Anyone, birthing;

[Shiya]

Deep down all you want is love
The pure kind we all dream of

Is it fear, or anger, that spurs her to imprison herself within the trees? When Shiya looks around, she sees only the grotesque, blight-eaten trees towering above her. Their branches reach hungrily for her as she threads among their trunks, her stomach large and heavily pregnant. For days – or has it been weeks? – she has desperately clung onto the pregnancy as her thoughts whirled with what next to do. This child was to be a beautiful beginning, but instead, it has become a painful end.

Vulgaris wants her gone.
Their family, their love, has risen and fallen within the year.

She should be used to this. Shiya has only had poor hands dealt to her in life; this should be no different, and yet it stings the most.

A contraction stabs through her body, but she does not flinch. The pain is so familiar; it’s a reassurance, too, that she can still feel something in this cruel world. Her emerald eyes drift shut as she steadies her breathing before weaving around another trunk and settling down in a bed of pines. She can only hope that she is deep enough in the forest that he will not hunt her, or find her.

The delivery is quick, the contractions brief as she pushes the child into this god forsaken world. A boy, she observes when she shifts to look at the result of an eternity-long love. A frown creases her pretty face. ”I could spare us both and kill you,” she whispers sweetly to him as she traces the lines of his face and notes how he perfectly emulates their familial traits. As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, he is beautiful. He is everything she could want in a son, and yet, she forces herself to look away in fear that they’ve already been found. Such a cruel twist it would be even as her mind falls deeper into conflict with each labored breath. ”But you’ve done nothing wrong… Not yet.” Shiya knows that he will, that he will be another pulled thread, because she doesn’t deserve the finer things in life; she doesn’t deserve happiness.

With a low grunt, Shiya rises to her feet and turns to face the colt. Finally, she reaches to touch him and cradles his forehead with her scaled lips. ”You will bring heartache,” she mumbles with her eyes shut in fear of what is to come. She wonders how poorly their lives will play out, how destroyed their family already is. ”And you will be my Despair,” because she already misses the tenderness that Vulgaris once shared with her. Brief as it was, it gave her hope that maybe, just maybe, she could find love and joy.

How the world loves to tear her apart and deprive her.

Placing a tender kiss on his poll, Shiya steps forward to grant him access to nursing. As much as she wants to run – like she has with all her other children – the history of the boy’s conception roots her and bounds her to him. ”I will try to protect you,” but she doesn’t say from what, doesn’t admit that it’s his father from whom she wants to keep him. Perhaps they can find a home and build a life. Maybe she can lie to Vulgaris to keep their boy hidden.

Maybe.

SHIYA

But we cannot escape the past,
so you and I will never last

original html by Jassal

@[despair] @[Jassal]