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no one's lucky here; kohani / karli / theron
Topic Started: Nov 1 2011, 03:42 PM (82 Views)
kimmys
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Continents separated mother from daughter, but both wore identical sour expressions. The pale mare's wide body, heavily swollen with the unwanted child she carried, waddled across the sands of the Quarry carefully, mentally cursing the softness of the sand that made her pant with the effort it took to haul her weight across. Every step she took made her legs burn – a result of a cross continental journey made in only a few days while at full term – and she ironically looked forward to the moment when it was safe enough to collapse and let the abomination slide from her.

Somewhere behind her trailed her first daughter, barely a year old, although Kohani hardly paid attention to her anymore. Why she'd let the filly follow her was a bit of a mystery, but she guessed it was some vain impulse to persuade the girl to chose something other than motherhood.

Kohani had made her bed, won the blanket of power, and now had to lay in it no matter how cold it had become. All she could really hope for now, was that this foal was a colt and that she would get a break (if not see the end) in the cycle of child bearing.

Angry at the pressure of contractions, the child was kicking wildly, hitting ribs and organs and making the resolute young mare wince each time. All she really wanted to do was reach around and rip the thing from her womb, to leave it on the ground here so that it could suffer the way she had. The endless bouts of colic, the strain of tired muscles, the physical restrictions her size forced her to conform to. She hated it. Every part of pregnancy, but especially the end when she was no more than a waddling uterus and there was no way to deny that she had allowed Diego to knock her up again.

A misplaced step on the beach brought her to her knees, and it took a good deal of struggle to bring her sweat-socked, sand dusted, generally ungainly form back upright. With her feet splayed and ears plastered back, the mare takes a few moments to pant, struggling futilely to bring oxygen to her lungs. With wide blue eyes, the filly stayed back from her mother, the very vision of grace that Kohani had always known herself to be. Before life happened. Before Diego.

Diego.

It was his fault this was happening to her again. It was his insistence, his cruel dangling of power over her head that had made Kohani agree to another child so soon. And he, the stallion who had lost the battle and made them go running from house and home. None of her family had ever been forced to move from their homes. Not even Viral, the insolent pig, had left Serpent's Province after his loss. Only her.

The only bright side that she could salvage from the situation was that they would be closer to Cian. And while Kohani hungered for the day that Diego would be strong enough to lead a revolution on his own, she did feel safer being closer to her brother. Perhaps he would be able to see her side of this disgusting cycle of childbearing and convince Diego to stop demanding children on her. Surely Cian hadn't followed in Thane's hoof steps and sired a legion.

Carefully the pale mare begins moving again, angling toward the sea grass that was marginally easier to navigate. With solid ground underneath her feet, she assessed her chances; the birth was further along than she had predicted and even now she could feel the wetness that signaled that the child's appearance was imminent. Frowning she scans the land in front of her, finding nothing that was acceptable and trudged onward. When at last she reached the mild cover of a hunched tree, the pale mare snarled at Karli to stay where she could see her and sunk to her knees, chest, her knees bending with an agonized creak before the soft whump of her mass signaled she was at last prone.

The cream filly, although she knows that her mother dislikes her, perhaps even hates her, feels no desire to stray from her dam. Whether it is because she hungers for a mothers love or only because she is young and this is a strange land is hard to say. Anxiety causes her petite hooves to dance, and she paces anxiously, feeling exposed in this frightening place of groans and blood and sweat and tears with her mother, her protection, on the ground. They left her father far behind, and while Karli does not know him much, she knows that he is supposed to protect them. So why wasn't he here?

A groan from her mother distracts her and her antsy movements cease for a breath, her midnight blue eyes snapping to her dam just in time to see a misshapen form exit her body. The youngster wavers on her hooves, hyperventilating with fear although she cannot look away. Mother didn't explain any of this and she didn't understand what was happening. Was mother dying? Was she abandoning her here?

Kohani hears the change in her daughter and doesn't care. If she faints, she faints. If fright keeps the girl from making her a grandmother for a long, long time she won't be disappointed. A breath rattles in her nostrils as she rallies for another effort, but nothing progresses. She can feel part of the child – forelegs? - against her tail and it hasn't moved and continues to stay there resolutely no matter how much pressure she adds. With a gasp she let out the breath she'd been using to push and raised her head to crane backward. She can't see anything over the swell of her stomach, of course, but she feels panicky now. It's not going like it's supposed to.

She hates motherhood, hates her position, her herd, her life, her mate. She hates everything right now including the filly and this child, but she doesn't want to die. Not here, not now.

A few pants later and she gathers herself, muscles stiffening all around as she pushes with all of her might. Perhaps if she had stayed calm, things would have been alright, not that they weren't now; but her body releases the child with a tearing pain in her abdomen of a muscle stretching, stretching, stretching to its breaking point and releasing as the foal exits her body with slippery ease.

Sweat drips down her face, burning in her eyes but she doesn't mind. It's over. She's alive. And it's alive, she realizes as it struggles against her rump. Her blue eye's raise to her daughter first, not surprised to see the horror and revulsion on her face. Amalthea never forced her to watch any of her siblings being born, but she had been close for Kairos and it had been terrifying just listening. Rolling onto her chest gingerly, she cranes around, anxious, almost desperate to find out what this was. What secret her body had harbored.

She barely notes it's coat. The same color as Diego, although wet now it looks almost black. With no regard for the fact that the foal had managed to orient itself onto it's chest, she nudges it over and finds a male apparatus.

It's a colt.

With a grin she pulls backward, closes her eyes, and just laughs. Finally. Diego had a son, and not only a son, but one that looked like him. Surely he wouldn't refuse her desire to wait after this.





Some hours later the three are upright, Kohani with a hind hip cocked to relieve the pain still strong in her body, the colt wobbling around his mother and investigating, and Karli mostly over her fright of the colt although when he moves quickly she is still wary. Together they wait out the night, and the next day, and the day after that before the matriarch feels well enough to travel. Still the colt remains unnamed, and she knows that it would be perfectly acceptable to let Diego name their son, but she doesn't want that.

This is her son, too. Isn't it enough that he looks like his sire? And while she doesn't feel fond of him really, just what he represents for her, he is still the one that is likely to carry on her own legacy. He needs a strong name. A proper name.

It isn't until she is ushering the two children to the sea for the swim that she speaks his name. “Theron, Karli, let's go.”
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