It was crowded. Any womb with two foals in it would be. Especially in this small womb, squeezed between slender hips that had already taken too much of a beating in their life. After all, this warm belly had already nurtured foals before him. One smaller than he and his sister (his sister— his barely sentient mind flutters with life at the thought, legs moving against their mother), and another; a dead, lifeless foal. Does such a death haunt a womb? Does it leaves morbid scars on tissues that should abound with life? By a dark twist of fate, this colt felt the phantom strokes of the reaper’s blade gently stroke around both he and his sister— though perhaps he noticed such caresses more than his sister.

Regardless, despite the cramped space, such a cocoon was warm. He was with his other half, the form that had pressed against him and the mind that had shared the amnion since before their lives had even begun. Their hearts, when they had begun to beat, ticked in unison. Or, they had until mother’s muscles had begun to tighten around them.

He wasn’t ready to leave. Conscious stirs once again, minuscule hooves cloaked in nature’s slippers twitching as if of a mind to hold on and fight these early contractions. But this darkling prince’s protests were in vain, for his mother’s body quickly shifted from welcoming womb to hostile home in a matter of moments.

Sister went first— she did not fight as he did. More complaint, less aggressive; even in utero the twins had fit their roles. Wrapped around each other, a yin and yang shrouded in blood’s shadow…

After long moments, (the darkling prince did fight), he slipped through the squeeze of canal— it was so tight that it jerked his mind into motion. The moment his muzzle felt cool air, roaring breaths and surprisingly loud grunts came from gurgling lungs.

And his first sight was the folded, golden mass of sister. Not his dam nor the black and white blur alongside the body who had given him life. No. His slick neck slid across the soil wet with birthing fluids, muzzle reaching towards the equally slick chest of the fellow life that had shared creation with him.

The pounding beat that had accompanied him in the womb galloped beneath his muzzle. Though he did not know what a ‘heartbeat’ was in technicality, his body understood the comfort of it all the same.

So, satisfied, the over-large colt gathered his too-long legs. They bunched, paused, and then he surged to his soft hooves, wobbly and shaking— but still standing. The princeling’s unfocused, bright blue eyes swept his sister’s form once again before his head swung to find mother. The movement made him totter, a spindly leg of pale yellow and grey stumbling to catch his unbalanced newborn body.

But he remained standing. Aqua eyes blink at the unfocused golden form that smelled like the birth that clung to his coat and saturated the ground around him. A nicker— more air than true noise from his infant voice— called to their dam.

He could not yet walk. So she should rise and come to them— he and his sister. There was an instinctual hunger in his barrel, and they needed their dam up to satiate it. At least that’s how his small mind fathomed it.

Kianzo

I want the WORLD or NOTHING.