The Moon gleams in the heavens, a white beacon that lays a veil across her golden shoulders and feels, to her at least, as if the sky smiles. It is late, the season brightening the evening air with a humid warmth that has reached even into the deep northern realms of her home, and in the folds of her broad body is sweat that has accumulated from the day’s heat and the shuddering pain that is threatening to tear her apart from within.

The Lady is pacing in front of her cave, hooves making splish sounds as they touch the earth dampened by the signs of what is to come. The changes were obvious enough, of course, and she had been given warning at first when she’d been forced to leave her armor in her dwelling and later when the pressure in her teats had grown so severe that she had pondered removing them with violence (that is when she was not soaking her weary ankles in the warm waters of the Spring).

The agony is supreme, the sort that leaves most women shaking and distraught, simpering cries of pain trembling from their lips. But she is not most women; she merely paces and pants, occasionally sighing fretfully when the pangs and throbs in her belly grow intense enough that her silence is broken. Inwardly, she is a storm, her thoughts flickering from the man who implanted the seed within her to the seed itself, how it has grown and gained life inside her. She can feel it moving, sometimes, kicks and wriggles and rolls, and when she thinks of it, even in the midst of its birth and the subsequent pain, she feels love, deep and warm, foreign as Thai food to a born and true southern American.

She also feels its strength, her lust for power brimming with every sharp pang through her guts, feminine features contorted into a mask that hides her discomfort and thrives in the thought of how beautiful and perfect the child is sure to be. She has dwelled long on the life within her, how it will be her legacy that lives on after she is only dust, and while she took a long time deciding who the sire of her line would be, she was quite pleased with her pairing. While Ulrik was distant, at times cold and emotionless, she found those traits to be of useful contrast to her own vivacity and yearning for contact and acceptance (though she shielded herself with sharp words and heavy looks), and the unison of their minds was surely the finest facet that her soon to be born child would exhibit; she was creative, Ulrik was brilliant beyond even the sharpest star’s comparison, and the thought of her little spider was enough to send thrills of exuberance down her spine even at a time such as this.

As all mothers seem to know when, she slips beneath the emerald veil of moss that guards her cave, dropping to the ground to lie panting and sweating until at last it was time to stand again. She does so slowly, languorously, lavishing every minute of the agony that sweeps through her for she knows what prizes it will bring to her.

The most gleaming jewel in her crown, the finest mink coat to shield her from the bitter winds of politics and the icy bite of lost hope and friendships. This thing could never leave her; it was hers. It owed everything and more to the golden woman who wails one pained cry into the mountainous midnight as the newest Prince of Snow falls hard on the stone.

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When it is done, she stands beaming and proud over the dark huddle at her hooves, finding with delight that the child bares the gold of his mother all across his slick black pelt, the small protuberance of his soon to be horn tinted the same as her own. Even more wonderful to her is the sweep of his tail across his shivering haunches, the way his two toes spread and flex as his puts weight on his front legs for the first time, how marvelously his golden eyes gleam in the shadow of her home.

So clever, even in these first moments, that he does not fumble and struggle to rise as many newborns; he is propped in an odd sort of sitting position observing the wet stone beneath him, the way his knees bend and the muscle covers the limbs before him. The tiniest of grumbles rises from his belly, hurrying the way his golden eyes flicker and dance across his surroundings and self, the most longing expression sweeping his face as those two golden pools fall on the woman who has made him.

It is disappointing, in ways, that the boy is not a female, for Illynx has always dreamed of having a daughter that she could raise to be as ruthless and feared as herself; but as she watches him try to gain his footing for the first time, she lets go of all that resentment. It is only fair that her darling Engineer is blessed with a male heir; as far as she knows, this is the first child for either of them, her excitement for the situation outweighing the weariness that tugs at her soul and pleads with her to help him get on with his first feeding.

A soft, gentle murmur disrupts her silence as she steps forward to rest her dark lips atop his shoulder in the gentlest way so as not to disturb his balance, the ripples of his unstable rise shuddering through her face and sending pangs of hot, burning admiration through her brain. Even when he fails to stand and falls once more to the floor, she only smiles, reassuring her child that it is possible to be tall and proud as she is.

"Come, darling," sweetly sings the wench, stepping back from the boy though it pains her to be so far from her babe, knowing that the distance will push him further even before his eyes flash towards her with a brilliant determination. He rises again, a quaking step made before once again his is down, the smallest sound of an angered grunt rising from him before he is trying once again.

This time, he succeeds. Her pride is obvious on her face, the way she bends her neck to nuzzle softly the center of his back as he finds the prize he’d been struggling to get to all this time.

Over the course of her pregnancy, she’d thought long and hard of names, bouncing back and forth between several and never truly choosing a one – but as she looked upon him, so suddenly it was perfectly easy to decide.

"Rikyn," she coos as the first trickles of dawn appear outside the dark confines of her cave, "my little boy."

OOC: Ulrik first please then others are welcome to come check him out! <3

The first to enter their pristine silence is the dark one who had helped her bring him into the world, his moments of quiet lingering before he speaks covered in her consuming admiration of the slender boy nestled alongside her. She raises her face to look upon him, the moonlight filtering through the natural drapery that had first drawn her to this stone hole to sweep across his charcoal colored skin. He looks awkward standing there, more so than she’s ever seen him, and for a long while she simply stares at him, through his words and his quietness, wondering what it is that has left him looking so stunned.

Surely it’s not the child. There are consequences involved with what they did together and the only one of them that was essentially guaranteed was the appearance of precisely that which fed from beneath her.

Was it because she had named him without asking? She hadn’t ever thought that Ulrik would be the sort to want to be overly involved with her son, part of the reason why she had selected him as a father over so many other options; the woman thirsted for control, and the thought of anyone attempting to wrest it from her over something as important as her own flesh and blood (even if he was of their own, too) would be faced with more wrath and walls than any army in the history of the world.

She doesn’t think that’s what it is.

He will be great, her mind repeats to her, its strange way of telling her she has wondered to long.

Could he be anything else? She wants to reply, but refrains. Instead, she smiles, motioning with her horn that he can come closer if he wants. She figures he won’t; it was shocking enough that he’d actually fallen to her desires and that he was here now was more than she could have asked for – especially considering she hadn’t asked him for anything more than his assistance bringing her child to life. "And handsome. He looks much like his father. Let us hope he is as shy as you are lest he bring us more grandchildren than we can house or feed." She laughs, a light sound, her golden eyes glowing in her emotions, so many sweeping through her.

She cannot tell the Engineer how much he has given her, and it has only been an hour at the most that she has seen the ball of foal that wrestled in her guts for so long alongside her; she can feel the holes in her heart sealing around his image, the sweet sound of his name lingering in her breast. She loves the boy, even if she never admits it, and that she feels it so purely and without doubt could make her weep, so overwhelming this serenity that floods her soul when she beholds that which they have made together.

And she had thought their sentinels were the pinnacle of their greatness, the finest thing that the two of them could give life to. She had been wrong.

She cannot tell him this.

She just smiles.

Her man, if she might call him that, is soon joined by another familiar face, one she had hoped would come to meet Rikyn; he was, after all, her brother in some ways, considering how Illynx felt about the white eyed girl. She was not hers, to be sure, and she had never claimed ownership over her or done much as far as teaching or guiding her, but the sensation that Jorogumo belonged to her more so than the others of the mountain still filled her. Her snort of disdain towards the Engineer rouses a look of mock disdain from her followed by a short ripple of laughter, knowing her temper and ego well enough to know that anyone would have received the same initial reaction from the Spider.

She wonders, though, how well Ulrik will deal with her sharp tongued orphan.

Returning the girl’s nod as she praises the boy at her side, the Lady listens to her words and hears them as deeply as she feels them; together, she and Jorogumo shared a pain, the knowledge that the world was unkind and without reservations as to who it lashed out at.

When the girl has done speaking, the golden one looks over to Ulrik with a flash of apology rising to her features before she returns words to the moon-eyed girl. "I would never abandon him, sweet Jorogumo, and he is blessed to have one such as you in his life," she says, seeing so much of herself in all that burning pride and passion; it was just so incorrectly used, directed in all the wrong ways… but she had once been the same. She couldn’t even remember their names, the faces she had left to rot in the sun, the hearts that had bled in honor of their memory, but she knew now why she had done all she had done.

To spite them, for all their light, how it burned her eyes and left her alone in a dusty room, clutching to the only handle she had to survive the agony of her soul: hatred. Break it, break it all into a thousand pieces, and cast the sparkling dust to the wind to mingle with your laughter.

It is a hollow life, this.

Where does all that glitter go, anyway?

"I wish…I wish I had done more to save you, after I found you in the woods," she says, softly, "forgive me, Jorogumo. I should have been there for you as my Empress was for me when I needed her most."

Where the conversation goes from here is a dark turn, one that draws the Lady’s ears back first to Ulrik’s words and then the following barrage of insults that stream out of her mouth, dark lips slowly dropping open as her son mindlessly and quite blissfully tugs from beneath her. She glances from one set of flapping jowls to the surely quivering and enraged ones of her chosen mate, finally finding her composure enough in her weariness to snap her golden eyes onto the dark child and her voice clipping into the dimly lit cave with all the whip-like pitch of a nun having caught the pastor with his pants down… literally.

She lets the pause slip by, holding her eyes to her mate in hopes that he will read the message writ in her features that she will handle this once the disrespectful yearling has shut her mouth. Irritably her ears catch the reply to her apology, that which follows the deluge of insults that has streamed from her mouth, heart hardening against her decision to regret not helping the babe when she had the chance; it was a waste of her concern, if the girl truly saw her as a daft fag hag as she had described in her ravings at Ulrik.

"Then, let me spare you the punishment of your most recent decision to highlight the truths in what Ulrik has titled you, then," she purrs, savoring the way her anger rises and falls in her chest, hot and cool in the same ripple, golden eyes gleaming devilishly at the girl as she lets enough of her mask slip to read, quite clearly, “you fucked up,” as faint blue light traces along her horn, roused to life by the subtle bend of aggression rising in her chest, "impudence is the act of a fool pretending to be better than those they are speaking to."

"You will cease such nonsense, impudent Spider, or I’ll let the Engineer prove his worth to you through the violence you so desperately desire," she growls through narrowed lids, lips sneering coldly as she looks at her adopted in some ways child with a gaze that could melt and refreeze ice, "insult the father of my son again and you will no longer have a tongue to be so petty and foolhardy with. Scream that you are grown to the Heavens until you drop dead, little Jorogumo, not a fool in all of Loorien will believe you with such idiotic assumptions spewing from your mouth, without a worthy deed to your name, without even understanding the meaning of the word for which you froth and foam. What have you done that surmounts that which Ulrik has accomplished in his years alongside this herd? What power or wisdom do you have to defy him? All you have are words, and moronic ones at that." Her luxuriously long tail cracks and whips through the air, striking the side that does not house a nursing child who looks up quite suddenly with blinking confusion as to why his momma has risen so much in body temperature so suddenly and what in the world that noise had been to the other side of her.

He peers over to the stallion and the filly, realizing that he has missed something rather important while in his milk induced ecstasy. His ears fall back, and his golden eyes flicker from form to form, landing at last on his mother with a pleading look that wants to understand why his family (as far as he knows it, anyway) is yelling at each other.

"I quietly allowed the abuse of the hornless girl while you walked with us, but I will not stand idly by and listen to a pretentious babe twitter on as if I cannot hear her insulting my decisions and my mate," her crown rises proudly, golden horn flashing in the moonlight that trickles in across her frame, smirk faded as she rants but reappearing as she thrusts the inexperienced words of her dear Jorogumo back at her, "or did you not think it would sound as such to me, that I might hear your hypocrisy and the ludicrous accusations of your words? Be quick and flashing of temper if you wish, but tend carefully to the sway of your tongue; I chose him, the first to have earned me. I am no whore who gives myself freely to whomever desires and I am not so oblivious to the hearts and actions of others to not see value where it lies; I will not be accused as such by one who lives only because I spared her a cold, miserable death alone in the woods."

Narrowing her gaze, that snakelike smile still curled on her lips, she takes a step forward towards the spider child, glaring upon the yearling with all the ferocity of a warrior hardened under the weight of a dozen souls cast into oblivion by her hooves, ears held at such an angle to show her discontent but not as to give her the appearance of one enraged; calculative, cold, her words are slow as they slip past her lips. "Your value has degraded under the weight of this most recent act of unacceptable behavior, and will remain such until you treat my Council with the measure of regard they have earned."

"Respect, child, is a lesson you must learn. Do not force me to set wolves upon you to teach that which you should already know from your… humble beginnings."

Illynx watches the anger take grip of Jorogumo’s features with a mask of glass, seeing the flickering of emotions undulate beneath the surface of the dark coated youth and letting her eyes remain hard and steely upon her. It was a lesson that had to be taught – there were those on the mountain she could not protect the little lost girl from, and such berating was only to spare her the violent end she might meet at the hooves and blades of others. The spider cannot understand that such harshness had spun from the lips of the Lady with affection, a desire to teach her how to exist in this world; Illynx had always worn an ego that seemed to shadow all of Helovia in its wake, but she had also always known better than to act a fool in front of those who held true power.

The only way to get it was to fight your way to the top, clawing and scratching, gouging and digging – or to ride the rise of another. The moon eyed girl was pushing herself towards the first, much more difficult option, one that would lead her down dark, lonely paths. Illynx does not want this for the spider or for any of her kin, to be sure, and so she sighs heavily as the tail of the child swishes and her words echo out, acidic as they had been for a while now.

The golden bitch responds with a tinkling of laughter, even to the rather dismal final statement of the girl’s diatribe as she turns to leave. Its mostly melodrama and teenage angst, she can see this, but it still pains her to think that Jorogumo is leaving this meeting feeling as if she was unjustly spoken to when, in all rights, Illynx had likely spared her from a fair bit of violence on behalf of the Engineer, less prone to lean on his words as the Lady did; it mildly offends her that the child is still so obviously stuck in the realm of woe is me, but she is also greatly thankful that she was given a son and not a girl child.

If her own memories of herself and this display were any evidence, girls were the death of their parents.

"Jorogumo, do not fret so deeply," she calls after her, her golden eyes glimmering with faint concern as the figure of the Engineer slips nearer her son, who happily drops his meal and moves closer to the one in the cave who isn’t yelling and carrying on with so many words he does not understand, "you must simply learn to live with others and not get yourself killed every five minutes."

When she looks back over to her chosen mate and the son they have made together, she finds the Engineer and the boy sharing a moment that is almost foreign and strange. Staring at the display of affection for a while with her gaze glistening emotionally, she observes the way the colt flicks his little lion’s tail about on his haunches and arches his neck up into the touch of his sire, his own gaze bright and full of wonder at the size of the man here with them. She smiles, the sweet smile of a mother watching something she is proud of, for both of them are among her treasures at this point in her life; no less valuable than the stone in which they sheltered from the harsh mountain winds, or the magic that coursed through her veins.

Rikyn looks up at the stallion as his masculine voice rumbles forth, catching the words with a face that says he is trying to understand but does not. Still, he nods his little muzzle up and down, slowly, turning his eyes to his dam as the Engineer looks over to her.

Her face in response to the thanks is one of pleased surprise; immediately her smile grows and she feels a tightening in her chest, a fierce pride and admiration for the man she had chosen rushing through her. "It is my pleasure to speak of your values," she says sweetly, "not to mention it would have been quite the biased contest." Her laughter rings out, and her son, too new to understand the purpose of the sound but finding it delightful and infectious, mirrors her. "She is a heinous bitch, to be sure, but I am fond of the little spider," her lips purse, the lower one pouting ever so slightly, "orphaned, lonely, and full of bitterness she does not understand. She reminds me of myself, when I was young. You would not have felt much more than loathing for me then… no one else did, to be sure." Her smile is soft and sad, her eyes slipping down towards the boy who she hopes to defend and stand alongside so that he does not suffer as she and Jorogumo had. She knew that path well – it was lined in bones and tears, and only after she had climbed the ruts alongside it and reached the open sun of Psyche and her Plague that she had found the woman she was now trapped inside that wretched little body.

@[Ulrik]