She is so quiet while she watches those emotions slip past beneath the cracks of the mask on his stormy face, flashing like the edges of a blue sky through passing clouds. And when he moves close enough to brush his nose warily against the marbled black fur of Thorn, she is almost amused, feeling a soft smile tugging at the corners of exhausted lips. “He probably won’t bite,” she tells him, a murmur full of affectionate laughter soft as trapped sunshine as she reaches out to press a kiss to Nightlock’s steely face, “at least not until he’s a little bigger.”
But then she is distracted again, lost to a swell of happiness that pushes aside the exhaustion in her chest as she watches him meet each of their beautiful sons. He must feel so confused, so bewildered, might even have doubts as he looks down at their little wolfish faces. He hadn’t been raised among wolves as she had, after all, and as surprising as it was for her to see puppies instead of foals, her knowledge of her family makes it something she can accept. But he touches them both so gently, buries his nose in their little necks as if committing their individual scents to his memory - and, after a long moment, he even picks a name. Claims him as theirs. “Tamlin is a beautiful name.” She tells him, watching him with such open love etched like pale sunshine across her red and bone face.
He accepts this strange reality out of love for her, she thinks.
And she wonders how she could have ever earned something so beautiful.
She pushes her face close to his, overwhelmed for a moment by the feelings of love that flood through her so raw and so wild. “I love you, Nightlock.” She tells him, reminds him, presses her lips to the soft corner of his mouth to breathe him in with those sea-green eyes shut tight. “Our family is beautiful.”
She would later wonder why there had been such a quiet gap between the third and fourth, wonder if perhaps it had just been easier to deliver the puppies because they were so much smaller than a foal. But as she moves to draw her family close to her, to allow the puppies to nurse while she lay quiet on her side, she is struck once more by that familiar spasming pain rippling from her stomach outwards. She flinches and groans, so careful not to harm the puppies curled up beside her.
Time loses all shape, turning fluid and slippery as the contractions grow closer and closer and she returns once more to the captivity of a body locked within the ruts of birth. She is so exhausted, straining weak and desperate as she struggles to obey the demands of the muscles tightening within her gut. This is, by far, the most difficult birth of the four. But she gives everything left in her, fighting and straining and pushing until at last she finds peace in the quiet of a body finished struggling.
But she can only lay quiet for a few moments, ribcage heaving and eyes closed as the sun and breeze start to dry the slick of blood and sweat from the copper of her skin. She is so tired, more tired than she has ever been in her life, and thoughts of sleep swirl around in her head in the shape of quiet salvation.
But she can’t sleep, not yet. Not for a while.
She heaves herself upright with a soft groan, maneuvering so that she is close enough to reach their newest child, so that though she still lays in the sand and soft, crushed grass, she can hold her girl between her forelegs and groom the birth from her skin. The feeling is quieter when it floods her with warmth, that wild glow of love as she washes clean her nose and her face, those little ears that droop and swivel, but it is no less brilliant. It seems impossible that there could be four of them - impossible that they hadn’t even known it. But as she pauses to look down at that beautiful copper face, she feels like she must have known, must have known in that instinctive way mothers claim to, because she is already so, so in love.
This one is chestnut like her mother, dark hair, dark face but for the spot of soft white on her nose. She has that same quiet glow that Rosine has in the places where her skin is white, but this light seems to emanate from everywhere in the same way Wonders does. It is a detail she loves, a likeness between them that flushes her with warmth. She is relieved by the marked lack of bone and antler, by the absence of unevenness beneath her perfect skin, but she also knows that these things come later. That even though she doesn’t have them now, it doesn’t mean she is safe from it. It is hard to consider, hard to imagine that this tiny little angel could ever experience a pain Wonder could not protect her from. It makes something dark and cold coil in the pit of her belly and she pulls her in closer, presses a kiss to the curve of her shoulder. “We’ll keep you safe, little one.”
Then, “four.” She says the word softly, glancing up at Nightlock with wonder in those bright-ocean eyes. “Can you believe it?” There’s a pang, a fear that claws inside her chest as she worries that there might be more, that she won’t have the energy to deliver another. It flashes across her expression, sharp and jagged in the lines of a face usually so soft. But then Nightlock is there, placing the puppies beside her belly so they can nurse while she rests, and there some semblance of peace she finds in his closeness. She settles again, though that quiet fear still crawls beneath her skin searching for another way to get out and assert itself. “How do you feel?” She asks, and though her attention is back on their daughter, grooming her mane and her wings, smoothing the feathers so they dry in soft, straight lines, the question is for Nightlock.
She wonders if he had ever even once guessed that this would be the shape his future took - wonders, too, if he is as overwhelmed by it as she is. It is a big feeling, but it is not a bad one. Breathless and exhilarating, beautiful and terrifying. “I wonder what Choke will think.” She says with a smile that is soft at the edges, with eyes that crease with the weight of satisfied exhaustion.
i am brambles but i am tangled in your love