She has never known a love like the one that floods through her at watching Nightlock press such gentle lips to the soft of their daughters dark and bright face. It is like raw sunshine trapped in her chest and fluttering outwards, filling every vein and groove until she is sure it must be seeping out through the many cracks in her skin. She could watch them forever, she thinks, could live happily within that moment if it repeated for the rest of their lives.
But there is no time for that, no time for holding still, and even as he repeats their daughters name in a way that tells her he approves, she can already feel the tightening of new contractions rippling through her delicate body. In an instant she finds herself faced with two very opposing feelings. A disappointment at not having more time to spend learning the exact shade of Rosine’s eyes, of memorizing her face and her eyes and the way her mane lifts and breaths like soft down in the ocean breeze. Everything seems so perfect, so impossible. Is this how her parents had felt the day she and Brigade were born? Just completely blown away that they could have ever been happy without having their children with them?
At the edge of that, though, is the contrast of eagerness, of a soft excitement that grows in magnitude with each crushing new contraction until she is once more groaning in the sand. The struggle of it is much the same as the first, as Rosine, but there is less fear now remembering the way Nightlock had murmured such quiet affection in the curve of her ear, the way his lips had felt as they soothed softly against her straining neck. And, sometimes, that feels like an impossibility, too. That she could ever inspire a love in someone as great as his.
She groans, low and long, soaked now in sweat and the blood from her armor as the skin tears where it’s been pulled so tight. She hardly notices though, can hardly tell one pain from another as she digs her feet into the sand with a bellowing groan that, at last, rewards her with sudden relief. She is not as quick to turn this time, though it’s not for lack of want as she already starts to imagine what this beautiful face will look like. It’s exhaustion that keeps her pinned and breathing hard, fatigue that makes her movements slow as she hauls herself up to her feet so she can turn to clean this child.
But what she finds freezes her in that way that only the strangest things can. Those frozen moments of uncertainty when her eyes see something her mind can not justify as truth. There, lying quietly in the sand and crushed beach-grass, two pups begin to stir. One is a shade not unlike hers, red-brown with tawny around his eyes and his mouth, eyes a shade of amber that takes her breath away. The second is much darker, with fur like midnight and steel, eyes like borrowed amethysts when they blink and lift to find her face. After a beat of bewildered hesitation, she settles her weary body back down beside the two pups, glancing over to where Nightlock stands with Rosine in an effort to gauge his reaction. But then the pups begin to fuss, soft mewling sounds and little paws that stretch open as they start trying to wriggle around.
She draws them instinctively closer, already wondering a thousand things - the least of which being how? But she was raised with enough wolves to recognize the shape of their newborn - and maybe that she had been raised with them is what helps keep some of the panic at bay. Did she truly just give birth to two wolf pups, or is there something more going on here? Shifters, perhaps. They wouldn’t be the first to be touched by that kind of magic. But as her lips drop to explore those little faces, with ears and limbs too big for such little bodies, she finds the how of it doesn’t really matter.
She cleans them one at a time, marvelling at the coarseness of their mottled coats where Rosine’s had been so silk and sleek. Cleans their faces and their ears, nuzzles the fur around their necks that she knows might one day grow thick and full. Even her own wolf-guardian pads closer out of the shadows, finding a spot nearby where she can sit and look on with an expression of bored disinterest - though the flick of her listening ears tells Wonder otherwise. When they are clean and as dry as she can get them, she pulls them closer with the soft of her nose, breathing in the scent on their fur as it mingles with the smell of warm sunshine.
Three. Three children. A daughter and two sons, each one perfect, if not a little unexpected. The thought makes her smile, makes her laugh softly when she lifts her gaze to find Nightlock again, to take apart the intricate mask she is certain he’s woven carefully into place over his face. But then her attention is back on her boys, first on the red who gleams like there is fire woven into the hair over his body, and then the black one who gleams like amethyst and obsidian night. “Who are you when you’re not so busy hiding.” She muses softly, already settled so easily back into that beautiful ache of meeting her children, of these little pieces of her own heart. She touches the dark one again, and she is reminded of the strong beauty of the volcanic mountain at their backs, of the quiet strength of the rock that protects the molten fire within. She thinks of his sister, the beautiful wild rose she is, that delicate little face blinking back at Wonder from beside her fathers legs. It seems an obvious choice. “You will be Thorn.” She whispers softly into the fur behind his ear, exhaling warmth over his skin. For what rose can survive without its thorns to keep it safe. “So strong, a protector.” And it doesn’t matter that all he’ll understand is the hum of her voice through the lips pressed to his fur, that the words will mean nothing important to him yet.
Her eyes lift again, finding Nightlock and beckoning him closer as her lips turn next to that deep copper boy nestled in beside his brother. “Will you name him?” The question is so soft and so gentle, allowing him the freedom to say no to something that feels so desperately vulnerable in some strange way she cannot name.
i am brambles but i am tangled in your love