Sequoia Coast Crumble like a temple, built from future daughters.

For @Galathilion and Dreamer, if there's interest! She will wake up when the dice tell me to wake her. Feel free to PP @Airasëa, they do not have a player yet!

On the morning of March 22nd, six days prior to when her children were meant to be earthside, Wilwarin sleeps a deep and seemingly endless sleep beneath the ice, where @Wolf Dreamer guards her.

The two boys at her belly are alive and well, but they are hungry and she has not yet woken to tend to them, and shows little sign of stirring from the full-body exhaustion. The onset of her labor had been gradual at first—then intense, as her body evacuated the daughters she was meant to have; they were gone now, removed by the scarred man while Wilwarin slept.

The floor of the shelter is streaked red and pink. The walls are scratched from where she'd so desperately clawed at them. Her sides undulate with even breaths rather than the panicked, ragged, rabbit-heart breathing that had overwhelmed her system the previous day and night.

It is warm here; but warmth is not all a newborn needs.

cen was in a much better mood. he and @Red Leaf had managed to dispatch two old caribou. he had insisted that she leave the oldest hides behind, but would say nothing if she did not. this was more evidence of his jubilant state, as were his warmer looks in her direction.

the caribou turned for the sea and the lanzadoii did the same. he broke the snow in front of his wife and helped her make camp in a new place each night. the hints of spring fell away behind them and they traveled in heavier snow, rich with moisture and salt.

it was on one such morning, caked in frost and stiff with cold, that cen and red leaf arrived upon the coastline where a curious structure had been built. a cave of snow, it seemed. beaten ice in front showed inhabitation. blood tinged the air. cen held back wisely, and called out, "my wife and i come peacefully. we seek shelter from the storm. we will offer dried meat in return."

delicately balanced on the balls of his feet, prepared for attack, cen tensely watched the black mouth of the den.

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the dreamer worked to bring her back.

each breath was a win. each moment of sleep untouched by pain was sacred to him.

but her eyes had not opened. the pups nursed and slept. wolf dreamer was too afraid to touch them, terrified that they would sense the rotten threads he had cut out of their mother and succumb.

but the snow shelter was much too small to stay away from dancing fox or the children. at last, resigned, he lay gingerly down among them.

dancing fox breathed steadily. he had cleaned the blood from her face and sopped a good deal from the floor, bringing in new snow to pack at the entrance.

"i met a coyote the other day," he said quietly to the burbling babes as his mind considered @Sorcerer. "i hope that he stays. you will need teachers other than Wolf."

a call, at the door. the dreamer looked to dancing fox and then rose, emerging from the shelter into the too-bright morning. a tall man stood a few feet away, and a woman with striking red eyes was with him. it was she who beckoned his interest, but he stared first at the man.

the tendrils from him were black beside the golden shimmer, obsidian strings that climbed toward the star web. the dreamer frowned, unsure of what to think. he gazed at the woman now, searching for the place behind her eyes.

she is scared. is she hiding something? her golden threads were pure, hundreds of them trembling as they connected her to the rest of the dance.

wolf dreamer did not know the man's words. "you are welcome to rest. but i have only this shelter, and no food to share." dismal pickings. wind blew the snow against them all.

Can be a cameo, and feel free to PP.

His first breath had been cold and metallic, and there was no comfort to be found. He had not been ready! The boy had not crowed even once through the night of his birth, and while he fussed a little bit, he had found the warmth of his mother's belly and slept for long hours; it wasn't until now that hunger woke him, and he did not know what to do about it.

Small noises could be heard within the ice shelter while the child struggled to garner the attention he needed, and he wriggled between the sleeping Wilwarin and his brother Galathilion with all the energy he could muster. It was dwindling, and his weakness would have been apparent if someone had been there to see it.

She sleeps, she dreams.
Nothing makes sense.

---

In the dream she was singing.
Her voice was like her mother's, and then like Kukutux', and then the Sindarin women of Tulltalle; each note was beautiful and keen with mourning. Wilwarin did not recognize the song—but it was in the languages of her mother's people foremost; as the words flowed from her she faded from her shape as wolf and as woman, and she became like starlight.

Between the stars that were her body, there were threads of gold. The threads sang too in a pitch that was almost violent for how sharp it was, and their song rose up while her own choked from her throat, until all that Wilwarin could hear was that shrieking, like a dog whistle; it went from melodic to dissonant as it rose in volume—and she knew it was the stars themselves, these tendrils, which now reached for her.

They netted around her mouth and knotted there.
They snared her throat;
They tangled around the girth of her belly and began to squeeze.
As she felt the stabbing pain of what she knew now to be birth—
nothing.

Soft voices, crooning.

Mother, mother it is okay.
We were meant for this.
We are your daughters,
and we will be with you here, forever.

The threads began to fray.

As they snapped, their light flickered and faded until the shape of her, this Wilwarin constellation, held only the black of the void along her belly; and as she felt this pain she opened her mouth to scream, and to beg for her daughters to be returned to her—but only silence came out.

---

When she startles awake it is with a barely noticeable fluttering of her eyelids; no biological imperative to seek out her sons, to tuck them close for feeding, no energy for cleaning them—but she is awake, and alive. The dream peels back from reality.

anyone could be a flesh eater.
cen drove the pair closer and closer to the sea, and up until now, they had not seen much of wolven life aside from themselves. she carried fresh pelts and dried meat along with a secret bundle of dried herbs meant to help her with her pregnancy. she was starting to show, now, albeit only slightly; one would only notice if they looked at her too closely.
she still hadn't told cen.
she had been considering it often given his warmer mood, and she felt more comfortable at his side as a result — things were good, things were normal! it was a good time, and yet something in her remained apprehensive. would he be happy? angry? disappointed? fearful? she didn't know, and instinct told her not to find out.
especially not now as the scent of others began to swarm her senses and signs of a camp came into view. she looks to him as the cool, sharp knife of anxiety slices through her core — they could be flesh eaters, he'd said it himself. why was he bartering with them? why wasn't he protecting her?
she remains quiet as she clings to his side, maple eyes wide as if she was face to face with a ghost.

cen did not care for the way this man stared at his wife, and stepped forward as if to obscure the stranger's view of her frightened red eyes.
"we do not speak the language of one another." the caribou hunter spoke in a voice that said this was known, and nodded, and turned toward red leaf with a long, tight inhale of pure frustration, this flicker in his nostrils the only sign of it. cen was pleased she had been so silent, but angered at his inability to communicate.
but she had learned. she would know.
he pulled away from her now, sharply; he grabbed up their worst hide and tossed it gently to the ground at the feet of the dreamer.
his eyes they gleamed with a luster that was unnatural, and the sight of them almost forced his hackles to rise.
"trade." red leaf's sharadoii body needed rest. and cen, he wanted to count the herds. how could he do that with a scared valley-wife who did not yet know how to be alone in the great plains? it was an excuse too for him to sleep. but more than either of these things, and this cen did not communicate, was that witches were said to live in the frost of the snowy ghostlands.
was this one before him?
against all lanzadoii notion, indeed, all caribou sentiment, cen wanted to learn these things. oh! cen was a caribou hunter man. but not all caribou hunter men were like cen. ”trade,” he said again. the scents of blood and what he thought was milk drifted beyond the tall man in the doorway. ”he has a wife,” he muttered to red leaf. ”and she has children.”

the woman was terrified, and all wolf dreamer could taste was her fear. 

"tayana," said the man, over and over.

even though he could no longer see the frightened young woman with the glow of gold deep inside her, the dreamer sensed the trembling of her presence.

tayana.

slowly the black eyes turned to the hide upon the snowy ground, and after a long moment more the dreamer gathered it. his movements were almost sluggish, as if he were lost in a trance. 

"tayana."

for a while he disappeared from the entrance. he took each child and lay them against her belly, aware of the shimmering strings which stretched up from both boys.

he saw the fading gilt light and his lips tensed in panic, in pain.

around all three of them, wolf dreamer wrapped the hide, breathing away the frost which had started to gather as it lay upon the earth.

Wolf picked his bone teeth.

he gives you something for what?

i do not know what he is saying.

his words do not matter. see what he does, dreamer.

the young man with the haunted voidlike eyes returned to the entryway. there was hardly room for all four of them, and he knew by the threads that dancing fox was lost to the web, and that her sons would also be lost. "your wife," and now wolf dreamer came from the doorway of the snow cave, and pointed politely at the woman, averting his eyes this time. 

he gestured toward the shelter. "a mother needs warmth. will your wife stay with her?" and then wolf dreamer pointed to the caribou, their tracks leading toward the shore. he was no hunter. but perhaps he could urge them closer.

their words remained unknown to one another. he hoped his meaning would be taken.

Awake and weak; children probing at her sides, maybe, or sleeping against her belly. Wilwarin is oblivious about the goings-on inside and out.

The dream clings to her.

She feels herself roped in place.

She feels as though her body is not her own, if she has one at all, and still the new mother fights against sleep.

Clinging to wakefulness as one clings to life.