Dragoncrest Cliffs the girl has always been half goddess, half hell

for @Wildfire and @Artaax & @Blixen if y'all want but no obligation! ^-^

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Eske has done her best to give Wildfire her space not wanting to intrude on the new mother’s time with her babes but it would be a lie to say that she is not curious. She smells the infants on Heda’s coat and when she lingers within hearing range of the birthing den she hears them, their squeaks and suckles and cries. And occasionally their small little baby yawns will bring a smile to her lips. Occasionally. As Cheka, she is Heda’s bodyguard, always within a howl away. Heda is somewhere and with the reassurance that she is not needed Eske lingers near the birthing den, hesitant. She has never seen babies before and, clearly, does not remember the time she spent as a mewling newborn. If Gyda has given birth to baby siblings Eske does not know of it and faces the likelihood that she will never know them.

“Hey Wifi,” Eske speaks up from the mouth of the den, her tone wavering in her hesitance. She is not sure how Wildfire is going to take her closeness to the den. In fact, while she has no idea how she is meant to act around babies the same holds true for her in regards to how to act around mothers of said newborn babies. She naturally errs to the side of caution, ready to leave if her presence isn’t wanted or appreciated. “Can I —” Eske pauses and rewords her sentence last second. “Do you think I could come say hi to fyucha?” She asks quietly, tentatively.

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Oops.

The pups were nearly a week old now and Wildfire still felt an inexplicable inability to bond with them. She was, at least, tending to them quite diligently, along with her mate. Sometimes when she was having a particularly rough time of it, she wished she could talk to Fox, obtain some advice and comfort. But her mother was dead and gone and the Bandrona was on her own, unable even to tell Thuringwethil about the depth of her misgivings out of fear of what the commander might do, not to mention how ashamed she was about feeling this way after everything they had been through to get here.

She was drowsing when Eske dropped by, the sound of a whispering voice not so much waking her as becoming part of her dream. When the young Cheka inquired about saying hello to the pups, Wildfire jerked awake so suddenly and violently that both hind legs kicked against the nearby wall. The right made a hollow thump! but there was a sickening crunch where the left one impacted. And the mother's paw did not connect with wood but rather something small and soft.

An immediate sense of dread poured over Wildfire. "Oh, no, no, no," she began muttering before she even turned around to survey the damage. One of the pups—robust little Phoenix—must have crawled behind her as she slept. And now he lay against the wooden den wall, gasping for breath. "No, no, oh, no." Gently, the she-wolf nosed him and the puppy began to make awful mewling noises. She couldn't tell what was broken—a leg? a rib? his neck?—so she withdrew and just stared at him in horror as he twitched several times and fell still.

She was too terrified to touch him. Wildfire just stood there, staring down at the poor thing, ignoring Eske in the doorway. She expected a crushing sense of devastation and loss to descend any minute, yet as the seconds ticked by, the Bandrona only felt a peculiar numbness creeping over her.

Blixen was actually sleeping soundly for once, until her source of warmth jerked awake and startled a bleary cry of alarm from her tiny lungs. She groped blindly in the dark as she tried to make heads or tails of what, exactly, had occured. The little girl had no way of knowing the drama that suddenly unfolded as it dawned on Wildfire what had happened, but she did know that her mother stood abruptly and left a hole that the chill of the air was slowly creeping into. Unfortunately, a larger void was tearing through Wildfire as she surveyed the result of the accidental punting. Blixen had no emotional connection to poor Phoenix, and it was fortunate that she would never remember her unlucky twin.

She tucked in closer to her brother Artaax and pawed at his shoulder, as if to demand he bring their mother back to her rightful spot.

sorry for the wait! :0 also short post is bleh & short.

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There is a hollow thump followed by a sickening crunch from within the birthing den. The sound is reminiscent to Eske of snapping bones and the Cheka’s heart jumps to her throat, threatening to suffocate her as her throat closes and she takes a forceful, rough breath of air that is more struggle than it is anything. She swallows hard when she hears Wildfire’s mutters a constant repeat of the word “no” and she draws a terrifying conclusion: that the sickening crunch had ended one of the children’s life. “Wildfire?” Eske chokes out the flame kissed mother’s name. “What’s wrong? What happened?” Eske demands, her voice high pitched in alarm. “S-should I get someone?” Maybe Portia could help, for Eske does not know for sure that it was one of the children — perhaps Wildfire accidentally broke her paw …or something. Yeah, that was it. Portia could fix that, right?

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Eske continued to darken Wildfire's doorstep but the Bandrona remained momentarily oblivious, staring down at the limp puppy at her feet. Only when the Cheka called out to her several times did Wildfire's attention snap to her, eyes wide but strangely glassy as she blurted, "I just—you—I didn't—he's..." She was almost certain he was dead—he wasn't moving or breathing—though she hadn't yet confirmed it. The young mother recoiled at the thought of touching him, yet she knew she must.

She forced herself to strike out a paw, her toes gently stroking over his small face. He wasn't cold to the touch yet, but when she rocked him ever so slightly, his head lolled strangely and he felt otherwise boneless. Swallowing the bile crawling up her throat, Wildfire bent down and touched his tiny flank with her nose even while turning her face sideways. There were no breath sounds, nor movement of any kind. When she dared nudge him gently again, he was unresponsive.

"He's—dead." And maybe it made sense to call for Portia but Wildfire didn't see the point. There was nothing anyone could do for poor Phoenix. Licking her lips, she glanced up at Eske again, eyes still strange and a little wild. "I—I—" I killed him, she wanted to say. It was an accident. But words failed her almost as utterly as she had failed her own child.

Blixen was unable to keep her rebellion going for long, because her desire to sleep soon overwhelmed her again. The proximity she now had to Artaax's warmth sang a sweet siren song for the girl, and she cuddled in close to him and promptly passed the heck out again. Maybe when she was old enough to understand the unfortunate circumstances that led to Phoenix's death, she might mourn what never was. But, for now, Blixen fell back into a restful slumber as her mother and Eske fretted over the accident that led to her brother's death.

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An uneven breath tears itself from Eske’s lips as Wildfire stutters to explain and slowly the Cheka lowers her head as Wildfire confirms what Eske has believed the sharp crunching noise to mean. One of the children were dead; and though she may not have been the one to make the strike to kill the frail infant she had been the cause of it and guilt roiled in her stomach, weighing heavily upon her like a thick blanket. “I’m sorry,” Eske couldn’t remember uttering those words before in her life (perhaps she has, perhaps she hasn’t) but her grief is evident in the choke of her words as she struggle to give sound to them. “If I wouldn’t have —” Eske bites her tongue lightly because it doesn’t much matter what she shouldn’t have done. A child is dead and she has played her role in it indirectly. “I shouldn’t have startled you.” It will never make up for the fact that she set off a chain of events that ended with the death of a helpless child. The Cheka’s ears lay flat against her skull. “I’ll — I’ll go.” Her curiosity around the babes is gone, utterly ruined by the death of the one. They have lost the enchantment they had begun to take for the young Drakru and now she wants to be and stay as far away from them as she can physically get within the confines of Drageda.

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Eske apologized and announced her departure in guilty, sorrowful tones. Wildfire just stared after her before turning to face her son's body again. A mournful noise crept up her throat, a low wail that echoed dully off the wooden walls of the den even as she ever so gently bundled the dead Phoenix into her arms, pressing his limp, cooling corpse against the place where her own heart beat miserably in her chest. She delicately pressed her nose against his tiny head, inhaling his scent for the last time.

And then she began to sob, her grief cutting so hard and deep that she wasn't aware of anything else—the commander's eventual arrival back at the den, the other pups' cries and movements, the soft rain that began to fall as if to herald the tragedy—as she wept endlessly over the little life cut cruelly short.