Albrecht

The mare walks, her wings folded uselessly at her sides, and the old stallion, watching her distended belly swing from side to side with each waddling step, assumes she's just too heavy to lift herself into the air anymore. He treads several moments behind, but close enough to keep her in sight, and as he watches, she suddenly stops. Her head lowers and even from this distance he can hear the low groan that slips past her throat and pinched nostrils.

Glancing over the mares back, he can clearly see the border of the Dragon's Throat in the distance, but watching her gasp and fold to the ground, he knows that they won't make it that far. Her pregnancy is farther along than either of them imagined. Too bad for her, he thinks, but lucky for him - he won't be forcibly removed from the birth of his child here.

Ears pressed forward, the stallion creeps near. He can see the violent spasms of contractions swirling across the mares sides and flanks, as if something within is grabbing and clenching the muscles there. He's seen foalings before, but this... this is something different. He'd been a welcomed guest then, an exalted participant. Now he hovers fretful and unsure at the mares back, out of her line of sight and acutely aware that he must be the last living soul that she'd want or expect to be here, but there's no denying his involvement.

The colt, for he can see and smell now that it's a boy, has the same fiery auburn hair for mane and forelock as him, the newborns normalized to the top of his neck, but the same telltale color as his fathers. There's another shock of copper fluff at the tip of his tiny, whip-like tail, also like his father, and on his small brow are two bumps that will one day be horns. He certainly didn't get those from his mother, but her influence is there too, in the additional limbs sprouting from his shoulders, in the pins lined all along them that will one day be flight feathers. She's in the lightness of his coat too, and the fineness of his head.

The stallions ears fall back, his heart clenches painfully. "Will you keep him?" He blurts out, eyes never leaving the newborn as he makes his first attempts at standing and walking, at squeaking in mimicry of the noises around him. "Will you care for him?" 'Careful.' His companion warns gently, fearful of the new mothers reaction to the sound of his bondeds voice.

They'd only meant to watch originally, but the depth and range of emotion whirling through the stallions mind at the sight of his son - the blacks chest tightens at every iteration of the term - is too strong for the serpent to temper with his own calmness, and he's not sure that he should anyway. This small creature that shares some of his bondeds features has brought out more emotion in the old stallion with his mere existence than any other soul or scenario has managed to do in the whole of the young pythons life.

"I can take him..." The black offers anxiously. Ignoring his companions warning, he edges closer, inhaling the scents of blood and mucus and foal.



"Alby talks" 'Strom talks'
OOC // Followed @Sabia from the Endless Blue in this thread. @Saoirse