Little Goat Mountain this one doesn't bite

Inside her mother's belly, her mind whips and snaps with malcontent visions of gold and churns with hums and purrs. She dreams of static and crackling sparks, of a godhood much greater than she, and in this dream she is a dancer — as her paws rove over herself, her spindly body while she moves, she can feel and smell the blood. The birds that swoop and swing over her head; the rot inside of her that makes her bones brittle and the flesh of her muscles melt like acid.
Athalia Ostrega was born sick.
And as she slides into the world with a silence and stillness that would worry even the most apathetic of birthgivers, goddammit, she defies all odds, all assumptions, and she twitches. Her foot, at first, a flex of a tiny red-stained toe, and then the muscles above her nose.
And finally, she inhales her first breath of chill mountain air and feels the press of a paw that urges her to seek sustenance. Somewhere out there, the birds, the ones who rise before the first light of dawn, are watching.