After all the waiting, the bated breaths and begging whispers in the dead hours of the molasses-slow nights, the time had come. The world had birthed countless new lives, in various forms. In the grand scheme of things, Lakota's experience would mean nothing. But her heart was as mortal as her soul, racing towards extinction with every life-fueled moment of exhilaration. So when the general feeling of malaise that morning grew ever stronger, her heart began to pound like staccato drums, old lines of her ancestry behind the human facade of her name and title. Breath puffed free from paper thins and Aodaun turned to face her, lime eyes wide and attentive. Their gazes fell together inexplicably, some deep thrum of communication they could not control in that moment, a twang of awareness that it was time. "Find Ktulu, Alleo and Archibald. Kitten if you have time," she breathed into a cloud of crystal and fog, eyes wide and intensely violet in the washed out whiteness of the landscape. An ink blot on the page, an oil stain reflecting back sapphire and onyx.

He left her in a soundless, muted flying of paws across snow that he should have been born into so long ago. She watched him go, breath catching in her lungs, hesitant and halting. Could she do this? Be calm. Find somewhere warm, I hurry. It came faintly across the wire of their connection, and Lakota's throat closed in a panicked attempt at comprehension. Her legs unstuck themselves more out of instinct than decisive action, hurrying over to a sparse copse of trees where the snow was thinned closer to the trunks. Her pregnancy had carried over into winter, as much as she despised that notion. Alleo had been born in winter, and he could hardly handle the frozen waters and snow that the harsh one they were clasped within brought. It reminded her too much of old wounds, old pains and hatreds. But she could not allow her heart to be heavy with such sorrows, not in that moment, not when her baby was so close to finally being born.

She nestled down into the snow and soft, earthen ground. Her metal faceplate had been long discarded and stored away, for Lakota had not wanted to greet her foal with a shielded face and warrior mindset. It meant little to her anyways. Snow was kicked away from her hooves as she rolled heavily to her side, spine braced against the sturdy trunk behind her. "Come on, bambino. Mammina wants to see you now," the Poisoner breathed, a little contorted, a bit strained with the contractions that wrought and cramped themselves into her abdominal muscles. She'd stopped feeling foolish, speaking to her swollen stomach, far too long ago. As if the woman cared what anybody thought of her on any other day.

The pain built upon each cluster of minutes, and it felt as if she was being eaten alive by fire ants, but her body knew what to do. It convulsed and pushed and relaxed in intervals that she couldn't understand, didn't care to as long as the job was being done. But as it grew fiercer, and her mate and brother and best friend did not show, she began to panic. "KTULU!" she screamed, the exertion almost too much as she let her head fall back to the blissfully cool snow. And whether her mate came or not, suddenly something snapped, and like a rubber band everything came apart...or rather, out, disgustingly.

Aodaun was at her side, though Lakota had no idea how he got there. His fur was warm and familiar in scent and texture as he burrowed himself beneath her, propping her up so she could struggle to see her newborn. Her world fell, seams unraveling peacefully, gravity retreating as the center of her universe shifted entirely. Looking upon her newborn son - oh, Gods, a son - she felt everything fade and turn to grey, meaningless in the face of his vivid quintessential existence. He was the core of her heart and her world, mere moments into breathing. Revolutionary. Meaningless in the face of the impartial Gods who watched mortals die like fireflies blinking out, but he was insurgent in her little, supposedly insignificant life.

"Murtagh," she whispered, the name summoned from old conversations with Ktulu. And in a land comprised almost entirely of water, a lord of the sea was only appropriate. Leaning forward to clean him, she felt tears streak down her cheeks at his beauty and perfection. "Ti amo, bambino," she choked, knowing he could at last finally hear her.

- - -

@[Murtagh], @[Ktulu], @[Archibald], @[Alleo], and @[Resplendence]. All others welcome too!

Lakota