She is alone when the first contractions come. But they come so soon that she does not believe them, does not worry as she should. She knows she is not due yet, that the life inside her could not possibly be finished growing. So she does not look for Nightlock or any of their children, does not think there is a reason to seek help until it is suddenly too late to do so. She expects this pain to disappear again, to stop and be forgotten by the time her husband returns home again. But these contractions do not relent, instead they twine like fingers in her belly and squeeze until she is kneeling and gasping in the sand.
The children come quickly, too soon and too fast, so terrifyingly small. She is scared to look and see if they breathe, scared that when she reaches out to press her nose to such bright chestnut skin it will be cool and still and empty. The first is a girl, and she is so beautiful. Bright chestnut skin and splashes of white just like her mama, even a small smudge of it on the pink of her nose. But she is most beautiful when she opens those luminous eyes and Wonder finds blessed life and a shade of seagreen every ocean would be jealous of. She is quick to wash her clean of the birth, to let her velvet skin dry in the warmth of the sun and briny noon breeze. She grooms the child until new pain rips her away again
The second is even smaller and somehow stranger than all the others who have come before her. For a moment Wonder can only gaze quietly down at her, brow furrowed beneath her forelock and jaw so tense. The pups had been odd in an unexpected way, but at least she had known what they were. At least they had looked alive. This child is something altogether stranger, something that births fear into the darkest parts of her beating heart. She cannot even tell if this creature lives, for when she tentatively presses her lips to the child’s cheek, it is hard and cold and wholly still.
She feels panic rise in her, decides to follow an instinct rather than any logic, because there is no logic that can explain this. She cleans more of the birth from this girl, her daughter, and every swipe exposes more bright, gleaming glass. Glass. Like the pieces of smooth, bubbled matter you can find in the sand after a lightning strike. Like thick ice over a winter pond - and even more horrifying are the thin fissures and cracks that spiderweb all across that delicate body. She looks so fragile, so helpless.
She traces the fissures all across that little body, starting at her neck and moving all the way down to her shoulders and then her ribs, pausing when she notices the faintest movement there. Such a tiny breath followed by the flick of an ear, a little ragged gasp for air that just hisses back out of that shining body. Wonder is frantic when she realizes, dragging both of them so carefully close to her as she calls out to a quiet, oblivious world for help.
i am brambles but i am tangled in your love