Noctisardor Bypass jusdreinen

welcome ezra & gideon!! <3 this is AW to everyone, would love if other pups made an appearance tho i did not tag! players may decide birth order based on thread events!

outside the den beneath dawnleaf's twined branches, heda stooped over chamomile she had gathered herself, separating stem from flower. the newest children of rivenwood were growing rounder; each day their auntie crooned into small ears and patted soft bellies and helped to clean the soft hides upon which they lay. she even hunted, here and there, though more often than not in the past week her efforts had been in vain. to @Glaukos and @Anselm then, she would leave such exploits, at least for now. heda then turned her focus to assisting @Etienne when he came to visit them, trying to learn as much as she could. she urged ava and @Dinah to keep close as much as possible, wanting them at least somewhere near when her own time came.
motherhood came easily to heda in such smoothness that it felt unfair to @Druid. something was rather wrong with her sister, she had decided. she did not stifle the notion, only considered that the new mother had been through an absolute ordeal and ended up with several pups, each with their own demands to add to her body.
still, she would keep an eye on her sister.
dizzy bouts of sickness paled the reservoir of strength she had been preserving, a nausea unexpected but so fierce it often drove her to sleep for long stretches of time. heda often found herself light-headed and disoriented, a disappointing, worrisome end to a pregnancy that had started harshly but smoothed.
the days wore to warm, though winterbreath still held in the darkened hours and the early morning, even through sunrise. her senses said soon.
dinah's voice, asking if her prayers continued. her breath wavered over the chamomile and she began to gather it back into a small scrap of fur, turning for the denmouth.
the first cramp caught heda high and sharp in the ribcage, a shifting. she stood as she was, eyes fixed ahead while mind raced through the inventory of her sensations. another step, another — and the second pain was a dull ache that bent her hard against the ground, provoking a gasp from her mouth.
a moment later, heda stumbled into the den and subsequently druid's arms; "oh, it's —" happening.

cold rain misted beyond the denmouth. her labour had stopped, for now, and heda insisted on using the moment of energy to help druid with whatever was needed. it was not long thereafter that her attention was pulled again, to pain, to ground, to focus; she leant one shoulder against the lintel of the entry and grunted with another contraction.
heda was visible for these moments to those outside the protected circle of the birthing site; for a moment she raised her head and looked through the icy sheet to the one who stood just beyond her line of sight.
and then she crept back to druid's side, and laid down in a quiet shambling of anguish quite palpable to those gathered. but she did not cry out, only tensed her jaw and let the dragon's snorting of scalded nostrils speak for itself of the agonies endured.

when heda returned to herself, the stars shone above dawnleaf, clear in the stark cold sky. by now she was near insensate with pain, her jaw girded against any outcry, and for what reason? she did not know? but in these moments, one's mind is cleverly guided from consciousness and suspended spiderlike above, and so heda found herself thinking of anselm and — his face above their cradle.
her vision blurred; if voices sounded, she scarcely heard them, twisted upright in a sudden urge to bear down, to — she was not aware of her voice, crying out;
god, please, god
it was so much harder than the first time. then she had been hale even in exhaustion after four to tend —
then eight —
oh, a breath, and heda was sobbing for caracal, his name floating weakly to hover at the doorline; and then she at last gave in;
surrender
i surrender
clay yields and is molded, and so did heda bow before the will ordained by creation and its progenitor.
a boy entered the world, greyscale and sleek; she sighed in relief to see him, and cleaned his small mouth swiftly, her heart already turning to a silken mush to see his tiny eyelids, his small ears;
but if there was anything overlooked, she did not see it, for god did not spare heda another moment before he led her into the last tribulation. and somehow, in a way she did not understand, heda knew it was the last.
it was on prayer she knelt now, incantative as they blurred and blended with her moans, the guttural sounds of a primeval world and an even older pain, that of the earth splitting its first joints and mountains and rivers;
and the second child came into rivenwood, another darkshadow boy; heda felt herself glowing with the same incandescence, and swept him forward. his face was the last thing she beheld before she blinked and the sky seemed to whirl.
but the strain of such trials overtook her as fast as those last sunderings; the golden eyes closed; the slim head on the thin neck lolled, and heda slipped into a soft-breathing silence, a blackness that would last for several hours.
only after she emerged would she speak names as if she had gleaned them from a vision.