Qeya River [b] love of mine

welcome, @Sparrowpup and @Phoebeigh <3 (hopefully y'all can claim ur names soon after this LMFAO) please let pups and @Silvertongue post first, then welcome to visitors!

nothing ever works out quite like you expect it to.
this time last year, wren had been sharing tongues with a stranger who smelled like firewood and hard liquor, and silvertongue had been caring for the newborns she hadn't wanted. wren had been reckless and young, only just getting a taste of what adulthood had to offer, and silvertongue equally so; but they had both lived full  lifetimes in so few days.
she had never seen this as her future. when she thought of motherhood, she pictured a white picket fence life under the shadow of a husband who did not truly love her; faceless in a sea of others who were only cogs in a machine led by an iron fist. sharp baby teeth and ceaseless cries, giving up part of your body and your soul for another's pleasure, seeing the remnants of such in beady little eyes and destruction of home. tied to these creatures for the rest of eternity — a mistake that can never be taken back, a sacrifice that will never be repaid.
she pictured cold, stagnant anger that starts deep in the stomach, only growing and growing and growing as these tiny people turn to big people, as they get teeth and claws and muscle, sharp eyes and a keen brain. resentment over the fact that they are both nothing like her, and exactly like her.
but today, when the first shuddering lurch of cramping began low in her hips, that was not how she felt.
they hadn't even been here for a week yet, and this might have been terrifying if wren was in any state other than indomitable determination. for the past few days she sought no one beside her wife, sharing daze-filled stories and sweet nothings, taking turns providing for the other when the exhaustion of hormones sent one reeling. it was comfortable, sweet, happy; where wren had expected seeing the black mass in her nightmares, she only dreamt of kissing her wife beneath moonbeams. and when she woke, she did exactly that.
but she is only a woman, and like every other mammal, labor is far from being so magical. it is teeth-grinding and relentless, agonizing in a way she had never before felt and never wished to feel again in the very moment. her throat grows hoarse and she finds herself cursing man, damning them, frigid and yet fiery in her slew of expletives and writhing. god was most certainly dead, because in what universe would a kind and merciful creator — or writer, in her case — ever put her through something so fucking painful?
and the first to be born is made of the same fire that courses her veins and thuds through her body like a shock of lightning. when she finally opens her eyes and wipes away the rivulets of spit and tears, she looks down to see a tiny, ruddy boy — a boy! a boy, a son, her son. her baby. her boy. hi, sparrow, she cleans away the grime of new life from his itty-bitty face, holding his squealing form in her arms as if he were made of gold. he looks just like her, so much like her, and nothing could have prepared her for the gravity of the awe and wonder she felt just looking at him.
but she is not done.
there is still more, more agony, after only an hour or two of rest with her wife and her son. she is ripped so violently from her slumber she almost hadn't realized she was awake and that it was real until she was mid-shout, gripping the floor of her den as snow begins to paint the ground outside a lovely silver-white. her daughter is stubborn, because of course she is — and when she is finally pushed earthside, wren is breathless; she feels half-dead as she gazes upon her little raven-pelted girl. she is dark-touched, a little ghost of her grandsire, and yet she is pure; here, wren promises she will never know his putrid touch. phoebe, the new mother cries, a peppering of tender kisses placed upon the chubby cheeks. my phoebe, my girl.
a son. a daughter.
wren had never before wanted motherhood, and yet as tendrils of darkness pull her back to sleep, she thinks to herself: she did not think she could love anything more than she loved them.