my heart never stops beating for you; birthing

[Xiah]

snow falls white on the mountain tonight; not a footprint to be seen.
a kingdom of isolation, and it looks like i'm the queen

For the first time ever, her life tumbles into the light.

It’s strange, at first. Entirely new. And cold, she decides, for one of the few concepts she understood was warmth. The end of her nose crinkles, a small white snip distorting at the movement. Blinking madly, the small bundle attempts to understand just what this new sense entails; before, blackness consumed her tiny life. Now? Everything burns into her storm-grey eyes, especially the cave opening where soft sunlight is filtered in through the clouds.

She crinkles her nose again, entirely displeased at this sudden turn of events. “Achoo!” The itty bitty sneeze courses through her small onyx body, though more due to the fact that the noise was all too loud for her small existence than because of the sneeze itself.

Shaking softly, a warm, wet something attaches itself to her. And then unattached itself. And repeat. Sniveling weakly, the ebony child twists fruitlessly in an attempt to see her assailant. When her neck complains at the weight of her head, she flops down onto the cool cavern floor, the snip at the bottom of her tiny face twitching with a sniff.

“Hello beautiful.” A familiar voice says, the same voice as the hummer. Xiah, she thinks she’ll call you. You? She frowns, perplexed, though makes no move to raise herself off the flattened stone. I’m you. Yes. Xiah. Me… You? Of course my dear, you are Xiah, and you make an enormous amount of sense. She sniffs pitifully again.

And then the thing nudges her! Xiah launches herself towards the large black object, pausing just in the right spot to balance precariously on her sloppily folded knees before misjudging her equilibrium and tumbling on to her other side. She snorts, as though the gravitational forces of this world are entirely obscene; she could float in Mother! Here? She had to work.

Perhaps if she had known the Lea from before, Xiah might have realised just how hard she would have to work to achieve something admirable… Now, she simply needed to live up to Lea’s happiness.

“Mother? Cold!”

Xiah