Emberwood the black hills, the bad lands, the calloused east

She was roused back into austere wakefulness at Cortez’s anecdotal behest and and thrown back into the world of pain and sickness and misfortunate — why she had to face this any longer, she didn’t know. Just behind the haze of unconsciousness, the frail woman lay, waiting to slip further into this relief. But the contractions continued incrementally, on their own, and the frustrated shewolf once again felt the actual desire and impulse to push. It seemed as though everything was right there, and if she did not reach out and grab it now, it might slip away from her forever.

The woman summoned all her strength and will, curling into herself with newfound determination to bring her children to life. She gritting her teeth and emitted noises that would make even the rainforest’s chattiest monkeys look up and stare. The placid woman transformed into a shedevil, with one sole purpose: to bring these children to life, and survive the process of doing so — but if she must die, then she at the very least she must not take her babes with her. She yelled her children into existence, pushing her forelegs so hard into the earth that she even lifted her chest off the ground an inch. She fought her children into existence, screamed them into existence. She channeled the strength of her own mother, her grandmother, any woman that was apart of the collective conscious, into the sole experience of birthing these cubs.

— and then, when the first child left her body, Olive found no issue in summoning to strength to reach her head down and examine the child. It was a male, of average size and silver pelage. He was alive. He was perfect.  “Oh, my child,”  she cried, cheeks wet with tears of both desperation and joy, and she pulled the small being between her forearms. She pressed her face into him, and felt him squirm against her muzzle. Here, there was life, where she was so certain there would be none. Olive cleaned the small boy with an eager tongue, so eternally pleased to be holding a healthy, squalling baby and not a corpse. The druid looked up at Cortez, beaming.

 “Praise the gods,”  she gasped, turning the little boy which she cradled in her forearms so that her brother might see. The little boy was mostly light, with ashen markings that would fade and smooth with age. Unable to fully process the unabated joy that she was experiencing, she buried her face against the perpetually strong form of Cortez, and held @Sundance close. Perhaps she had actually died, and gone to heaven — well, if this was heaven, then she was totally satisfied with her eternal sentence.