There is no containing the fear which gripped her heart the moment her swollen sies began to quake. The tell tale trembling of the life inside desperately trying to get out. She had hoped she could last long enough, for what she could not say. An omen perhaps? That the Gods had not abandoned them as the World crumbled and blackened beneath their hooves?

No omen had come, and that optimism had bled away into grim feelings of abandonment and despair. As her knees bent down toward the grass of the meadow, she realized that those dark marks upon her heart only turned another shade darker. She would bring a life into this world, as the world in turn lost it's own. A agitated nicker escaped her as she laid her head between the vivid flowers that seemed more muted than she remembered and set to work pushing the life from her.

Sweat lined her chimeric body and each push she willed herself to give set her body alight with both pain and concern, her feathered wing lifted and gently fanning her side whenever she had the energy to spare. Nephele had almost forgot what birth was like, her children were grown and hopefully far away from Helovia by now. Caught by the same case of wanderlust she had when she was but a babe ready to spread her wings and fly. Hopefully, she could do the same for this one, some small part of her still hoped. Take them far away from the troubles which ailed around them, back to the place she had called her home in the years following her original departure.

Her thoughts distracted from the pain long enough for the last push to break through, one last lanced jab of pain as the child slipped from her and into the grassy bank she had chosen. In an instant, with more effort than she would of liked, her head lifted to glance at the small feathered mass. Gangly, she noted as she shifted enough to right her body, nose outstretched to gently to press against her child's side. The foal gave a stifled whinny, downy wings half-flapped as her daughter gasped her first few lungfuls of air as her legs set about finding their purchase. There's no denying the father, as if she had ever doubted the paternity, her dalliances with the Sultan were the only ones she'd bothered to entertain, but the skull which had gifted it's grim visage to her face confirmed that she was one of Volterra's own.


"Antiope." She muttered under her breath, as she began to clean her daughter


"Speech."