+- Wolf RPG (https://wolf-rpg.com)
+-- Forum: In Character: Roleplaying (https://wolf-rpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5)
+--- Forum: Archives (https://wolf-rpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11)
+--- Thread: Ankyra Sound VII. Now what's a little sweetheart like you, doing with a bloody nose? (/showthread.php?tid=41411)
VII. Now what's a little sweetheart like you, doing with a bloody nose? - Raleska - May 14, 2020
Dated 5/15. Read only.
Raleska didn't know the term eclampsia, or dystocia for that matter. Words like red bag delivery, breech, meant nothing to her -- but she knew things were wrong.
And terribly so.
Some time the night before, when the leviathan had been within her presence, Raleska's body had seized.
When she woke up it felt as if a fang was pressed to her forehead, chilling and agonizing at once. Her muscles were sore as if she had run for thousands of leagues, and a burning sensation rippled up her flank. Her muzzle had been cut, sporting a wide gash across her skull -- more than likely a result of her convulsions against the cave wall.
She was aware of none of this except the pain: any time she moved, her head felt like a rotted jellyfish's tentacle constricting her skull. Her eyes burned red, blurred by rheumy tears -- while her skin crawled with feverish cold.
She was burning up,
freezing down,
Slow heartbeat. Distant thuds with gradually increased time between . . .
Shuddering, Raleska tried to take in where she was, recalling only bits and pieces of -- where had she gone..? What had happened?
Her breath hiked as the first of a crippling series of contractions stole over her. She whimpered, her cry cut short by another bout of convulsions within.
Nothing --- not Rosalyn's mentorship, not Erzulie's cautions -- had her prepared for the searing violation that was giving birth. She was at her most vulnerable, laid across the stony floor like a lowing brood-cow; wheezing, breathing deep, cheeks puffing in and out as something molten and hateful made its way down a part of her she had never felt before:
how she struggled and grunted, pushed, cried, wailed, whimpered -- to little avail.
When it seemed she could try no more and the last of her energy had been stolen from her, Raleska felt something within her tear -- a piece of membrane too red, too vital to possibly have meant to come earthside, expelled from within her. In horror Raleska tried to bring her nose back, to poke and see the nature of that raw and wrong excoriation -- but there was nothing at all moving within the murky red sheath, and the only sound in that isolated chamber was the rough leaps and bounds of her staggering breath.
For a long time, Raleska stared in disbelief at that spherical bag of rotted flesh and parts of her own body -- and never once, did it occur to her if she acted quickly, the lives within might be saved.
That her life might be saved.