Blackfoot Forest wicked little goblins

For @Tuwawi !

The fragile state of her mind had kept Ramona out of the midwifery game for years now, but every spring, when the air was as pregnant with promise as her patrons of old, the blind old codger felt a surge of excitement. It soothed her aches and made her feel young again, when the women with their gently swelling bellies and nervous energy had been her world - wolves and foxes alike.

She had woken before dawn, dismissed her entourage - even Damara, who was about as easy to get rid of as constipation - and trundled to the very edge of the forest to watch the colours. The burning red and orange was the only thing that could still cut its way through the white clouds that had settled permanently over her eyes. It hid a multitude of sins, too, brightening her faded pelt and taking attention away from the way her skin sagged on its old and bony frame. Childbirth had done that - season after season of childbirth, but Ramona liked her life story as it was.

Silent and more lucid than she had been in months, perhaps even the year, she watched the sun climb ever higher in the east.