paint my spirit gold

There was an uneven mix of sadness and relief that released itself from her shoulders. Weight felt as though it had been lifted from her chest, despite the heaviness in her joints from pregnancy once again. She hadn’t had much of a chance of telling Tembovu of the pregnancy, and wasn’t sure if he’d been so busy with the events of the Goddess leaving the Edge to even notice the swelling in her sides and the exhaustion that creased the corners of her eyes. But there was a new trinket resting within her dual toned mane. A gilded feather, belonging to Calstron, was tied meticulously by Remy in with the mane and gilded chains that adorned her body.

And she hadn’t attempted to venture very far aside from following Ron after she had realized he didn’t plan on torturing her – wondering if perchance he had a change of heart with different outcomes from becoming a father to living children. Despite that, she had appeared after his death a fact that she still hadn’t quite registered – always remembering him as the nightmare of her past, a torturous ghost out to always haunt her; where he would haunt her no more. And so she left the scene, hiding herself away in the southern ends of Helovia, sending Marembo out for Tembovu should he show – should he have witnessed her leaving, wondering where she may have gone to. She was sure he didn’t know that Calstron was there, living among them. But he would learn, now that the threat was no longer evident.

But plans didn’t work out – she wandered away as contractions began to split through her body, and just like the familiar sting she had grown used to nearly every year now, she knelt to the earth and began to push more life into the world. After a while, she managed to get one body out, but feeling the familiar sting of more contractions from her time birthing Kiada and Kianzo, that she realized she was bearing another set of twins. A small amount after that, she managed to push the second child out. After resting for a moment or two, she felt far better than the first time she birthed twins, finally able to reach over and look upon the new faces in her family. One of them, the boy, was beautiful and simplistic, seemingly taking after her more than Tembovu. But the girl, there was something strange about her that she wasn’t sure about just yet. She made sure they were breathing, not having another issue that they did with Safiri, before beginning to clean them, uncertain of what to name the gilded children.

"Talk."

rexanna

Long limbs ached to be spread outside the womb. She was curled, knotted, twisted in a womb far too small—despite being stretched— alongside another heartbeat. Her unconscious body could hear and feel the other rhythms, though hers beat a tune all its own. A quiet, fast thrum that raced ahead, ready and waiting and impatient.

So when she came from her mother’s womb, she exploded; a tangle of eagerly trashing legs falling in the metaphorical blood of her dam's old lover. But the pale gold mini-goddess didn’t care; no, her silver- blue eyes popped open and her painfully slender head (already crowned with two sharp black nubs) proudly lifted.

A dark blob beside her—but that shared lifeblood did not hold her interest. No, it was the promising sweet warmth of milk that drew her unsteadily to her tiny feet. She wobbled forward, warm pink lips parting and pushing towards her exhausted dam’s teats. She didn't even waste the time to greet the life that brought her into this world.