The Moon gleams in the heavens, a white beacon that lays a veil across her golden shoulders and feels, to her at least, as if the sky smiles. It is late, the season brightening the evening air with a humid warmth that has reached even into the deep northern realms of her home, and in the folds of her broad body is sweat that has accumulated from the day’s heat and the shuddering pain that is threatening to tear her apart from within.

The Lady is pacing in front of her cave, hooves making splish sounds as they touch the earth dampened by the signs of what is to come. The changes were obvious enough, of course, and she had been given warning at first when she’d been forced to leave her armor in her dwelling and later when the pressure in her teats had grown so severe that she had pondered removing them with violence (that is when she was not soaking her weary ankles in the warm waters of the Spring).

The agony is supreme, the sort that leaves most women shaking and distraught, simpering cries of pain trembling from their lips. But she is not most women; she merely paces and pants, occasionally sighing fretfully when the pangs and throbs in her belly grow intense enough that her silence is broken. Inwardly, she is a storm, her thoughts flickering from the man who implanted the seed within her to the seed itself, how it has grown and gained life inside her. She can feel it moving, sometimes, kicks and wriggles and rolls, and when she thinks of it, even in the midst of its birth and the subsequent pain, she feels love, deep and warm, foreign as Thai food to a born and true southern American.

She also feels its strength, her lust for power brimming with every sharp pang through her guts, feminine features contorted into a mask that hides her discomfort and thrives in the thought of how beautiful and perfect the child is sure to be. She has dwelled long on the life within her, how it will be her legacy that lives on after she is only dust, and while she took a long time deciding who the sire of her line would be, she was quite pleased with her pairing. While Ulrik was distant, at times cold and emotionless, she found those traits to be of useful contrast to her own vivacity and yearning for contact and acceptance (though she shielded herself with sharp words and heavy looks), and the unison of their minds was surely the finest facet that her soon to be born child would exhibit; she was creative, Ulrik was brilliant beyond even the sharpest star’s comparison, and the thought of her little spider was enough to send thrills of exuberance down her spine even at a time such as this.

As all mothers seem to know when, she slips beneath the emerald veil of moss that guards her cave, dropping to the ground to lie panting and sweating until at last it was time to stand again. She does so slowly, languorously, lavishing every minute of the agony that sweeps through her for she knows what prizes it will bring to her.

The most gleaming jewel in her crown, the finest mink coat to shield her from the bitter winds of politics and the icy bite of lost hope and friendships. This thing could never leave her; it was hers. It owed everything and more to the golden woman who wails one pained cry into the mountainous midnight as the newest Prince of Snow falls hard on the stone.

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When it is done, she stands beaming and proud over the dark huddle at her hooves, finding with delight that the child bares the gold of his mother all across his slick black pelt, the small protuberance of his soon to be horn tinted the same as her own. Even more wonderful to her is the sweep of his tail across his shivering haunches, the way his two toes spread and flex as his puts weight on his front legs for the first time, how marvelously his golden eyes gleam in the shadow of her home.

So clever, even in these first moments, that he does not fumble and struggle to rise as many newborns; he is propped in an odd sort of sitting position observing the wet stone beneath him, the way his knees bend and the muscle covers the limbs before him. The tiniest of grumbles rises from his belly, hurrying the way his golden eyes flicker and dance across his surroundings and self, the most longing expression sweeping his face as those two golden pools fall on the woman who has made him.

It is disappointing, in ways, that the boy is not a female, for Illynx has always dreamed of having a daughter that she could raise to be as ruthless and feared as herself; but as she watches him try to gain his footing for the first time, she lets go of all that resentment. It is only fair that her darling Engineer is blessed with a male heir; as far as she knows, this is the first child for either of them, her excitement for the situation outweighing the weariness that tugs at her soul and pleads with her to help him get on with his first feeding.

A soft, gentle murmur disrupts her silence as she steps forward to rest her dark lips atop his shoulder in the gentlest way so as not to disturb his balance, the ripples of his unstable rise shuddering through her face and sending pangs of hot, burning admiration through her brain. Even when he fails to stand and falls once more to the floor, she only smiles, reassuring her child that it is possible to be tall and proud as she is.

"Come, darling," sweetly sings the wench, stepping back from the boy though it pains her to be so far from her babe, knowing that the distance will push him further even before his eyes flash towards her with a brilliant determination. He rises again, a quaking step made before once again his is down, the smallest sound of an angered grunt rising from him before he is trying once again.

This time, he succeeds. Her pride is obvious on her face, the way she bends her neck to nuzzle softly the center of his back as he finds the prize he’d been struggling to get to all this time.

Over the course of her pregnancy, she’d thought long and hard of names, bouncing back and forth between several and never truly choosing a one – but as she looked upon him, so suddenly it was perfectly easy to decide.

"Rikyn," she coos as the first trickles of dawn appear outside the dark confines of her cave, "my little boy."

OOC: Ulrik first please then others are welcome to come check him out! <3