She catches him frowning at their daughter sometime between contractions, starts to wonder if maybe he would have rather she kept this from him. Kept the secret of their children to herself so that he could be happy with her sister, could belong wholly to his family without this mess on the side. He’s even stern when he approaches the small blue filly, breathing the scent of her skin in and then exhaling it hard like it’s burned his nose on it. But he curls with her anyway, settles his beautiful body down beside her so that she can be protected and warm, tugs her in close so that their girl burrows into him, exploring his body with a soft kind of wonder.
Her nose pokes at the ridges of bone, snuffles softly at the bitter, metallic tang of blood she’s surely discovered against the night and white of his skin. Then she finds the patch of stars buried against the corner of his mouth and she nuzzles it so insistently, that tiny dark tail flapping softly behind her.
Luster wishes she could watch them forever, even in these strange little fragments she’s stealing between contractions, but so soon she finds she must push again, finds their second is ready to join them. She groans, the sweat dappling her body so dark and deep it is like oceans have opened up across the softer blue. Her legs kick, rigid and reaching and drawing little furrows in the grass as her muscles contract and she pushes with everything she has left. She tries not to pant, tries not to cry out among these grunted efforts, but she is so exhausted, so spent.
She doesn’t make a conscious decision to do so, in fact had quietly told herself to leave the man alone, to let him love from a distance if that was what he preferred - and to just love them, not her, never her anymore. But she is so weak with wanting him, with loving him, and even with those quiet brown eyes pinched shut, she knows she is reaching for him as her head stretches rigidly in the grass, braced against a contraction that has brought her to the pinnacle of pain and so much pressure again. She heaves another groan, pushes hard, and is rewarded as a second damp bundle slides into the grass beside them.
There’s a beat where she can’t move, where her eyes don’t want to open and her muscles won’t respond to the urging of her mind, and she feels like she might sleep forever until all those dead stars have flung themselves from the sky. But it’s only a beat, only a second, and then she’s forcing her body to obey the heart that is so ready to meet their second child. She curls around him, the motion bringing her closer to Dovev and their beautiful little girl who at some point must’ve half-fallen asleep against the warmth of her father. But Luster only minds them for the briefest instant, only basks in that warmth for a fraction of a second, and then she’s cleaning the damp and birth from the emerging body of a small colt.
She is in love at once, crooning softly at the near-black shade of blue that stretches across his skin, dark like steel and so beautiful. The color is interrupted here and there with irregular shapes of white and spatterings of the celestial markings he must have inherited from his father. She cleans his ears and his face, washes around eyes that are so unmistakably brown and beautiful like her own, and it feels as though her heart has never ached so deeply in her chest. “I love you, baby.” She murmurs so softly against his ear, memorizing the way he feels so soft and warm beneath the white of her wandering lips.
She stays like that as long as she can, curled in a stardust dark with part of her family, wishing Merry were here too to share in this with her. He was her first, after all, hers in every way that mattered. But eventually she has to stand, has to use those weary legs so that their children can nurse, take what they need to be so strong and healthy. She kisses the boy again, drags her nose along his neck to breathe in that amazing smell, and then she’s rising with a soft, pained groan, closing her eyes beneath a furrowed brow until she feels steady enough to open them again. Her lips drop to the boys back, leave a trail of soft kisses along each vertebrae of that impossibly small spine. “Come on, baby, let’s try out those beautiful legs.” It doesn’t matter to her that the words hold no meaning to them yet, that all they will understand is the soft crooning of her gentle tone. It is enough to speak to them anyway, love them aloud, finally, forever.
Her lips move to his legs, stroke the soft, clean skin with a sweep of her nose, lingering with a smile over the stars that creep up over him. “He looks so much like you.” She breathes, aches, realizes a second later she’s said it aloud. Her eyes lift to find Dovev’s face, her expression suddenly quieter, a subtle ache that maybe he won’t remember how to recognize after so long. And then, hesitantly. “I’m glad it was you.” She whispers, pauses, looks from their son to their daughter who is now busy trying to untangle her legs and stand, leaned in so safely against her daddy. “I don’t understand why it happened, or how it’s even possible, but i’m glad it was you.”
