Redhawk Caldera ambergris

teya had ignored every milestone of her pregnancy and now the raven found herself at its end. the flutters had been ignored, the kicks studiously set aside from her mind. even as her instincts intensified, the woman had not seen fit to call it what it was.
naming it would make it real. she had forced herself to accept the physical changes to her body. the sickness. the fatigue. the way her emotions had twisted and writhed until they were tangled vines she could not hope to stir, not now — the hunger. the displacement inside her own flesh, inside her own skin.
but teya would not name it.
by now sweet @Maia would have noticed her friend's disappearance from any traveled trail or even the borders themselves. but perhaps by now the gentle wolf might have also found herself distracted by her own preparations. it would be far easier for her. teya didn't want think about maia now, maia for whom motherhood was so natural and for whom there was a husband who had wanted all of his children.
the little violet had entertained vivid, insane fantasies in which @Reyes and bridget fell in love on their return journey, and she could scarcely begrudge them that. it was not acceptance: it was that she had told herself over and over again that when he came back to brecheliant, it would not be for her. and why would he? she would be something he did not want to be when he returned. she hated him and by turns ached horribly with love and with desperation that somehow he should know and come back at once.
the first pains came late and in response she disinterred herself from the new space she had dug down into the earth to find. smeared with soil, squeezed from fitful sleep by the throb of anguish which had begun in the base of her spin, teya flung herself into the water.
long swimming strokes; she cut through the lake in a semi-circle and pushed herself beneath the surface again, breath a trail of silversmith bubbling until her body focused upon her lungs and she no longer felt the tightening ripple along her flanks. the face of the channel was pierced again and teya drew her dripping form onto the other side of the island.
she found herself breathless and unable to leave the bank where the lake touched her paws; she found herself fleeing back into its embrace when her body sounded another knell. this time there was not space between and there was not strength to throw out her arms beneath the water. teya dug her claws into the bank, half-submerged as she forced a guttural cry into the mud beneath her jaws.
the pain was horrendous, far worse than the raven had expected it to be. but the largest torment was every muscle and fiber and atom tuned directly into the center of herself, which felt as if it were expanding and moving to swallow even her own consciousness.
there was no lash of thunder to announce the rainstorm that suddenly opened up over the lake, pitting the surface all around teya with a rush of pattering droplets. she lifted her muzzle into them and opened one eye as the current contraction waned to nothing but the dread of another. get out, she told herself, forcing shaking limbs to carry her up the sloping lakeshore and then the few steps to the mouth of her den.
lie down, and teya was not sure it was even her voice which spoke in such solemn instruction. it was too late to call @Eljay, or perhaps it was not; he had all the experience that teya did not and maybe there was more than a little regret as she bent forelegs lamblike and nestled her wet body against the pile of milkweed fluff and sheepskin and silken furs plucked from the plush coats of rabbits. as soft as she needed. softer than she deserved.
maybe if reyes was here they could reconcile, teya thought frantically to herself. the tightening spasms were starting again, and anxiety spiked high in her chest. i do not want to do this!
but there was no other choice.
eventually the sensation of denial and revelation and even coherence banked down beneath the rhythm of pain, the breath between each swell which cut higher and sharper as if it were the caustic arching back of some eldritch sea creature slicing the top of a darkened river. rain still rushed lightly over the top of the den and it provided her with a lighthouse of sound upon which she could focus.
push
even if teya had wanted to resist she would not have been able. her entire existence focused upon the bearing down, beyond her control and beyond her comprehension, again and again and again, until the only sound in her own ears was her own strangled keening and finally a blackness, and when she blinked up through the velvet there was nothing else and no one else save for
"—@Sorana." voice cut into hoarse shreds uttered despite the fact that there was no one to hear them, and teya working upon instinct once more to guide a single crying cub to breasts already wet with a welcoming letdown. the rain went on. teya closed her eyes and lay back inside the new room she had dug inside the den itself, welcoming the respite of the numb sensation which washed over her now.