like the dawn you broke the dark; birthing

[Solace]

It didn't take long for Tephra to feel like home.

They had met with Tangerine and Svedka, and Solace's heart was full as she passed the hours with them. There was some exploring (at a snail's pace) and lots of catching up to be done. Solace hadn't been able to hold back her tears when she finally saw Warlight again, the first of two children she had lost to the afterlife, but her dark-eyed daughter had only laughed and taken it all in her stride.

But soon the changes in her body would no longer be ignored, changes that made her more inclined to linger by the healing waters of the Tephra's newest landmark.

Solace in soaking her tired legs in these waters when she realizes that her time is very, very close. Fueled by a nervous excitement, she makes her way to the chosen coconut grove, calling for Kagerus as she does.

The familiar process begins, and a colt is born just as the stars are coming out. Labor releases its tenacious grip on her body for a moment, and Solace reaches round to kiss and admire him. But the window is a small one, and the pegasus nudges him in Kagerus' direction as her head falls into the palm boughs, and her womb begins to churn again.

Hours pass, too many hours, and she breathes and strains in a seemingly endless cycle. One more push, she thinks, just this one. But as she cries out, no progress is made and the child will not come.

"Something's wrong," she says the words out loud before pulling air back sharply through her teeth. The child is sedentary, and her body is nearly exhausted. She knows it, and when she looks up into Kagerus' eyes, she knows they both know.

"We need to go to.." her sentence is ended prematurely as another wave of burning causes her to shudder, but she knows that her wife will understand.

S

olace

    we're reeling through an endless fall
we are the ever-living ghost of what once was

[Kagerus]

Kagerus

{ and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times }

Tephra becomes home with an expected yet still invigorating rapidity; as much as I miss the place we'd called home Outside, the familiarity of this volcanic land begs affection of me -- and receives it. For as much as I miss the clear Hyaline airs and the lake at its heart, I admire Tephra's heavy-thick air and volcano (as well as the volcano's magical pool) just as much, if in a different way, of course. The people make this place home, though. From strolls with Tangerine and Kavi (Solace's mother and my father, who hit it off famously when he made the move here with us), to our reunion with Svedka, Warlight, Rhaegor, and many others, Tepha's inhabitants welcome us home as one of their own.

Their numbers shall grow by two tonight.

Solace's labour starts early in the day which gives us time to journey up the volcanic passages in between her initial contractions. Her strength now causes her composure during Oriash's pregnancy and birth to pale in comparison (I joke that she is allergic to singlets) and we arrive to the healing pool with time to spare. More light humour and words of intimacy pass between us as we circle the pool, it which I came to when Tangerine heralded me some weeks ago, to foretell of our twins. Indius and Iridian, she had said, that gaudy and windswept smile that she passed down to Solace and Svedka loud upon her graying face.

"Indius," I murmur to the first small body which slips from Solace's womb. His ebony coat, interrupted by patches of white just like my own, glimmers with afterbirth and a familiar blue. Solace's blue. And on his nose, leopard print markings; a perfect combination. I circulate warm air around the colt as he shivers and huddles beneath my frame, already familiar with my presence after spending countless nights dreaming with Solace and I. At first the usual joy and elation of mother-fatherhood fills my chest but as time goes on and Indius mewls for food, a pit of concern burrows itself in my chest. Please, I beg to forces I cannot name or know. Please let them be okay.

We need to go.

With Indius asleep at my hooves (having drank his fill of the milk I spun for him), I obey.

The dream feels tumultuous before we even wake up inside of it. The platform beneath us rises and falls like a ship at sea during a storm, and indeed the clouds overhead speak of danger and thunder. I grit my teeth and right the ship, bending the dream to my will with a groan of effort until, in a heartbeat, we find ourselves in a pool much like the one in Tephra.

Though my psychokinesis would allow me to intervene and help in the waking world, the dreamworld allows forgiveness for mistakes -- and small nightmarish moments do not outweigh that advantage. Not with my wife and daughter's lives on the line.

"Solace," I call to her, dropping to my knees in a nondescript but familiar shape. I touch her neck and cup her face, allowing my powers to peek into her inner workings; what I find causes my heart to wrench. "Solace, the baby is too small, and she's dreaming, fighting." A flash of light and a crash of thunder reinforces my statement; my daughter and I duel and for a moment. Impressive, I think to myself. Iridian’s authority challenges mine, thoughnot so much that I could lose control of the dream — just enough to reassure me that she will be okay. Please be okay.

"Indius must have taken the majority of the nutrients in utero." Stupid, stupid, you could have checked this sooner. "You have to give birth to her here. She needs to leave your body but stay in the dreamscape -- it's the only way." I increase the pressure I hold against Solace and begin stroking, my mind's eye finding the passage of her womb and widening it, easing the pain she feels there; tears stream down both of our faces as we fear for the life of our youngest.

The dreamtime which passes seems unknowable.

And yet, the storm ends. There in the dreamscape, with Indius' resting consciousness close by, Iridian arrives. Small and perfect, a chestnut unlike any of the children we've had before; she appears half-phased here, unrealized in a way that makes my stomach lurch. The space around her shifts colours and textures as she lay there in the shallow pool, heavy breaths moving her tiny chest. Having done all I could, I stand above Solace, equine at this point, and wait.

@[jenger]

Let me know if I need to change anything!!! And I did not do a once-over so please forgive any typos !!!

[iridian]

She is a thousand broken hearts and the culmination of every wish thrown up into the whispering stars.

She is now and she is never, she is always and eternity, she is everything and she is nothing, and she is exactly right.

Before her eyes ever open, she experiences her very first lifetime. Time is meaningless, there is only nothing and the absence of nothing, and that absence of nothing grows beside her until time finds meaning and it is defined by the beat of his beautiful heart. Later, he will be her brother, he will be Indius, but for now there is only them, an entire world of just them and the blissful dark as they grow together. But he grows bigger and stronger, and she is so small beside him, her heartbeat a little echo in the empty intervals of thump thump. In here it doesn’t matter though. She is safe.

She isn’t ready when the time comes, isn’t done with this dark or the way mother keeps her so safe. But Indius is, and he leaves. It is the first time they’ve ever been apart in her timeless, ancient life and she riots. Or she thinks she does, but truly there is so little life in this delicate, fragile body, and all the fight in her is only that of her mother contracting around her. It feels like eons before anything changes, like a second lifetime until at last she learns what it is to exist, and everything that came before is gone forever.

She inhales, and the effort makes her feel odd and hazy, but she does it again and again until the rhythm reminds her of another from long ago, the rhythm of a heartbeat she doesn’t remember but still knows so intimately. Her sides heave, so small and bright and beautiful, and when she finally steadies enough to lift her little head, those navy eyes are so wide and full of gentle love.

Legs are the first thing she sees, momma’s legs all long and dark, shades of brown and black and white that absolutely dazzle her. Then she turns and sees mothers face next, and it’s such a nice face that she cannot help the way her little damp tail waggles behind her in delight. She feels stronger here in this place, like the longer she lay here, the easier it is to take breaths. But there is still something so important missing, and that delicate overo face abandons mothers’ as those navy eyes search for Indius. She knows him in that impossible way, in muscle memory, just as she knows how to breathe, how to live.

But where is he?

The world around her ripples as she peers about, not realizing he is simply behind her and resting peacefully while she learns what it means to be born within the dreamscape. To be at once both freed and trapped. Her little tail goes still, and her sides heave a little more again as she pulls on a power she doesn’t quite understand yet, one that comes so much more easily here than it might have in the waking world. She fusses and blinks, and then that boy is beside her, her boy, and the hazy ripples fade quietly from the world around her. She does not question how it is she brought him here to her side, only that it is good and right and she is content again as her gentle heart-thrum matches the stronger thump of his.

iridian

we are infinite as the universe we hold inside