bother to reach. Places that hold replacements for her lack of love that has burrowed into him like a killing worm.
Oh sure, he knew that as her first-made (not born, no - not from those childless thighs) that he was loved but her love came in waves. Sometimes it crashed over him but less and less as her sea of love swallowed up others. Which at first he did not mind until less and less attention was paid to him and he spent more time walking in dreams.
That’s where he met—
No, he dares not think of that name or face here. Not as he descends into the company of the two mothers and their triplets and some old stallion he’s never met.
These three bear a portion of his blood and he noses each of their tender newborn heads for one minute at a time. Abysm then turns hollowed our eyes to the two mothers and emotionlessly congratulates them, “They’re beautiful, of course.” How could those children be anything but? Neither queen was horrendous to look at in their own right so it is natural their triplets would be some blend of beautiful at birth.
He then steps back, not quite sure why he remains and thinking of somewhere else he’d rather be (with someone else) as clouds of ponderous emotion move across his face.
The triplets refuse to be separated for long, and soon it is finished. Relief floods Solace as Rhaegor and Sviko draw their first breath, and all three children prove to be healthy for now. Her body aches as she adjusts to better reach them all, but the pain is secondary to her delight. She fights the instinct to stand, deciding instead to watch as each child takes in the strange world they find themselves in.
Six eyes - round, curious, and every shade blue between them - search each new face. The flicker of recognition in their expressions is recognizable as they take in the faces of their family members. "Hello, little princes," she whispers into space between them, knowing that their delicate ears will pick up her words even if the others can't. The young mother returns any affection she may receive and then lays back to observe her children's first interactions with the other relatives gathered.
Her cerulean gaze lingers on her wife, a different kind of pride filling every crack in her exhausted body. When Kavi moves forward to spend his moment with his grandchildren solace reaches for the soothing touch of her mate.
"I could sleep for days," she laughs softly into Kag's ear, nipping at the crease with practiced accuracy. But Kavi's light laugh brings her back to the present and she turns to meet the wise eyes of her children's grandfather.
"Kavi," her voice is tired but genuinely tender, "thank you."
Then Abysm is stepping forward. The young stallion who she struggles to neatly quantify, a beautiful creature who remains a mystery. He is not her child, but the offspring of her mate. He is not her subject, and there is wildness which keeps him distant.
Yet she is drawn to him, as she was so often drawn to those who were undecipherable, but the boy she had known was becoming a stallion who was a stranger to her.
"Abysm," she calls gently as the handsome youth strides forward and Kavi turns to Kagerus. Her tone is familiar as she reaches for any bond they may have fused in his childhood. "Your a big brother now," she suggests mildly, tempered and far-off as her body reminds her of its recent ordeal, but hoping that he can sense the hope she hangs on those words - hope that he will find his place among them.
Her searching is quickly rewarded, and Warlight finds her first brother. She moves her twiggy frame to fit alongside his own, only then relaxing enough to continue her investigation of the adults who surround them. She sniffs her mothers ivory sides, still upturned and contracting with the force of labor, before reaching out to do the same to Kagerus.
Then the third arrives and she gives another half-formed nicker to let him know they are all together again. She lurches forward in an attempt to find her feet, stirred by the same instincts which had led her out of the womb, but this time she is not as successful. Landing on her rump, the little bay folds back into her brothers side.
Another large creature is steeping forward to meet them and she is content to be still. Her inky, blue-black eyes search the face of the palomino who presses his nose to hers, and she smiles at the contact.
With a sharp bob of her head she looks back to her brothers.
and in my dreams, i kissed your lips a thousand times
And in the wild moments after Solace's miraculous birthing, other come to join our celebration. They barely fit in our little grotto, bodies against bodies in a way that only some can be. Some in the room are ancient (my father is at least seventy years old) and some are less than three minutes of age, while others fall more inbetween: I at around eighteen, Solace near eight, and Abysm near three or four. So many ages to keep track of, but of course, our ages are not what I'm concerned about; in fact, I'm concerned about very little. I am surrounded by family; old, young, broody and calm alike.
"I wouldn't have it any other way," I rasp to my father, smiling tearfully towards him. He's always, always been there for me; I grew up without a mother. My heart squeezes at the thought, eyes turning to Abysm as I try to find a connection there. He's been so distant, so hurt; and it's my fault. And I'm sure that, to him, it feels like it's my fault I can't pay more attention to him. But with six kids between Solace and I now... It's a lot, and I fear my best will never be enough because of how our relationship began. With my abandonment of him.
But it won't happen again; although it might feel like spite to my eldest, it is because of him and for him that I will pour all of my love into my triplets.
Stepping away from Rhaegor, I press a kiss first to my father's cheek, and then I look to Abysm. My antlered head lowers in submission and respect, and if he will allow it, I step into him, too. The light champagne of his coat reminds me momentarily of his father; but as I breathe in his scent, I remember that he is mine too, and that in every way, no matter how weird, he too belongs right here with us.
Solace's gentle call brings me back to her side immediately, and I lean to catch her whispers and the soft bite of her teeth along my ear. I shiver and smile, wuffing warm air over her tired eyes in silent appreciation of the sacrifice she has made for her family, knowing that if I ever did, I would die.
Allowing the warm, full energy of our family to overcome my logical thought processes, I kneel down next to our youngest, setting to the cleaning of his creamy little mane. "Hello, Sviko..."
![[Image: kag]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/2e8039018ce4dff6112c167ec23e886a/tumblr_p72zjit7wC1s5a0qvo1_100.png)
![[Image: rhae]](https://66.media.tumblr.com/c013fae479a9e0c775688ff921306b4e/tumblr_pivbqpgHuG1xsr748o1_250.png)
