Blackfeather Woods for who would bear the whips and scorns of time

another growl slips betwixt tightened jaws, and pain ripples again down her side. still, she is detached, alienated from the body that stirs, moves, is alive at her chest. it takes the sudden presence of another to ground her fully, and she feels then the full magnitude of her pain, her actions, and knows that her child is fiercely hers. growl again crawls from her throat, this one born not out of pain but out of a kind of defensive possessiveness she did not expect to feel. her gaze settles on the woman, and she is dimly aware she is panting, and that the stranger is speaking. she does not both to reply. she is breathing, quickly and labored, but breathing all the same, at that has to be good enough.

another. two. the come quickly, the latter almost on the heels of the first. she trembles and instant at the strain of it, the understanding that the contractions are ebbing, now. she draws them towards her, clumsily, and dislodging the first who cries out in a way that has her pause, blinking, at it. the two are covered in blood, the same covering as the first, and loose earth. she exhales, the burning in her chest subsiding and realizing that she ought to have heeded the woman's advice. 

the pup she cleans now is lighter than the one at her chest, and she places it beside the first, where it lays limp. the last she sorts out far more quickly than the first two, and again she places it alongside the others. the girl who will be called @Astraea is quick to latch onto a teat, though her sibling is unmoving. the woman is too exhausted to notice the odd stillness immediately, and instead runs her muzzle over the writhing firstborn before turning her attention once more to the woman. it's drizzling - sometime during the end of her labour, it must have started. she blinks, exhausted and unable to piece together the words she wants to, which are, in simplest terms, what now?