|
The streams that flowed on the shadowmere’s face did not come from the sky, for she did weep.
When it had been Callisto nestled in the dark mare’s womb, it was a period of sublime ecstasy, a sweep of days that seemed like a heartbeat of clarity in Circe’s life; the weather had been frigid, but her heart had been warmed and melted completely, the knowledge that her body was the vessel for the purest, tiniest form of life taking her breath away and renewing it with a sweet mist of star struck affection. Feeling the small filly move within her body was a feeling of deepest intimacy that no other gesture could match; not even the Dauntless’s caress could compare to the tiny nudges within her womb from the ethereal filly that Circe had felt. She remembered those nudges, from time to time—though she wished she hadn’t, as it made the pain of losing her firstborn all the more wrenching.
This….this was a different sort of child all together. Circe had refrained from naming this new child, fearing the destruction of her heart all over again if this one turned out just as blue and cold as her Callisto. The warmth of motherhood persevered regardless, although it was subdued somewhat with the pain of it. Callisto had not brought pain; this new child seemed to regard its mission as bringing as much agony to the shadowmere as it could muster before it breathed life. Indeed, Circe felt her sides swollen much further passed the limit Callisto had pressed them; she felt heavier, clumsier than she had with Callisto, the soles of her hooves feeling like failing supports as she hefted all her bulk around. Her organs were rearranged, compressed, pushed together in the most uncomfortable of fashions; she could barely expand her lungs to breath, barely fill her stomach with food before she felt almost painfully replete. Not that Circe found much in the way of sustenance, for her palate was a trickier sort than normal; the grasses found in her home, the Meadow, forced the shadowmere to lose her appetite. She found that she craved the red berries found in the thicketed corners of the Foothills, that she day-dreamed the taste of marsh-grasses found in the most tepid of waters. Peculiar as it was, it seemed the most trivial compared to the strange vices Circe now found herself victim to.
Her heart trembled, her mind was scrambled. What usually took seconds for Circe to process in her mind now took several minutes at a time, for she constantly second-guessed herself, suddenly timid in her passions. Her moods would swing from low to high, swooning in affection for her lover and the child in her belly one second, scared out of her mind for the child’s health and safety the next, and filled with the fires of wrath and fury towards Archibald’s daring the third. The nerve of him, she would think, huffing in anger and gasping in pain as her child would thrash about in her abdomen, strutting about, that anaconda of his swinging back and forth, looking for more prey to choke and grasp into horrors of pregnancy. I hope he trips over his own feathered ass and all is there to see his humiliation. Then the guilt would spiral into the chasm of her chest, and with the guilt came the cries of Stella as her hoof crushed the tiny bird chest. Always those cries would come.
Circe was sick with herself; with her seemingly broken, quivering spirit, with her worry for a child who seemed angry at the world already, with her own spontaneous anger at the stallion who had seen more worth in her than any other. So she left he Meadow for a time, following the salt in the air that seemed to spark an appetite in the worn mare’s tongue; and now, as she came upon an intimate place of solitude, her soul seemed to ease somewhat, and the shadowmere decided it would be best to rest her weary feet in this agreeable place. In the curtain of the rain came a voice of water, of laughter; its vibrant tones reached Circe’s ear, and though her tears didn’t cease with it, her heart switched once again and became a thing of calm contentment for the time. Closer inspection proved to dissuade the notion that the very rain sang in this place; no, it came from a nymphet who settle in the water, her own delicate sides swelled gently, her visage one of perfect serenity of a sort Circe had felt only once before. “How good that must feel,” Circe murmured, thinking of her own sore frogs; she leaned on one side and gazed at the tiny mare who stood in the rain-churned waters, and a wish jumped in her heart—that she was just as carefree as the mare who sang in the drizzle, instead of hopelessly bloated and wracked with a heart pulled in every direction.
 |
.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
