Sequoia Coast Crumble like a temple, built from future daughters.

She sleeps, she dreams.
Nothing makes sense.

---

In the dream she was singing.
Her voice was like her mother's, and then like Kukutux', and then the Sindarin women of Tulltalle; each note was beautiful and keen with mourning. Wilwarin did not recognize the song—but it was in the languages of her mother's people foremost; as the words flowed from her she faded from her shape as wolf and as woman, and she became like starlight.

Between the stars that were her body, there were threads of gold. The threads sang too in a pitch that was almost violent for how sharp it was, and their song rose up while her own choked from her throat, until all that Wilwarin could hear was that shrieking, like a dog whistle; it went from melodic to dissonant as it rose in volume—and she knew it was the stars themselves, these tendrils, which now reached for her.

They netted around her mouth and knotted there.
They snared her throat;
They tangled around the girth of her belly and began to squeeze.
As she felt the stabbing pain of what she knew now to be birth—
nothing.

Soft voices, crooning.

Mother, mother it is okay.
We were meant for this.
We are your daughters,
and we will be with you here, forever.

The threads began to fray.

As they snapped, their light flickered and faded until the shape of her, this Wilwarin constellation, held only the black of the void along her belly; and as she felt this pain she opened her mouth to scream, and to beg for her daughters to be returned to her—but only silence came out.

---

When she startles awake it is with a barely noticeable fluttering of her eyelids; no biological imperative to seek out her sons, to tuck them close for feeding, no energy for cleaning them—but she is awake, and alive. The dream peels back from reality.