Blackfeather Woods sinnasaik

Shivali does not have to wait long before Tahani is filling the den, taking up the rest of the small space. The new mother eagerly nuzzles against her sister, filling in the growing loneliness of her chest. Though children never weighed heavily on her mind in the north, if she had pictured it, it was with the conventional mother and father and many healthy babies. Her sister being here erases all of it and she can’t ask for anything better. 

“Yes,” she assures her sister as she goes on to explain again what there good for. A smile can’t help but form upon her features. Her sister turns away for something else and she looks at it carefully, nodding her head. “He looks like you,” she jokes, a stupid grin showing on her face. 

It doesn’t take much to wipe the smell from her face, another wave taking over. She squirms uncomfortably, bumping into her sister, before settling and starting to push. The first born is knocked around a little bit she readjusts him for the new setting. She leans over as a second child is born, pulling it close and tearing away at the membrane. She works to clean the pale child, growing colder by the second, and no amount of ministrations breath life inside the tiny body. Saddened, she whines, pressing her nose into the body and into her chest, licking at the babe again to stir something inside him. 

All efforts are in vain and she closes her tired eyes, resting her head against the cold, lifeless body, not yet ready to give it up.