upon returning from a conversation with akavir that had been quite interesting, silvertongue relayed to @Ash Paw the disappearance of the swiftcurrent mother. "he asks for a mother to help with the nursing," she murmured. "in exchange, you will be fed whatever it is you like." ash paw could of course decline, but silvertongue hoped she would not. a twinge rippled in her belly. she looked around the charming den and smiled at the children, of which she had become somewhat fond. 


but the odd sensations did not abate. rain came and went, though eddies of a springtime storm darkened the hollow beyond its usual shadowing. soon the true deluge would come again. the rush of it was almost immediate, trapping silvertongue for the moment. she did not want to return to her den, and so sat sheepishly at the edge of ash paw's own, watching the lightning.


the storm too, did not pass. it lingered over riverclan for hours, swelling the waterways and trickling down through the thickly interlacing of branches and leaves and foliage. silvertongue at last was pierced with a pain so great she doubled over in a gasp. "no otra vez, por favor!" she sobbed out in a surprised whine. electricity flared knifelike in the sky and she lay down, panting.


it was not blood that arrived next, not the welter of dismay truly expected by silvertongue. instead, a great and crushing need to bear down grabbed her, and the flanks which had only begun to soften heaved, and the child who would be called @Shadowpup slid wetly into the world. silvertongue stared down at the pup, legs quivering, and then blackness claimed her in shock. the world flickered for a moment to near void as clouds poured before the face of the moon.


the anguish was great and the surprise of it, the unexpectedness of it, had her wailing aloud in agony and incomprehension. by then crowfeather had joined them, his face a mask of horror and worry and perhaps some of her very own shock. she clung to him, uncaring now how her voice might rise to meet the storm, and it was beneath a torrent of thunder that @Stormpup was born.


"i cannot! i cannot!" her voice was hoarse, fur plastered to her cheeks with sweat and rainwater. "ash paw knows; crowfeather, i tried to — end this." them. and now; she stared with rapidly growing freneticism at the children alongside her, first a daughter and then a son. "i cannot." she shook her head wildly. "they — they can never know what i did. i cannot be their mother. i will not." she was near crazed as she stared at crowfeather. "take them. raise them with —" oh his name! "i will — i will see that they are fed, but mariposa, i will never be la madre," she seethed to him and to ash paw, though it was now tears which wet her face.


dawn found a storm banked down to misting rain. eventually silvertongue would rise and move the small space to her own woefully unprepared den, crowfeather and she each carrying one of the two. but her mind would not accept it, and she refused to force herself, even as she curled around them and felt the pull of their greedy, healthy little mouths.